If you don’t believe me that Arab land is being confiscated by Tehran, then read the comments of the UN’s housing expert Miloon Kothari after his visit to Iran in 2005. He said:
“When you visit Ahwaz [in the western Iranian province of Khuzestan bordering Iraq] in terms of the very adverse conditions in the neighbourhoods, there are thousands of people living with open sewers, no sanitation, no regular access to water, electricity and no gas connections. I think that the kind of question that arises is, why is that? Why have certain groups not benefited? In addition to this there are a couple of other problems that come up. Again in Khuzestan, you notice that we drove outside the city about 20 km and we visited the areas where large development projects are coming up – sugar cane plantations and other projects along the river – and the estimate we received is that between 200,000 – 250,000 Arab people are being displaced from their villages because of these projects. And the question that comes up in my mind is, why is it that these projects are placed directly on the lands that have been homes for these people for generations? I asked the officials, I asked the people we were with. And there is other land in Khuzestan where projects could have been placed which would have minimised the displacement.
“The third issue in Khuzestan, which is very disturbing, is that there is an attempt being made by the government to build new towns and bring in new people from other provinces. For example, there is the new town of Shirinshah where most of the people being brought into that town are people from Yazd province [in central Iran] – non-Arabs. So the question then is that these people who are being brought there, perhaps for work and lots of incentives, why is it that those jobs are not going to the locals?
“Another point in Khuzestan is that from these deprived neighbourhoods you can actually see the towers of the oil refineries and the flares and all of that money, which is a lot, and it is going out of the province. Even a small percentage would significantly improve things in terms of development.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=25364
The truth is that not one “opposition” group of wealthy Iranian exiles wants to acknowledge this fact, which is repeated in countless human rights and UN reports and in resolutions by the European Parliament and the UN General Assembly. Why is that?
If these “opposition” groups actually listened to Ahwazi Arabs and understood them instead of lecturing them and accusing them of separatism whenever ethnic rights are mentioned, then Ahwazi Arabs will gladly join with them. Whatever the historical arguments, the fact is that their homeland was called Arabistan in Farsi in acknowledgement of the Arab character of the region, which enjoyed long periods of autonomy from Tehran. It’s true, secessionism is not a powerful force, but if you continually deride and downplay the Ahwazi Arab cause, then what alternative is there for these people?
