Freedom for South Azerbaijan – Down with the Ayatollah Tyranny over 25 Millions of Azeris
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
March 18, 2009
With the present article, I want to give space to South Azeris´ representatives in the web and thus cover a wider range of subjects pertaining to a vast area and a populous nation that have long been tyrannized by the monarchical nationalism and the theocratic extremism of the Persians. More than 25 millions of Azeris struggle today under the criminal and inhuman regime of the Ayatollahs. The world community bears the responsibility to listen to them and actively contribute to their liberation.
I therefore republish the section ´Who we Are" from the South Azerbaijan blogspot, a predictive and farsighted analysis under the meaningful title "The Tomorrow of Iran will Be Bloodshed" elaborated by Ensafali Hedayat, one of South Azerbaijan´s foremost journalists and intellectuals, and an ecological insightful concerning the great Lake Urumiyeh of South Azerbaijan that has been totally disregarded by the lunatic Ayatollahs.
South Azerbaijan - Who Are We
http://southaz.blogspot.com/
South Azerbaijan, designed to provide our brothers who live both in diaspora and in Iran, and the journalists/writers and academics interested in the subject in the Western public opinion with objective information, will be the reflection of the various opinions of free thinkers and intellectuals who are interested in the preservation of the historical-cultural-artistic-economic and political visage of the South Azerbaijan. To this end, cooperation and exchange of views with the visitors are tired to be made in the website. Our main goal is to deal with the cultural, artistic, social and political problems of our community and to put forward the reflections of the activities and struggle of the South Azerbaijanis for political thought. As a group of Southern Azerbaijanis, who love their country-people independently from any fraction and are reborn from their ashes like phoenix each time has activated the website South Azerbaijan that is not connected with any party or movement and has an independent characteristic.
We will observe the following issues in order to introduce the South Azerbaijan in our website that will always contain objective news and comments:
The line South Azerbaijan follows depends on the preservation of the cultural, social and political riches of South Azerbaijan.
South Azerbaijan wants to give place to new ideas and points of views, as well as the views of the South Azerbaijani thinkers and intellectuals from every sector.
Open to cooperation and discussions, South Azerbaijan will also convey the opposite views.
The publication of new researches and activities of social, cultural, artistic and political quality are aimed at in the website.
South Azerbaijan intends to convey the past experiences of South Azerbaijan to the future generations.
In South Azerbaijan, we will try to have everybody who is interested in the issue of South Azerbaijan access correct and reliable information.
South Azerbaijan will also deal with the problems of the women living in South Azerbaijan and address the subjects they are interested in. You can send us the writings and articles that you want to be published in the website South Azerbaijan.
However, it is our primary criteria that the writing to be published in our website should be far from insults and slanders and expressed in a respectful style. We would welcome the publication of the writings in the website South Azerbaijan in other websites, referring the SouthAz as the source.
The blogspot´s owner can be contacted here: savalansesi@gmail.com
The Tomorrow of Iran will Be Bloodshed
By Ensafali Hedayat
Iranian- Azeri Independent Journalist
(Amongst others: http://southaz.blogspot.com/2008/05/tomorrow-of-iran-will-be-bloodshed.html and http://moriab.blogspot.com/2008/04/tomorrow-of-iran-will-be-bloodshed.html)
I received a scroll today from the Iranian Azeris. It was signed by more than 17,536 Azeris from all over the world. The Azeris are one of the many Iranian ethnic groups. There are other ethnicities in Iran, including the Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Turkmans, Baluchs, Sistanies, and so on. Most Iranians believe that the Azeris and Persians are the most dominant communities among all of the ethnicities and they think that the political and economic power in Iran belong to both of these two major ethnic groups.
However, each group believes itself to be the most popular in Iran. The population of Iran is around 72 million. The Azeri political and social activists claim that the Azeri population comprises the actual majority, since they number 35 million. Even so, the ruling Persians somehow manage to relegate them to minority status.
Meanwhile, the Azeris were in power for more than one thousand years, and throughout all those centuries, they did not impose their Turkish culture and language on other Iranian ethnics. However, when the political power turned to Persian hands in the 1920s, the government imposed the Persian culture and language, designating Persian as the only official language and suppressing almost 120 languages in Iran in this relatively short period of time.
Unfortunately, there are no reliable statistics on the populations of Iranian ethnic groups. Like many other matters, it is kept under a cloak of secrecy. The Persian political system calls the Azeris in derogatory names in public and the media. In fact, the Iranian media feel free to make Azeris the main subject of a lot of jokes. The official print media and radio and television stations present them in despicable, distorted situations. For example, in May, 2006, an insulting and inflammatory cartoon was published in Iran, the daily newspaper of the official Iranian news agency (IRNA). The cartoon depicts a cockroach which talks in Azeri, instead of in Farsi, the official or newspaper´s language.
The government eventually shut down its own official newspaper, but only after a huge public protest. In 2006, outraged by the controversial cartoon and the government´s institutionalized discrimination against Azeris, the Iranian Azeris held large demonstrations in districts, cities and regions where the Azeris constitute the majority. Their main slogan was: "We are Turks!" and "The Turkish language should be official!". They called upon the politicians of the Islamic regime to honour the Iranian Islamic Constitution´s fifteenth and nineteenth articles that allow all the ethnic groups to use their local languages in schools and universities, besides Farsi as an official language.
That national protest was as close as Iran has come to a revolution in almost thirty years. Hundreds of thousands of Azeris filled the streets. It reminded the authorities of the role played by the Azeris in the Islamic Revolution in 1978. They thought it may happen again, as it was begun by and continued by Azeris.
Therefore, the Islamic regime called thousands of its troops to quell these demonstrations. In total, the police, secret intelligence forces, Revolutionary Guards and civil militants (Basiije) killed at least eleven and arrested more than 1300 people. At least these are the two figures recorded by Iranian official news agencies.
It was the biggest demonstration in Azeri history since 1978—although there were also a lot of peaceful demonstrations from 2000 every year in the Azeri-dominated provinces. I was a journalist there and I was monitoring both sides of the action. Despite my Azeri ethnicity, my thinking is not the same as that of most Azeris. In other words, many of them support the goal of full separation in theory and practice. I am an Azeri-Iranian journalist who does not have any interest in the separation of an Azerbaijan of Iran. Nevertheless, I am an advocate of the recognition of the cultural, economic, historical and ethnic distinction of Azeris and other ethnic groups in Iran. And I am the witness of deep discriminations in these fields.
There is such deep discrimination towards non-Persian Iranian Muslim ethnics in Iran that you cannot imagine it at all, because it is not possible for you to imagine yourself as the victim of such blatant discrimination and persecution. Most Canadian-born people have not felt the effects of this degree of racism and its long-term psychological and political effects. Only the people who have grown up in such a situation can fully comprehend what it feels like to be treated as second class citizens. Only they can imagine what I am going to say.
You should thank God that you were not raised in a society like that of Iran—to feel what we endured on a daily basis. The government´s attitude towards Azeris and other ethnicities in Iran is more like the deprivation of food and goods. I have been a witness to that discrimination myself because I was not permitted to read and write the language of my ancestors, that is, Turkish. I do not know anything about my background, history and culture. But I do know the Farsi and Persian culture and history perfectly, as I was forced to learn it officially in schools and university and by every bit of education and high professional training in journalism.
Although I know very little about my background, I have studied my language on my own outside of school. I know there are a few other Iranian religious ethnic groups that have their linguistic and religious rights there. However, they are relatively small groups compared to other Iranian ethnic minorities. For instance, the Armenians of Iran have special permission to have their own schools in their languages there. It is good and I am glad that they are allowed a little bit of their human rights, but what about us and other ethnics? We Iranian Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchs, Turkmans, and Sistanis constitute huge populations. However, we do not have our human rights to read, write and study in our languages in official schools and universities.
I have written many articles on this subject, not only when I was reporting from Iran and when I was in prison as a dissident, but also since I have been living in exile in Canada. Given the growing ethnic tensions, I predict that the Iranian future will be worse than politicians estimate. The future of Iran will be full of war, blood and dead bodies—and the division of the country into small parts.
Clearly, the future will bring regional and ethnic violence in Iran and throughout the Middle East. The onus is on the world human rights organizations and individual activists to do something now to prevent a tomorrow of disaster and devastation in that region.
As an Iranian journalist living in Canada, it is my duty to make you aware and ask you to do your best for all the Iranian people who have been living for tens of centuries there together. Please be realistic about Iran´s future before it changes to a new Darfur.
Based in Toronto, Canada, Ensafali Hedayatcan be contacted here: hedayat222@yahoo.com. His telephone number is: +1-416-497-8070
Lake Urumiyeh is Drying
http://www.oursouthazerbaijan.com/English_LAKE.htm
140 km-long Lake Urumiyah, which is an attraction center for swimming, water sports and boat activities, is at a great stake. Lake Urumiyah attracts a lot of people in summer with its beautiful beaches and salty water. Depending on its water containing many minerals, Lake Urumiyah has made its region one of the most beautiful and unique places of the world for the water therapy systems. This lake is unfortunately under the danger of extinction.
Within the borders of the West Azerbaijan, in the Lake Urumiyah National Park, which is under a "so-called" protection and which contains islands, coasts, various kinds of plants and animals, and the area of 4810 hectares some kind of ecologic problems, depending on the increase in the saltiness level due to the decrease of the water level, are experienced. A meeting was hold in Tabriz in November 16 – 17, 2007 on this issue.
In the above-mentioned meeting, to which relevant individuals and experts were attended from the cities of Tabriz and Urumiyah, it was declared that "the negativities seen in Lake Urumiyah were mentioned to the relevant authorities in the year 2005, however no appropriate researches and studies were conducted on this issue." In addition to this, it is reported that in the meeting, some points as "as of November 300 milligram salt in one liter lake water was measured, and the reason for this is the decrease in the waters of the rivers flowing to the Lake Urumiyah, the future of the lake would be in danger if any measures do not taken, and the people living around would be affected negatively because of this reason" are discussed.
According to the experts, although the individuals attending to the meeting could not express the following facts openly, "they point out that the central government is indifferent to the Azerbaijani States and insensitive to the problems of the region". In addition to this, the experts underline that the area´s biological variety draws attention internationally and because of that reason the area was declared as a national park and taken under protection as "a biosphere region" by UNESCO. It is suggested that the Government of Iran´s unconcerned attitude towards Lake Urumiyah would also set environmental organizations in motion.
Note
Picture: Lake Urumiyeh – a typical view
Print
Email
