Aims of the meeting: to plan the Area for the Collective Rights of the Peoples at the World Social Forum 2009.

The meeting will bring together a score of representatives of the Kurdish, Amazigh, Palestinian, Basque, Galician, Corsican, Sardinian, Saharaui, Gipsy, Mapuche, Tamil, Catalan, Baloch peoples, with the aim to arrange their presence and program of activities at the Area for the Collective Rights of the Peoples to be hold at the forthcoming World Social Forum 2009 in Belém do Pará (Brazil).

14 Nov 2008
Presentation at World Social Forum by Monireh Sulemani
Barcelona, Catalan Countries

On behalf of the Baloch nation I would like to express my gratitude to CIEMEN for organizing these seminars.
The word Balochistan means the land of the Baloch People. Balochistan is divided between three Multinational states of Afghanistan, Pakistan and The Islamic Republic of Iran. I am speaking here as a representative of the Balochistan Peoples Party (BPP), which is a Liberal Democratic Party struggling to achieve national sovereignty for the Baloch people within a secular, federal and democratic Republic in Iran.
As we find confirmation of our presence and our identity in history, the Balochi language is a window to the historical path that Baloch people have walked.
Baloch culture is oral and in the folklores we find evidences of our existence and the memory of our ancestors. But through systematic discrimination Baloch people are not allowed to use their language, which leads to denial of our history, this is a cleaver tool in the assimilation politics that is the agenda of the regime.

The law of the Islamic Republic of Iran is no law of equality since it is not fair, as discrimination is institutionalized.
As a privileged Baloch (living outside the repressing borders of Iran) I feel it is my duty to tell the international community of the abuse and the unjustness that Baloch people live with.
According to the UN conventions all people are entitled to their identity and culture, but the Islamic Republic deprives its citizens of these rights over and over again.

We are struggling for the recognition of our cultural and political rights as human beings. Iran is a multi ethnical and multilingual country composed of Azerbaijani Turks, Ahwazi Arabs, Balochs, Persians, Kurds Lors and Turkmen.
But due to the Iranian regimes cultural and linguistic apartheid the only group that exists is the Shia Persian group. The elite Shia and ultra nationalistic exclusion of other nationalities and ethnical groups have created an all-exclusive Persian State.
Use of our languages in schools or publications has been strictly prohibited in our own region. There are no cultural institutions or activities for Baloch people and only the Persian History is taught and recognized as the history of 70 million people.

As the Baloch people adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam they are marginalized due to this attribute. Rights of Iranian Sunnis are restricted by the provision of article 115 which excluded Sunni Muslims from holding the office of the Presidency of the Republic thus reducing Sunnis to status of second class citizens. To be able to attend university, state employment or open a shop, people are questioned of there religious believes.
The state has a duty to take measures to safeguard the public not be a threat to them. As the international law obligates states to respect fundamental human rights the Iranian Regime is over and over abusing its own citizens and breaking the law. Amnesty International is greatly concerned about the rise in human rights violations against members of the Baloch people and is calling on the Iranian authorities to take urgent steps to end abuses and respect human rights.

From the perspective of the Iranian government there does not exist any opposition the only phenomena that exists is terrorism. This way the regime is deliberately avoiding dealing with the issues and reducing the notion of democracy and not recognizing the rights of its own citizens.
The repression of the Baloch people is well documented by the Amnesty International and by the Baloch Human Rights Watch. There is not a correct figure of detainees and imprisoned Baloch. Harassment and prosecution of Baloch in general and Baloch national rights activists in particular, is the increasingly daily practice of the regime. In May 2007 Iranian parliament member Mr Hossien Ali Shahryari stated that 700 people were awaiting execution in Balochistan. And among these prisoners are children under the age of 18. The regime is conducting public hangings to inflict fear in the society.
Just recently, on the 2nd of October this year two young Baloch men Abdullah Shahbsksh and Hamid Shahbaksh were killed by the Iranian regime’s Mersad, which is the state security armed force under the direct command of the Regime’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
According to the reports from the pro-Iranian regime’s news agencies and the regime’s own official agencies, tens of young Baloch some being high school students have during the last 2 weeks been arrested purely with reference to having not acceptable character and appearance by the regime’s security forces in a Balochistan City called Sarawan. Some of them have been released while many are still in custody.
Both the international covenant on civil and political rights and the convention on the rights of the child, to which the Islamic Republic is a party, obligate states not to impose the death penalty on those who commit a crime under the age of 18.

The prison conditions are harsh and torture and abuse is occurring daily. On the 4th of august 2008 a young man, Yaqub Mehrnehad, despite calls from many international human rights organizations and Amnesty International’s concerns was executed by the government. Mr Mehrnehad was a journalist and the spokesperson for the Youth Association Voice of Justice an organization approved and endorsed by the official authorities. After a public seminar titled “Asking Youth and responding authorities” on the 24th of August all its Central Committee’s members were brought into custody. After 70 days all other 15 members were released except Yaqub. After being detained for approximately a year suffering from physical and mental torture in the hand of the security forces, accused of being of being a corporate of western powers and threat to the national security without a fair trial was executed. Yaqub as a journalist wrote about the problems that youth Baloch were facing such as drug addictions, aids, unemployment and poverty. This is what the Iranian government sees as an act of terror, so the execution of Yaqub Mehrnehad a 28 years old civil rights campaigner and a responsible journalist with two small children was justified by maintaining Iran’s national security from an act of terror.

One of the members that was released last year was his 16 year old brother Ebrahim Mehrnehad who now again is in jail and have been sentenced to 5 years imprisonment, by a closed door court charged of being a national threat in first degree without the privilege of a lawyer. This young man has been torture and is in need of medical attention.
The theocratic and totalitarian regime of Iran since its existence, for the fear of mass reaction, has been eliminating Baloch religious activists by abduction, assassination and accidental murder plots. But recently for the first time in its history, dared to publicly hang two Baloch open spoken religious teachers and continues arrest and detain Baloch religious activist meddling religious conflicts between people of Iran.

Iran has suffered a long dictatorship era with totalitarian and forceful assimilating governments denying the basic democratic group rights to its Multilingual and Multicultural nationalities who are the natural habitants of their historical lands.
The denial of these basic rights and implementation of the forceful assimilating policies have always faced resistance amongst Balochs, Kurds, Turks, Arab and Turkmen nationalities.

We believe that in order to have a peaceful and stable not only Iran but the whole region, it is necessary to have observed the democratic and human rights of the oppressed nationalities in multinational countries.
This object cannot be achieved without the help and cooperation of the international democratic and peace loving communities.

Monireh Sulemani represented Balochistan Peoples Party