AHRO condemns the crackdown of protests in Ahwaz
The internal security forces broke up the protest of Ahwazis which lasted until this Friday evening, and suppressed the demonstrators who had gathered for the fifth consecutive day to protest power outage and pollution in different cities .
In regards to protests ,The spokesman for the Internal Security Forces in Ahwaz an-nounced state of emergency ,warning from the continuation of demonstration and threat-ened to arrest the participants .
Activists sent pictures to AHRO in which anti riot police are appearing in the city and re-ported that officials called these forces from Fars and Loresten Provinces to suppress the demonstrators who during the past five days took the streets in Al-Ahwaz , Al-kurah ,Fallahieh and other cities in Arabistan to protest against pollution ,discrimination , marginalisation , continuation of power outage ,interruption of services , unemployment and poverty despite living in an oil rich region .
protesters chanted “We have no one but God” referring to the fact that their continuous pleads are not addressed and they are left alone as officials ignore their calls and con-demned the continuation of power outage and disruption of services, rampant unemploy-ment and discriminative policies exercised by Iranian government which has made the lives of local indigenous unbearable .
Iranian news agencies announced the dismissal of two officials from Ahwaz ,the general director of provincial crisis management and the General Director of provincial natural resource ,but it doubtful that this dismissal solve any problem or change the situation as the central government is committed to policies of demographic change and systematic destruction of environment of the region .
Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation condemns the crackdown on protests ,and supports the civil society activist’s calls for peaceful demonstrations and calls on Iranian officials to stop the excessive security measure and allow the peaceful gathering that call for freedom of speech in accordance with international laws and human rights principles
Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation
17/02/2017
click here to see the pictures
