Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation (AHRO) received shocking footages which shows Iranian security publicly humiliating a group of arrested Ahwazi Arab men. Click here to watch the video. The agents are shouting, coursing and making the men bark like dogs. The exact date and place in which the video was recorded is not clear, however activists on social media believe that it is related to the arrests during the last Al-adha celebration (31 August)in which Iranian police and security forces arrested dozens of Ahwazi Arabs as they do every year around the same time. AHRO had warned against the mistreatment of detainees by the Iranian security service and condemns these inhuman treatment which is in breach of both Iranian and International laws and calls for the punishment of the perpetrators.
With the start of this school year in Iran, Ahwazi children have launched a campaign called "education in mother tongue is my right” . On Saturday, 23rd of September, millions of students in Iran started the first day of the new academic year, However Ahwazi Arabs and other non-Persian nations in Iran are deprived of education in their native language. Students must begin their studies in Farsi, which is the only official language according to the Iranian constitution. On this day Ahwazi Arabs launched the campaign "education in mother language is my right" on social media to campaign and assert the need for a multilingual education system for a multiethnic country like Iran. The students and their families have published many pictures and videos with the same hashtag and called the Iranian government to allow education in Arabic at schools of Ahwaz. Click on the link in blue to view the pictures and videos: #التعليم_بلغة_الأم_حقي
Farsi is the language of only one nation within Iran while other nations which make up more than half of the population speak in different languages such As Arabic,Kurdish, Turkish and Baluchi. UNESCO's education 2030 which aims tat ensuring equal access to education for all, requires the government to teach all national languages. However in Iran the Academic of Literature and Persian Language, insists on banning the education in mother tongue, stating that it would damage the Farsi language. It is clear that nationalists and radical islamist in the the Islamic Republic are seeking to discourage and prevent the realisation of the natural human right of children to learn their mother tongue. The Iranian Government continues to violate the international resolution of 16 May 2007, in which the General Assembly, in its resolution A / RES / 61/266, called upon Member States to "promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by the peoples of the world" . In the same resolution, the General Assembly proclaimed the year 2008 as an International Year of Languages to promote unity and diversity in order to promote international understanding of multilingualism and multiculturalism. The Ahwaz Human Rights Organization calls for the implementation of international laws concerning the right to education of the Ahwazi Arab people and other non-Persian peoples in Iran in their mother tongues, which is affirmed in many international instruments, particularly articles 3 and 4 of the ational or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities , United Nations General Assembly resolution 47/135 of 1992, article 30 of the Charter on the Rights of the Child (adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child) and article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (of 16 December 1946) of the United Nations General Assembly. The Iranian government has signed all these resolutions and charters, hence must implement them unconditionally, especially that for the past 38 years the implementation of Article 15 of the Iranian Constitution, which stipulates the right to education in the mother tongue of all non-Persian peoples has been suspended.
