The Foundation for Democracy is preoccupied by reports emanating from Iranian Balouchistan of a wave of arrests and killings in recent weeks, that appear to be aimed at Sunni Moslem clerics and religious institutions in Eastern Iran.
On March 4, Molavi Abdul Malek Mollahzadeh, a Sunni cleric in Iran, was murdered as he was leaving his house in Pakistan, family members said. Molavi Abdul Malek's movements in Pakistan were being monitored by agents of the Islamic Republic because he was a well-known opponent of the regime involved in organizing the Balouchi community, family members alleged. The son of Molavi Abdulaziz, the most prominent Sunni cleric in Iran, Molavi Abdulmalek was killed along with an associate, Jamshid Zahi, by two gunmen in a taxi.
This is the fifth alleged killing of a Sunni Muslim cleric by Iranian government agents since 1994. The Foundation reported on some of the earlier killings on Feb. 15, 1996 [AM 007, "Disappearance and alleged execution of Molavi Ahmad Sayyad."]
These latest killings appear part of a systematic crackdown by the Iranian authorities against ethnic Balouchis and against the Sunni Muslim minority in Iran.
In Mashad, Iran's most prestigious religious center after Qom, government security agents broke into the Salehabad Sunni Muslim seminary in late February, arresting faculty members and sending many of the students to military service, family members of those arrested reported. Under the Islamic Republic's constitution, it is illegal for the state to oblige seminary students to do their military service. Among those arrested was the head of the school, Mr. Mosavi Mohialdin, who was forcibly defrocked by the authorities.
Another Sunni cleric and high school teacher, Molavi Abdulrahman Alahverdi, was arrested by the authorities in late February in the Balouchi town of Saravan, sources in the region reported. So far, his fate remains unknown. The Foundation for Democracy in Iran will publish additional details on these events as they become available.
The Foundation is concerned by reports that the Iranian government has been forcibly relocating Balouchi citizens to remote desert areas, while systematically encouraging non-Balouchis to take their place by giving them incentives such as free land, cheap housing, no-interest loans, and government jobs. Such policies amount to ethnic cleansing by another name.
Over the past two years, the ethnic balances in major Balouchi cities such as Zahedan, Iranshahr, Chabahar, and Khash has become non-Balouchi because of these government policies. In the Iranshahr area, tens of thousands of Balouchis have been forcibly relocated from fertile farming areas to desert communities in Rashkoh, Naygon, Mnzran, and Daman. In the Sarbaz areas, Balouchis have been relocated to Gornagan, Hamnat, and Sarkor. In the region around Khash, the desert relocation site is known as Erandegan. When villagers refuse to comply with evacuation orders, they face armed attack. In May 1995, for instance, Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops attacked the village of Sovrdar of Zardkoh (40 kilometers outside Iranshahr) after villagers refused to evacuate their homes and relocate to a desert community.
This policy of forced relocation appears to have begun in 1994, after the February riots in Zahedan, the capital of Iranian Balouchistan, when local residents protested the destruction of a Sunni Muslim mosque in Mashad. At least fifty people were wounded when Revolutionary Guards troops fired into the crowd in Zahedan's Maki mosque. In another instance, Balouchi sources say that in December 1994 Iranian Army helicopters fired rockets into the village of Maraverti, killing 100 villagers. Another 200 villagers were either wounded or arrested in the attack. Those arrested were transferred to prisons in Kerman, Zahedan, and to Tehran's infamous Evin prison.
Many Balouchis who have protested the forced relocations have been arrested and accused as drug smugglers or foreign agents, Balouchi sources claim. Some have been executed under these false charges. As the Foundation has noted in previous communiqués, the Iranian authorities appear to be using ethnic differences, "banditry" and "smuggling" as pretexts for a brutal crackdown on potential opponents to the regime. Similarly, the Foundation is concerned that the authorities are seeking to excite ethnic violence between Sunnis and Shiite Muslims in the region.
The Foundation has written to the leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamene'i, President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the Ministries of Justice, Interior, and Foreign Affairs, and has sent an inquiry to Iran's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, requesting that the Government of Iran authorize a delegation from the Foundation and from other human rights organizations to visit Iranian Balouchistan to investigate these allegations.
The Foundation has also requested specific information on the alleged March 4, 1996 murders of Molavi Abdul Malek and Jamshid Zahi; the Feb. 2, 1996 disappearance and subsequent death of Molavi Ahmad Sayyad; the disappearance in Saravan village of Molavi Abdulrahman Alahverdi in early February; and the late February attack on the Salehabad Sunni Muslim seminary in Mashad.
The Foundation calls on the Hon. Maurice Copithorne, Special Representative for Iran of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, to investigate these allegations and, more generally, the human rights situation of Balouchi and Sunni Muslim citizens of Iran.
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran is a private, non-profit corporation registered in the State of Maryland. Contact: Kenneth R. Timmerman, Executive Director (exec@iran.org). FDI materials, including the FDI Newswire, are available free-of-charge via the Internet at http://www.iran.org/.