Ahwazi Centre for Human Rights representatives at Food for Thought.

Ahwazi Centre for Human Rights representatives at Food for Thought.

Ahwazi Centre for Human Rights representative “Hossein Bouazar” recently gave a presentation about the history of the Ahwazi Arab community, and human rights violations by the Iranian Regime that are still ongoing today.

At the Food For Thought event, Ahwazi Feast, hosted by Hossein in Perth Australia, Hossein talked about the Ahwaz region which historically known as Arabistan. This means: land of Arabs. It was independent of Iran with more than 10 million Arabs in AL-Ahwaz until it was annexed and occupied by Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran in 1925.

After overthrowing and murdering the last Arab ruler of Ahwaz, Sheikh Khazal Alkabby, the new Iranian regime initiated programs and policies of Persianization. This included enforcing Persian, or Farsi, as the official language and banning the teaching of Arabic in the schools in the region. The region was also renamed from its historic name Arabistan to Khuzestan, in an attempt to strip the identity of many Ahwazians.

Hossein also explained the important events surrounding the Iranian occupation of AL-Ahwaz in 1925 and how it lead to Iran changing the name of cities from Arabic to Persian, forbidding people to wear traditional clothing, enforcing the compulsory use of Farsi, banning Arabic newspapers (only Persian propaganda), confiscating Arabic owned land, stealing AL-Ahwaz’s natural resources, forbidding to use of Arabic names for children and erasing Arabic Education. As a result there are protests every year at this time (20th of April) in resistance to these historic events.

Executive Director of the Ahwazi Centre for Human Rights, Faisal Maramazi, was the special guest of honour. He joined Hossein by Skype to talk tothe audience about the current situation in Ahwaz and the continuing persecution of Ahwazi Arabs.

You can watch the presentation by Hossein online: https://youtu.be/l5GX1h-ewGs