Video of Retirees’ Protest in Ahwaz: A Cry for Justice Against Imposed Poverty and Chronic Injustice
Report by the Ahwaz Human Rights Centre – UK
Video of Retirees’ Protest in Ahwaz: A Cry for Justice Against Imposed Poverty and Chronic Injustice
A video received by the Ahwaz Human Rights Centre – UK shows scenes from a protest held by a group of retirees from the Social Security system in Ahwaz—a peaceful yet powerful gathering filled with cries of anger and demands for justice in front of the city’s Social Security Directorate.
These retirees, who for decades had a portion of their meager wages deducted as taxes with the hope that they would receive a modest pension in old age, are now forced to take to the streets in the midst of extreme financial hardship. Even the basic pension—rightfully theirs—is being systematically denied by the authoritarian Iranian regime.
Ahwaz is the wealthiest land under the occupation of the Iranian regime, rich in vast oil, gas, and natural resources. Yet its Arab inhabitants have long been deprived of the most basic human needs: clean drinking water, electricity, healthcare, and breathable air.
As temperatures in Ahwaz soar above 52°C and widespread power outages persist, these retirees must try to survive on pensions that don’t even cover a week’s expenses—within an economic climate plagued by inflation, scarcity, and international sanctions, all of which are direct consequences of the Iranian regime’s aggressive and confrontational policies.
Poverty in Ahwaz is not an accident—it is a deliberate reality.
This crisis is the result of a structural policy designed to marginalize, suppress, and gradually erase the Arab nation of Ahwaz from the sphere of human dignity.
The retirees’ protest in Ahwaz is not merely a labor-related demonstration—it is a symbol of the Arab nation of Ahwaz’s resistance against the colonial, discriminatory, and Arabophobic policies of the Iranian regime. Policies that have reduced even the most basic human right—such as receiving a pension—to an unattainable and deferred demand.
The Ahwaz Human Rights Centre – UK fully supports the just demands of the Arab retirees in Ahwaz and reiterates the urgent need for immediate international action to document and respond to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in this occupied region.
We call upon the global community to listen to these cries for justice—and to stop normalizing poverty, discrimination, and the systematic denial of rights against the Arab nation of Ahwaz through international silence and politically convenient diplomacy.
3, August 2025 / 12 Mordad 1404
Ahwaz Human Rights Centre – UK
