Tuesday, August 5, 2008
By M.sarjov
Yaghub Mehrnehad’s sin is that he is Baloch and a victim of Persian nation building and Shiite expansionist, and international arrogance toward the Baloch nation. Why should the international community care whether Iran adopts an assimilation model of nation hood and citizenship? The international community has always been aware of the problems minority groups face in a Persian dominated Iran. There concern is that it be managed properly.
Disaffected minorities have been a source of conflict since the nineteenth century, and the struggles of secessionist minorities have repeatedly redrawn the map of the world states, in violent and destabilising way. Nothing more disturbs the peace of the world than the treatment measured out to minority groups. What have changed over time is the way this minorities problem is imagined, and the proposed remedies.
The world need to understand the conditions that the Iranian Baloch are in, if they want to make sense of the current activities of the Iranian regime and the dilemma it has put Baloch into. Iran is a multi ethnic nation and Shiite majority. Balochistan has been divided in between three states Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. However, the Baloch language, culture and sense of nation hood are still alive. Some Baloch still pursue aspirations for a unified Baloch homeland. Iranian occupied Baloch populations are a Sunni sect of Islam. Iranian constitution discriminates against non Shiite communities and limits their participation in civil servant jobs and businesses.
The Iranian Regime mistrusts Baloch and regards them as British, American and Saudi collaborators. Iran actively encourages Sunni Baloch to change their religion to Shiite sect of Islam. The regime rewards those who are willing to change their religion to Shiite with a job for life. For decades Tehran regime pursued that to replace indigenous languages and culture, into Persia. But for the last three decade Tehran has pursued the religion change in Balochistan, in some cases the regime has achieved some success in cities like Iran-shar and Saravan.
The regime has faced some tough resistance from some corner of societies. Groups like Malik Regi (Jondullah) has taken to armed resistance, others like Moullavi Islam Paskohal used peaceful means to resists religion assimilation. They have been jailed on false charges leveled against them, and they have no access to a lawyer. Iran pursues the idea of Persian homogeneity. It has always been accepted that the Iran holds a sizeable Baloch minority. It exists as a distinct, linguistic, and cultural, into the indefinite future.
A wide range of justifications have been offered for pursuit of assimilation. In some context, it was argued that the state needed to be more unified in order to effectively defend itself against external or internal enemies. Who would be the state internal enemies? Cultural unified state was easier to administer and would have a more efficient labour market.
These sorts of racist ideologies which claim that language and culture of minorities and indigenous people were backward and inferior and barbaric, unworthy of respect to preserve, within the territories of Iran there are many groups possessing their own homeland, language, history, culture, heroes, and symbols.
Baloch are one of these groups that are excluded entirely by the process of nation building. If individuals accept assimilation then second-class status stigmatisation is rewarded to them by the Persian Tehran-centric ideologies used to justify the nation-state. Indeed Yagub Mehrnehad is typically the target of these policies since the Islamic regime in Tehran thought he is the greatest obstacle to assimilation, and in Tehrans nation building. Tehran regime has created deep rooted forms of exclusion and subordination for Baloch combining political marginalization, economic disadvantage and cultural domination.
The claim that the international community has legitimate interest in the treatment of minorities is a dramatic break with tradition reversing the long standing assumption that states should have a relatively free rein to manage ethnic diversity. Baloch basic human rights such as freedom of speech, association, and conscience, while attribute to individuals, are exercised in community with others, and so provide protection for a minority group life.
Where these individual human rights are firmly denied it is felt further minority specific rights are needed to protect Baloch minority in Iran from the Tehran regime. International community has a duty to protect Baloch from genocide just as they protected Kosovo from Serbia. Iran has ignored three Security Council resolutions, Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, and the Tehran regime has no respect for the international community.
The Iranian president stated that Iran will wipe the Israel from the face of world on ideological grounds, but before the Iranian president is able to do that with Israel, the Tehran regime will wipe Baloch from the face of Iran if it is not contained. Baloch problem is not an issue of separating from Iran and joining another state, it is an issue of self-determination. Iran is the only old Shiite ideology that survived the twentieth century, and it is getting more and more difficult for the Iranian people, as well as creating a crisis for the whole world. |
