Iran Is Not Persia.
Iran is a Multi-National country, and the population of Azerbaijanis (southern) live in Iran, is approaching 30,000,000. Yet, their very basic human rights (rights to education and learn how to read and write in their mother language in their own homeland) have been ignored by Iran's regimes for almost a century. Azerbaijanis are neither Persians nor of a Persian origin, and they have lived in the region long before Persians arrived in Iranian plateau. In addition, other Non-Persian nations, including Arabs; Baluchis; Kurds; Turkmen and others have lived and spoke in their mother languages for thousands of years in Iran. The analogy of what is happening to Non-Persians in Iran, is the banning the Welsh people from learning and using the Welsh language in Wales, and making them to accept that they are of English origin and must abandon their Welsh identity! though, in a much larger and greater scale. Yet in Iran, it goes even further: As part of the persian chauvinistic policies, children are often humiliated and punished for speaking in their mother language in schools! They are afflicted by this barbaric behaviour and traumatised for life. They often think: why they were not born as Persians?! Mother-Tongue Dilemma from the United nation educational, scientific and cultural organisation
In Southern Azerbaijan in Iran, men and women are working peacefully and often at great risk to themselves and their families to secure human rights and fundamental freedoms to follow their consciences and speak their minds without fear, to choose those who would govern them and hold their leaders accountable and to achieve equal justice under the law.
The South Azerbaijanis in Iran believe that it is the duty of freedom loving and free nations of the world to support these courageous men and women and help them to achieve the justice they deserve as humans.
The Azerbaijani Human rights activists lack resources to challenge the oppressive Iranian regime using the very basic means of communication while risking their lives. The movement for national rights in Iran lacks international experience or any support from outside, but still constitutes the strongest challenge to the Iranian regime. The Western policy toward Iran is Tehran-centric; while the biggest challenge for the Iranian regime is in the provinces where ethnic minorities are concentrated.
We are asking for support to reach Azerbaijanis and other minorities in Iran. They need to know that the world is paying attention to them. They need to know that putting their lives at risk for equal rights is not in vain. They need hope, And they are looking to the international community for it.
Knowing they have international support will give them the strength to continue fighting for equal rights, and that means greater stability and democracy for Iran and the wider Middle East. Iranian minorities are agents of change in a country that needs it badly. They are struggling for a positive transformation in Iran; and they need all the help they can get.
The main ethnic nations and languages in Iran, www.ethnologue.com 1997*, (from 1996 Iranian statistical centre)
* The figures below have changed since 1996, and the population of Azerbaijanis in Iran approaching 30,000,000
As a group of Iranian and Azerbaijani scholars and human rights activists, we the undersigned would like to express our deepest gratitude to you and all the individuals involved in publishing and maintaining Ethnologue, the most objective and scholarly body of knowledge on world languages.
Mr Raymond G. Gordon,
Editor, Ethnologue
c/o International Linguistics Center
7500 West Camp Wisdom Road
Dallas, Texas 75236 USA
Dear Mr Gordon:
As a group of Iranian and Azerbaijani scholars and human rights activists, we the undersigned would like to express our deepest gratitude to you and all the individuals involved in publishing and maintaining Ethnologue, the most objective and scholarly body of knowledge on world languages.
In recent months we have learned of some dubious attempts to pressure the editors of Ethnologue into reducing the number of Iran’s Azerbaijani-Turkic population (also known as Azeri, Azerbaijani, Turk, and Turkish) registered in Ethnologue’s current edition. Needless to say, we are deeply concerned and saddened by such attempts. In our capacity as scholars, academics, and human rights activists, we would like to assure you that Ethnologue’s current estimation (Web Edition, 2005) of Iran’s Azerbaijani and Turkic speaking populations is a most objective estimation that closely corresponds to the facts on the ground. We hope that the editors and researchers of Ethnologue will not cave in to various Persian ultranationalists’ propaganda, and will not allow Ethnologue’s scholarly reputation to be tarnished by ideologically motivated misinformation. To this end, we would like to bring the following to your attention:
1) It is a well-known fact that in Iran’s entire history, no kind of census has taken place that would account for the country’s population makeup based on ethnicity, nationality, and more importantly, language. All existing figures and numbers in this area are estimations based on unsubstantiated sources and literature. As such, care must be taken that in estimating the number of each ethnic community, the views of local community leaders, scholars, and human rights activists are taken into full account. In particular, an objective researcher must be cognizant to the fact that, due to lack of respect for human rights and the rights of minorities in Iran, both ruling governments and many scholars of the dominant Farsi-speaking group have always presented a distorted view regarding the size and status of disenfranchised communities in the country. Unfortunately, they still continue to do so.
2) In current Iran, even though the significant portion of the Azeri-Turkic population is living in the provinces of Eastern Azerbaijan, Western Azerbaijan, Ardabil and Zanjan; the entire population is by no means limited to these four provinces. These provinces are recent creations based on dubious government measures and questionable administrative purposes. While constituting the core of Azerbaijan’s geography, they neither correspond to historical Azeri lands nor do they reflect the Azeri inhabited areas in current Iran. In any kind of research on Iran’s Azerbaijani population, it must be borne in mind that the Azeri-Turks reside all over the country, from the current Azerbaijani provinces in the north-west to eastern and central Iran to provinces of Tehran, Khorasan, Markazi, Hamadan, Qazvin, and so forth. Paying due attention to this important issue is not only a matter of objectivity in social research; it is also a matter of consideration for morality and ethics, particularly in dealing with marginalized communities.
We are confident that Ethnologue’s competent researchers will pay attention to the above-mentioned factors and, as always, will present a most objective estimation of Iran’s Azerbaijani and Turkic populations in the upcoming edition of Ethnologue. Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information or any kind of assistance. We will be more than happy to provide your researchers with relevant historical and contemporary literature on the subject.
Respectfully,
A group of Iranian and Azerbaijani scholars and human rights activists
Signatories are listed in alphabetical order, along with their academic background and current affiliation.
Dr Seyed Zia Sadr al Ashrafi
Sociologist; Azerbaijani member of Congress of Nationalities for Federal Iran
Sedigheh Adalati
Ph. D. Sociologist
Alireza Ardabili
Journalist and Publisher
Dr Alireza Asgharzadeh
Sociologist, York University
Mehemmed Azadgar
Writer and human rights activist
Professor Reza Baraheni
Iranian novelist and poet, a former president of PEN Canada and retired professor of Comparative Literature, University of Toronto, Canada
Professor Younes P. Benab
Professor of Political Sciences at Strayer University, Washington, D.C.
Ahmad Geybi
President, Association of Azerbaijanis in Sydney, Australia
Dr Farhad Ghaboussi
Physician Un Konstanz
Dr Almas Shoar Ghaffari
Member of Societe Botanique Francais "citologiste"
Ali Gharajelou
Ph. D. Political Scientist
Seyfeddin Hatamlooy
Writer and publisher
Ismail Jamili
Poet and Artist
Lale Javanshir
Writer and Artist
Samad Purmusavi
Architect and Artist
Dr Shahriyar Rahnamayan
Postdoctoral Fellow, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
Hedayet Soltanzadeh
Lawyer, writer, human rights activist
Hadi Sultan-Qurraie
Ph. D. Comparative Lit.
Shahrouz Torfakh
Architect
Fakhteh Zamani
Research Engineer; Director of Association for the Defence of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners in Iran (ADAPP)
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Iran: Ethnic minorities facing new wave of human rights violations
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Public Statement
AI Index: MDE 13/020/2007 (Public)
News Service No: 039
26 February 2007
Amnesty International is greatly concerned by continuing violations of the rights of members of Iran's ethnic minorities, including Iranian Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Baluchis, and Arabs. Within the past two weeks, hundreds of Iranian Azerbaijani linguistic and cultural rights activists have been arrested in connection with demands that they should be allowed to be educated in their own language; Kurdish rights activists have been detained, and demonstrators killed or injured; and a Baluchi accused of responsibility for a bomb explosion on 14 February 2007 was executed just five days later.
As Iran's ethnic minorities face growing restrictions, Amnesty International is calling on the government to ensure that all Iranian citizens are accorded, both in law and practice, the linguistic and cultural rights set out in Iran's constitution as well as in international law, and are able peacefully to demonstrate in support of such rights. The Iranian authorities must also ensure that the police and other law enforcement agencies do not use excessive force, that all detainees are protected from torture or other ill-treatment, and that all reports of torture or other ill treatment, excessive use of force or killings by the security forces are investigated promptly, thoroughly and independently, with the methods and findings made public. Anyone suspected to be responsible for abuses should be brought to justice promptly in a trial that complies with international standards of fairness, and without recourse to the death penalty.
Iranian Azerbaijanis
The arrests of Iranian Azerbaijanis occurred in the run up to, and during, peaceful demonstrations on International Mother Language Day, an annual commemoration initiated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on 21 February.
The demonstrations were held to support demands that their own language should be used as the medium of instruction in schools and places of education in those areas of north-west Iran where most Iranian Azerbaijanis reside. The protest organizers are reported to have sought official authorisation in advance, though it is not known whether it was granted. Most of those detained in advance of the demonstrations, which were held in Tabriz, Orumiye and other towns in the north-west, were soon released as of 26 February between 10-20 people may still be held.
Ebrahim Kazemi, Ja'afar 'Abedini and Mehdi Mola'i, were among a group of up to 12 people detained in Qom on or around 11 February 2007, at least two of whom were reportedly arrested for having painted slogans on walls, including 'Türk dilinde medrese' (Schooling in [Azerbaijani] Turkic). They were reportedly held for several days before being released on bail. Ja'afar 'Abedini and Mehdi Mola'i were reportedly ill treated while in detention by being forced by Ministry of Intelligence officials to drink liquids which caused them to vomit.
In Orumiye, up to 60 Iranian Azerbaijanis have reportedly been arrested, including Esmail Javadi, a journalist and Iranian Azerbaijani cultural rights activist. He was arrested on 18 February 2007 and may continue to be held in a Ministry of Intelligence detention facility in the Doqquz Pilleh district of the city.
At least 15 arrests are said to have been made in Zenjan, where a reportedly peaceful demonstration was held in the city's Sabze Square. Those detained include journalist Sa'id Metinpour, well-known locally for his human rights activities; he is said to have had blood on his lips when he was taken away raising concern that he may have been assaulted by police.
Ramin Sadeghi, who was detained in Ardabil on 19 February 2007, is one of approximately 20 who were detained in the city in connection with International Mother Language Day events. Only he remains in detention at the time of writing and his family are reportedly concerned about his medical condition.
Kurds
On 20 February 2007, Kurdish students held an event at Tehran University's Department of Literature. They called for the teaching of Kurdish in Iran's education system and at the University of Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan province. The students reportedly signed a public statement which stated, in part, that 'In today's multicultural climate in the world, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other humanitarian principles, every nation should have a right to develop and advance its language.'
In recent months, several Kurdish journalists and human rights defenders have been detained and some are facing trial. In addition, on 16 February 2007, three Kurds, including one woman, were reportedly killed in the course of a demonstration in Mahabad. An unconfirmed report states that a dispute between demonstrators and security forces resulted in the death of Bahman Moradi, aged 18, a woman called Malihe, whose surname is not known to Amnesty International, and one other. Dozens were reportedly injured in the course of the demonstration.
Iranian security forces have a history of the violent suppression of demonstrations by Kurds. For example, in February 2006 similar clashes between Kurdish demonstrators and the security forces in Maku and other towns reportedly led to at least nine deaths and scores, possibly hundreds, of arrests. In March 2006, Kurdish members of parliament (Majles) wrote to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanding an investigation into the killings and calling for those alleged to be responsible to be brought to justice. An investigation was reportedly set up, but its findings are not known. Some of those detained later reportedly received prison terms of between three and eight months.
Baluchis
In the province of Sistan-Baluchistan, the circumstances surrounding the extremely summary trial and execution of an Iranian Baluchi man, Nasrollah Shanbeh-Zehi, who was executed on 19 February 2007, calls into question the standards of administration of justice enjoyed by minorities without discrimination. Among five people reportedly arrested following the 14 February bombing of a bus carrying Revolutionary Guard security officials, which to date has killed a total 14 and injured around 30, Nasrollah Shanbeh-Zehi was shown "confessing" to the bombing on Iranian television on behalf of an Iranian Baluchi armed opposition group, Jondallah, and was executed in public at the site of the bombing.
Jondallah, which has carried out a number of armed attacks on Iranian officials and has on occasion killed hostages, reportedly seeks to defend the rights of the Baluchi people, though government officials have claimed that it is involved in drug smuggling and has ties to terrorist groups and to foreign governments. In March 2006, Jondallah killed 22 Iranian officials and took at least seven hostage in Sistan-Baluchistan province. Following the incident, scores, possibly hundreds, of people were arrested; many were reportedly taken to unknown locations. In the months following the attacks, the number of executions announced in Baluchi areas increased dramatically. Dozens were reported to have been executed by the end of the year
Amnesty International condemns unequivocally the killing of hostages and urges Jondallah to desist from such and similar practices immediately. However, Amnesty International is concerned that Nasrollah Shanbeh-Zehi's "confession" may have been forced, and that the rapidity of his execution indicates that he did not receive a fair trial and was not permitted an adequate opportunity to appeal against his death sentence, if that was imposed by a court.
Arabs
In January and February 2007, Amnesty International deplored the execution of eight Iranian Arabs convicted after unfair trials of bombings in Khuzestan province in 2005. Other Iranian Arab prisoners are also at risk of execution after unfair trials.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGMDE130202007
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The Mother-Tongue Dilemma
United nation educational, scientific and cultural organization
Studies show that we learn better in our mother tongue. But then it has to be taught in school, which is not the case of all minority languages. More convinced than ever of the value of multilingualism, certain countries are trying to promote learning in a number of languages. However, the political and economic obstacles are enormous.
Many were outraged in 1998 when Californian voters, by a 61% majority, imposed English as the state’s sole language in publicly-funded schools despite opposition from a coalition of civil liberties organizations.
Approval by referendum of Proposition 227, as it was called, meant resident foreign-born children, mostly Spanish-speaking, could no longer be taught in their own language. Instead, they would have an intensive one-year course in English and then enter the general school system. The move was watched closely nationwide because 3.4 million children in the United States either speak English badly or not at all.
The episode was not trivial. First of all, it showed the passions that anything to do with language stirs up. It also reversed a decades-long trend towards acceptance of the mother tongue and, more broadly, the benefits of multilingualism.
“Teachers have known for years the value of teaching children in their mother tongue,” says Nadine Dutcher, a consultant with the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington D.C.Better results
Many studies have shown children do better if they get a basic education in their own language. This is important because about 476 million of the world’s illiterate people speak minority languages and live in countries where children are mostly not taught in their mother tongue.
In New Zealand, a recent study showed that Maori children who received basic education in their own language performed better than those educated in English only, notes Don Long, who produces books and teaching materials in the country’s minority languages.
In the United States, a research unit at George Mason University in Virginia has monitored results at twenty-three primary schools in fifteen States since 1985. Four out of six different curricula involved were partly conducted in the mother tongue. The survey shows that, after eleven years of schooling, there is a direct link between academic results and the time spent learning in the mother tongue. Those who do best in secondary school have had a bilingual education.
“Learning in the mother tongue has cognitive and emotional value. Minority pupils feel more respected when it is used,” says Dutcher. Clinton Robinson, an education and development consultant and former head of international programmes at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the United Kingdom, says “children who learn in another language get two messages – that if they want to succeed intellectually it won’t be by using their mother tongue and also that their mother tongue is useless.”
Revising language policies
Some rich countries have become more aware of the issue and have started revising their language policies. The idea that integration means giving up your mother tongue is no longer sacred. “The Jacobin tradition of punishing children for using dialect languages at school has changed,” says Michel Rabaud, head of the French government’s inter-ministerial task force on mastering the French language. “Speaking a language other than French, regional or otherwise, is no longer a handicap for a child.”
The countries of the North are taking in more and more immigrants and have to adapt to their presence. In 2000, more than a third of the population of Western Europe under 35 was of immigrant origin, according to a recent UNESCO report on linguistic diversity in Europe.
It quotes a study done in The Hague (Netherlands) showing that in a sample of 41,600 children aged between 4 and 17, about 49 per cent of primary and 42 per cent of secondary school pupils use a language other than Dutch at home, such as Turkish, Hindi, Berber or Arabic. This makes it hard to continue with the old policy of linguistic assimilation.
“Despite this, there aren‘t many laws about immigrant languages, unlike with regional ones,” says Kutlay Yagmur, a researcher in multilingualism at the Dutch University of Tilburg and co-author of the study. “But this will change because population patterns are changing.”
Some countries have already responded. They include the Australian state of Victoria, where bilingualism has been steadily introduced in all primary schools over the past twenty years. In 2002, compulsory courses in “a language other than English” involved forty-one languages in primary and secondary schools. Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, German and French are the most popular.
Huge obstacles
Mother tongue education and multilingualism are increasingly accepted around the world and speaking one’s own language is more and more a right. International Mother Language Day, proclaimed in 1999 by UNESCO and marked on 21 February each year, is one example.
Encouraging education in the mother tongue, alongside bilingual or multilingual education, is one of the principles set out by UNESCO in a new position paper.
On top of this, languages are now regarded as an integral part of a people’s identity, as shown in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001), which recognizes the importance of languages in promoting cultural diversity.
Yet, despite this growing awareness, many obstacles remain, especially political ones. “Every decision about languages is political,” says Linda King, Senior Programme Specialist with UNESCO’s Division for the Promotion of Quality Education. “But technical issues of how to teach them are involved too. The main thing is to respect local languages and legitimize them within the school system as well as giving pupils access to a national and foreign language.”
French author Louis-Jean Calvet puts it bluntly in his book La Guerre des langues et les politiques linguistiques (Hachette, 1999). “The war of languages is always part of a wider war,” he says.
A political decision
Minorities are usually the victims and the first thing they get hit by is typically a ban on using their own language. Just one example is the systematic repression of Indonesia’s Chinese community during President Suharto’s regime, when use of Chinese was officially forbidden.
But encouraging the mother tongue is usually a calculated political decision. After independence in Africa, one of the first steps by the new governments was to rehabilitate local languages.
Swahili became Kenya’s official language in 1963 and Guinea launched a linguistic decolonization by proclaiming the country’s eight most widely used languages to be official ones and launching literacy campaigns.
But when General Lansana Conte seized power in Guinea in the mid-1980s, he restored the use of French only in the education system. Kenya’s ruling class today speaks English more readily than Swahili. “A symbolic decision is not enough,” says Annie Brisset, who teaches at a translators’ and interpreters’ school in Ottawa and is a UNESCO consultant on language issues. “In some African countries, the old colonial language still carries such prestige that parents prefer their children to be taught in French or English because it still means going up in the world.”
Robinson says that “for a multilingual approach to work, governments must see linguistic diversity as a boon and not a problem to be dealt with. The speakers of those languages must also support it.”
Revival of local languages
The Mali-based African Languages Academy was founded in 2001 to encourage use of the continent’s languages. Since 1994, Mali has been applying “convergence” in its schools, which means teaching children in their mother tongue for the first two years of primary school.More recently, Senegal has launched a scheme to revive local languages and, since the 2002 school year, children in 155 classes throughout the country have been taught in Wolof, Pulaar, Serere, Diola, Mandingo and Soninke, which were chosen from among the twenty-three languages spoken in Senegal. Children are to be taught entirely in their mother tongue at pre-school, 75 per cent of the time, during the first year of primary school and 50 per cent of the time, during the second and third years of primary. After that, French will become dominant.
But technical obstacles can add to political ones. For countries such as Nigeria, which has more than 400 languages, the task is more difficult. Which languages should be chosen for teaching and why? The ones chosen must also be adaptable to modern life.
Adapting languages
“To be teaching tools, they must go beyond just describing the legends of the forest and be able to handle things such as scientific plant evolution and the greenhouse effect,” says Ibrahim Sidibe, a programme specialist with UNESCO’s Division of Basic Education. But how can a language come up with new words to describe a computer programme or an Internet browser when it is kept out of the mainstream and confined to daily conversation?
The languages spoken in the former Soviet republics had tough competition from Russian for about 70 years and today lack suitable words and terms to describe the modern scientific and technological world.
“Azerbaijani became the official language of Azerbaijan in 1992, for example, and the first step was to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin one,” says Brisset. “Now it’s only used for daily conversation. So terminological databases had to be compiled to review all the words and expressions in it and invent new ones to describe the legal, commercial, diplomatic and technological aspects of modern life. That’s essential before using it as a teaching language.”
The job is huge and costly, as Peru discovered in 1975 when it declared Quechua an official language. This involved translating all official documents and teaching it in schools. The government reckoned it needed 200,000 teachers to do this. The scheme has gradually been abandoned. But pressure for widespread bilingual education is now coming from the indigenous people themselves.
“They’re increasingly aware of their rights and demanding recognition of their culture,” says Juan Carlos Godenzzi, who teaches at the Université de Montréal (Canada) and is former head of the bilingual education department of the Peruvian education ministry.Such recognition requires above all promoting a culture’s language, the foundation of building any people’s identity.
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=28801&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=205.html
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The problem of 30 million Azerbaijanis living in Iran (Southern Azerbaijan) to get access to education in their mother tongue
Doc. 9710
13 February 2003
190 years ago - as a result of the war between Iran and Russia in accordance with the Gulistan treaty of 1813 and the Turkmenchay treaty of 1828, Azerbaijan was divided into two parts - Southern Azerbaijan was placed under the authority of Iran, Northern Azerbaijan under Russia.
Northern Azerbaijan gained independence as the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918-1920, when Southern Azerbaijan established independent government in the years 1945-1946. Unfortunately, both of the above-mentioned states lost their independence resulting foreign pressure.
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic lost its sovereignty when Soviets invaded the country and it became part of the USSR, however, in 1991, its independence was restored as the Republic of Azerbaijan.
At present there is a population of 8 million in the Republic of Azerbaijan, but the number of ethnic Azerbaijanis living in a compact way in Iran is close to 30 million. Unfortunately, these Azerbaijanis do not have the opportunity to receive education in their mother tongue in that country.
A number of Council of Europe member states have close political, economic, scientific-cultural relations with Iran and, even if Iran is not a European country about 30 million Azerbaijani compatriots, share the same linguistic and moral-cultural values as the citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan. If they had the opportunity to obtain the right to education in their mother tongue they would be able to conserve and develop their identity, at least to read books, newspapers published in the Republic of Azerbaijan, to acquire the national as well as European values, to acquire a more European way of thinking and behaviour with a view of membership of Azerbaijan in the Council of Europe.
The Parliamentary Assembly believes that the provision of conditions by the Iranian government for establishing primary, middle and higher schools for the ethnic Azerbaijani population living in Iran will be a sign of dealing with for the essential rights of the major national minority.
The Parliamentary Assembly therefore calls the Committee of Culture, Science and Education to examine this problem and prepare the report.
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