Endless Racism In The Iranian Model Of The Nation-State

Endless Racism In The Iranian Model Of The Nation-State

By Ali Badri

02 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

The world has lived under the shadow of discrimination for a long time before the liberation movements appeared to realize the demands of equality for the oppressed peoples. What happened during the racist massacres remains a disgraceful stain on the face of humanitarianism. Many of nations have freed themselves from this ghost, but still some of them are living under racist murderers.

The most prominent nations that face racism in all aspects of their lives are non-Persian people in the political geography of Iran. The Islamic Republic is one of the countries that is seeking to impose its own version of nation-state on all the ethnic groups that live within its borders by force. A nation-state is a state whose primary loyalty is to a cultural self-identity, which we call a nation or nationality, and is now the predominant form of state organization. (The Nation State by Anthony C. Pick).

On this basis, Iran established the political system based on the exclusion of other peoples for sake of the people of Fars background after Reza shah took power in Iran with support of England. Reza Shah took over the non-Persian people's states and the founded a nation-state based on the idea of the so-called Aryan race in Iran.

The racism and oppression in Iran must be viewed through the lens of the nation-state and ideas of its theoreticians and founders, and also must be evaluated by looking at how the new Iranian state had been established. The modern state was founded in Iran on the basis of theories by senior Aryan racists ideologues including like Kermani and Kasravi, and all the constants were on the basis of the melting of the other ethnic groups into one “Persian” nation.

Five large ethnic groups live in Iran under the discriminatory policy and denial of all their basic rights of the Persian state, which uses occupation to suppress their rights and voices. Arab (Ahwaz territory), Kurds (Kurdistan territory), Baluch (Baluchistan territory), Turks (Azerbaijan territory), Turkmen (Turkmen Sahra territory) are living under the conditions mentioned above. This article could not cover f all the rights which are restricted or taken away from these peoples. From the right of choosing ethnic names for their children to the right of learning in the mother tongue, Iran did not only deprive these peoples of their rights but also has taken steps to make the populations Fars-centric. The most important racist steps which are taken by Iran to change the demographic ratio in non-Persian regions are as follows:

1. Building settlements in the depth of the non-Persian regions to resettle migrants from the rest of the peoples.
2. Preventing indigenous population from employment in order to force them to emigrate into Persian areas.
3. Sabotaging environment.
4. Drying rivers.
5. Depriving peoples from practice of their religious and nationalist rights.
6. Arrests and executions of political and social activists in the non-Persian areas.
7. Spreading and facilitatingdrug abuse in the non-Persian areas.

The goal of each of these acts is the melting of non-Persian peoples into Aryan/Fars culture in order to build a single Persian nation-state. The worst of the racist attempts are taking place in Iran with the silent acquiescence of the rest of the world. Iran is teaching its children hatred and malice towards non-Persians people and we can see this racism in school curricula and books and government media. Eradication of racism in Iran cannot be done by demands or even statements of condemnation or even changing the government but by drying of roots of the current model of nation-state in Iran.

Ali Badri is an Ahwazi Arab writer