Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, Mr President, My name is Hamed Kanani of the Ahwaz Studies Centre. Our people in Arabistan (Southern Iran) have been suffering a systematic ethnic cleansing practiced by successive Iranian governments for eight decades. Ahwazi Arab man as well as Ahwazi woman face numerous forms of oppression and the most serious of them are: 1. Both the Arab and Iranian woman in Arabistan are subjected to general injustice and oppression as a result of laws of the Iranian regime, whose conduct is hostile towards women. 2. Both Arab men and women in Arabistan are subjected to national and religious oppression, exemplified by racism, political and economic exclusion and cultural deprivation by the Iranian government. 3. The Arab Ahwazi woman is also subjected to a third [form of] oppression specific to her social environment, being a part of a community dominated by patriarchal tribal culture. In the past years, in light of deteriorating economic, cultural, social and political conditions in Iran in general and in Arabistan (Khuzestan) in particular, illiteracy has spread, the rate of poverty, unemployment and social ills have risen, and tribal culture has been exacerbated. All these problems contributed to the violation of women’s rights, the marginalisation of their role [in society] and the increase of patriarchal violence against them; violence which has reached an alarming rate and cannot be tolerated any longer. Let’s not forget that the Iranian regime, in order to tighten its grip on this Arab province and [its] wealth in natural resources from oil and gas fields, miscellaneous metals and fertile agricultural land, is deliberately obstructing the awareness[-raising] and cultural efforts of some Ahwazi activists by imposing security measures, arbitrary arrests, unjust public executions, political assassinations, and long prison sentences. Exactly one year ago, as a result of the Iranian authorities’ preventing cultural work and the conduct of scientific studies into the causes behind these social problems, a group of educated Ahwazi women decided to take advantage of social and religious events [to conduct interviews], where large numbers of women would gather in homes or halls/rooms prepared for these occasions, far away from the prying eyes of the Iranian security services. In a short period of time, these women were able to pose specific questions to around 1000 married Arab women whose ages were between 12 -58 years old in five Arab cities. I will only indicate the results of the domestic violence survey and they are as follows: 27.6% of women have experienced physical violence by their spouse.