Balochistan People's Party
Fifth Forum on Minority Issue s 2012-11-27
Challenges and problems encountered in the practical implementation of the Declaration
Mr. Seria Dadiar, Balochistan People's Party
Thank you Madam Chair,
It is a great challenge to implement the declaration in practice. The Islamic
regime of Iran has yet to recognize Iran's different ethnic minorities with
cultural, religious and linguistical differences such as the Ahwazi Arabs,
Azerbaijani Turks, Baloch, Fars, Kurd, Lur and Turkmen as well as Bahai and
Yaresani, as equal in their collective rights. it is also very challenging for the
Islamic regime to encourage conditions for the promotion of the identity of
these minorities, due to ongoing policies and approaches from the Islamic
regime.
Despite article 15 of the Islamic regimes constitution and article 27 of the
ICCPR, minorities face discrimination in exercising their right to use their own
language. This issue is the tip of an iceberg, of a more extensive challenge
where students from early age are disadvantaged by commencing their
schooling in a foreign language, and thus following behind. This not only
resulting in poorer results in comparison to the national average, but also
slowly erasing their cultural identity.
Madame Chair, Balochistan has the lowest cultural development in Iran.
Effective participation in cultural, religious, social, economic and political
life for minorities face great challenges in its practical implementation. The
rigid and centralized top to bottom model of the Islamic regime of Iran is
an obstacle for
minorities, resulting in people not being able to effectively participate in
decisions on national and regional level where they live.
This is clearly amplified by the Gozinesh law which is an ideological screening
of citizens, that denies minorities participation in cultural, public and political
life. This practice has resulted in the UN repeatedly expressing its concerns
over the effect of this discriminatory law towards minorities.
We recommend that the UN investigate the shortcomings in the rule of law
and weaknesses in the judicial system in Iran. And why international fair trial
principles are not followed, which results in judges being given significant
freedom of choosing between the penal code or Sharia law.
We recommend that the UN take measures in the seriousness of the situation
where the UN special Rapporteur for Human Rights to Iran is not granted
access to visit the country.