Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation Saleh Hamid Email: SalehHameed9@gmail.com www.ahwazhumanrights.org Tel: +46 76180071 I will speak about the systematic violence against the Arab minority in Al Ahwaz (officially Khuzestan) in South Western Iran and I will go into the reasons for the spread of this state violence, and the oppression, discrimination and marginalisation which has reached the point of ethnic cleansing. I will also put forward some recommendations on how to put an end to these forms of violence which have reached a peak during the last few years. It is known that Iran is a country with a variety of nationalities, religions and sects and that non-Persian minorities within it make up more than half the population. However, the Iranian authorities do not release statistics listing the ethnic minorities of Arabs, Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Baluchis, Turkmen and others deprived of their political, cultural, economic and other rights. With regard to the Arab Ahwazi minority in Iran, statistical field studies of Ahwazi academics confirm that the number of original Arab inhabitants is not less than 5 to 7 million residing in their historic homeland. The systematic violence against Ahwazi Arabs begins with removing political activists by executions held both in secret and in public or by handing down long prison sentences and torturing activists from civil society such as writers, poets, teachers and intellectuals. During the last 2 years, 12 activists have been executed as a result of their participation in peaceful protests or because of their membership of cultural associations, which were prohibited under the pretext that they carried out unauthorised activity against the government. A further 4 died whilst undergoing torture. The Iranian government has perpetrated violent oppression against demonstrations and peaceful protests since April 2005 when thousands of Ahwazi Arab citizens demonstrated as a result of a letter leaked from the Iranian Islamic Republican President’s office outlining a ten step plan to