Remark from the Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation - Jaber Ahmad Thank you, Mr. President! I speak to you as an activist in the Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation, and director of the Ahwaz Studies Center. I have been working with my colleagues for many years on the issue of oppressed minorities in Iran. In my intervention, I would like to focus on [the topic] stated in the Agenda of this session, and talk about the role of the justice system and the police in violating the rights of people belonging to minorities in Iran, and especially activists demanding national rights for the indigenous people of non-Persian minorities, which make up about half of the inhabitants of Iran. The problem, which national and religious minorities [living] under the regime of the Iranian Islamic Republic face, is the lack of independence of the judicial system and its submission to the control of the security apparatus. This is what led to the issuance of mass death sentences against activists of national minorities, such as Ahwazi Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, over flimsy charges such as threatening the national sovereignty, destabilise national security, fighting against God and the Prophet, spoiling the land, and similar charges all aimed at the elimination of the political movement demanding basic rights for Iranian minorities. The judiciary system in Iran is unfortunately complicit with the police and the security apparatus in a campaign of oppression against the Ahwazi Arab national minority, which lives in Southwest Iran, and which is subjected to an operation of deliberate ethnic cleansing by the regime of the Iranian Republic. This is a policy [that has been] pursued by the subsequent Iranian governments in power in Iran since the end of the semi-autonomous Arab rule of our people by Reza Shah Al-Pahlavi in 1925 and until our days. I also want to stress an important point; it is not possible for there to be justice in the Iranian justice system with regards to national minorities, if they are not allowed to speak in their mother tongue in front of the courts or the police, because the only official language in the country is Persian and is imposed on all citizens. Therefore, the availability of such matters as [being able to] speak their language in the courts, with the police and in the official facilities of the country, or the availability of translation, are basic conditions for equality among citizens. I would also like to tell you that I was part of the Ahwazi Arab delegation, which went to Tehran to negotiate with the transitional government after the triumph of the revolution in 1979 to demand