Ahwaz protests condemn Iran at Cairo embassy

Al Arabiya

More than 40 people of different nationalities demonstrated on Saturday in front of the Iranian embassy in Cairo to protest and condemn alleged discrimination against Iran's ethnic Arab minority in al-Ahwaz (Khuzestan) province.

Europeans, Egyptians, and Iraqi members of the National Organization for the Liberation of Ahwaz rallied with Ahwazis at the Iranian embassy in Cairo to condemn “Iranian massacres” committed against the Arab-Iranian minority, the electronic version of the Egyptian newspaper al-Wafd reported Saturday.

A group of Ahwazis residing in Europe came to Egypt to protest the Iranian regime’s perceived injustice against its people, said Adel al-Sweidan, head of the media bureau of the Hazm organization for Ahwazi rights. 

“We were taken by surprise when employees at the Iranian embassy assaulted us and took all the banners and books we had to expose the brutality of the Iran against the Sunni Ahwaz minority,” he said.



When 25 embassy employees started beating protestors, Egyptians, Europeans, and Iraqis joined the demonstration against Iran. 

Egyptian police in charge of guarding the embassy did not interfere and two of the protestors were transferred to hospital.

The Hazm organization has been calling for Ahwaz mobilization both inside and outside Iran and the trip to Egypt is part of a campaign to expose perceived suppression of the Arab minority in Iran.

Arabs in Iran are concentrated in the Khuzestan province in northwestern Iran, whose capital is Ahwaz. The province was initially called Arabstan due to the fact that it has a predominantly-Arab population until its name was changed by the Shah in 1925 as part of a Persianization campaign that aimed at erasing Arab identity in the country. 

(Translated from the Arabic by Sonia Farid)

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