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Prepared and presented by: Committee for research and studies in The Arab Movement for the Liberation of Al-Ahwaz   

The security and municipal agents in Ahwaz raided a home belonging to an Ahwazi extended family, throwing their furniture out onto the street and trashing their personal belongings. This barbaric act happened on Sunday morning, 18 January.

Eyewitnesses were quoted as saying the residents of the home were screaming in the attempt to protect their property that they had lived in for 26 years, but the regime’s agents did not care and continued to destroy their property.  Two women and an old man who were standing there were brutally beaten and sustained injuries.

The occupying security forces, escorted by bulldozers belonged to the municipality of District 6 in Ahwaz city raided Zafaraniyah neighborhood and wiped out the home of the Ahwazi Arab family.

The Persian Occupation forces, by demolishing the home of the Ahwazi citizen in the Zafaraniyah neighborhood provoked fierce indignation among local people.

Violent clashes broke out in between the Occupation forces and the citizens in response to the wanton aggressive action, which outraged the local people.  The resistance of the local people to foil the security forces from destroying the home was in vain, and the house was razed to the ground. In reprisal, the bulldozer driver, who demolished the home, was shot dead by the local people, eyewitnesses quoted.

The Zafaraniyah neighborhood is one of the most densely populated areas in the Ahwaz capital, and its Arab residents are suffering from marginalization and deliberate negligence policies by Occupation authorities.

It is worth mentioning that the bulldozer driver, who was killed, is an Ahwazi Arab citizen who was used as a human shield to carry out the brutal action.

The institutions and departments of the occupation usually deploy Ahwazi citizens to commit such criminal acts taking advantage of their extreme economic weakness as the majority of Ahwazis suffer poverty because of marginalization and discrimination policies.

The family of the victim bulldozer driver, after hearing the news of their son’s death had attacked the mayor of the District 6.They blamed the municipal department, placing the entire responsibility on the head of the municipality for their son’s death.

In recent months, the Iranian regime has brutally demolished and confiscated many of the Ahwazi Arab homes almost under the pretext of building without a permit, as roughly 70 percent of Ahwazi applications for the building permit are rejected.

According to Ahwazna sources, on Tuesday, 23 September 2014, the Iranian regime security forces who were escorting a bulldozer raided a home in one of the Ahwazi villages the day before and ordered the home residents to collect their things, and get out immediately because their home must be demolished. But the occupying forces met with stiff resistance from a group of Ahwazi Arab women who bravely formed a human chain around the home and refused to evacuate as well as some of them laying down in front of the bulldozer to prevent it from demolishing their home as of one women was crying and screaming saying to the security forces that “you are going to demolish my home over my dead body”, “I have five children, where else have I to go?”.

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On Monday, October27, 2014, Iranian occupying forces once again brutally invaded Ahwazi Arab houses in the poorest slums in various parts of Ahwaz capital.

According to eyewitnesses, the military operation which was launched in the early morning without any prior warning to the Ahwazi Arab residents left more than 45 Ahwazi houses completely ravaged and destroyed and over 78 others were severely damaged.

The operation which has been reinforced with intensive military vehicles, including 5 bulldozers, has savagely terrified the innocent and defenseless Ahwazi Arab residents including children, women, the elderly and handicapped people by constant  arbitrary shooting in the air as a message for  the Ahwazi civilians to get out of their houses and giving them only 20 minutes to evacuate their property  as their house must be  destroyed as usual under the pretext of so-called illegal construction and lack of legal building permit.

The occupying bulldozers have also demolished the electricity piles, telephone towers, branch roads and streets of the densely residential areas of the Ahwazi civilians.

This military operation by the Iranian occupying regime left 45 homes demolished with 350 homeless and the homes and property of over 78 families (500) were seriously damaged.

The silence of the international community toward violations of humanitarian rights in Al-Ahwaz serves to encourage the Iranian occupying forces to intensify such oppression and violation against the Ahwazi Arab people.

An unbearable condition of life has been imposed on the entire Ahwazi Arab population by the Iranian regime. It is incredible that in an age of human rights, such atrocities can continue to rage for more than 9 decades and that there are people in nations who undermine and underestimate such inhumanity.

Poverty, expulsion, killing, substance addiction, land, home and property confiscation and many countless crimes are perpetrated by the Iran regime. Where are those human rights activists who proclaim advocating human rights and why haven’t they opened their eyes toward the Ahwazi Arabs’ suffering?

In the early hours of Sunday morning 17/11/2014,  the Iranian occupation forces demolished the homes of Ahwazi Arabs in Om-Al Ghezlan district (Koye Farhangian), the angry residents,  in a natural reaction, clashed with the invading forces.

In response to the brutal actions of the occupation forces who invaded the district to destroy the Ahwazi Arab homes, men and women desperately resorted to throwing stones during the clashes with the invading forces.

According to eye witnesses, in the early hours of the day, the Ahwazi Arab stone throwers defended their homes by burning tires in front of the occupying bulldozers and managed to deter the invading operation for short time.

The invading forces, after having faced down the resistance from the Ahwazi homeowners, have decided to deploy more forces which resulted in the arrest of many people  with bulldozing of around 20 homes along with ruining the property of Arab people, giving them no chance to save their possessions.

The Ahwazi Arab residents filmed and photographed the criminal operation of the destruction of their own homes, calling on the world conscience to condemn and to speak out against the atrocious policies of the Iranian occupying forces in the Ahwazi territories.

In recent months, the occupation forces have significantly intensified the home demolition operations and seizure of property in most of the Ahwazi Arab residential districts. The demolition of homes is always been carried out under the pretext of the owner not having a legal permit for construction.

The local people reported that their children are suffering from stress-related night-time bed-wetting and sudden epilepsy due to the trauma and terror they have had received during the home destruction operations.  The security forces were intimidating the Ahwazi Arab women and children by pointing guns at them during the demolition of homes.

Such brutal and unjustified policies are consistently conducted with forced displacement and migration of the Ahwazi Arab people who are extremely punished due to subjection to the outrageous ethnic cleansing policies of the Iranian occupying regime.

In parallel with the demolition of the Ahwazi homes and confiscating of properties, the occupation government is encouraging Persian settlers to reside in Ahwaz, providing them with full facilities, housing units and job opportunities as incentives to settle them there.