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Alireza Sarrafi, editor-in-chief of the bilingual journal Dilmaj. |
Editor’s note: This address was prepared for delivery at a rally scheduled to take place outside the Islamic Consultative Assembly on May 28, 2006 (Khordad 7, 1385). Unfortunately, the severe security conditions, the establishment of several security cordons around Parliament, and widespread arrests prevented activists from assembling. Six days later, on June 3, Mr. Alireza Sarrafi read the statement in full at the auditorium of the Iran University of Science and Technology. He also presented the postscript protesting the encirclement of Parliament, the assault on participants, and the prevention of the assembly.
Honourable Representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly
Perhaps you know better than anyone what kind of crisis has engulfed Azerbaijan during the past two weeks. A storm has arisen from Azerbaijan, and only some of its flames have reached this place. The match struck by the newspaper Iran ignited a fire and ultimately transformed the unresolved grievances of millions into a volcanic eruption of rebellion. Many people lost their lives, and many others were placed in chains. Amid all this, perhaps the least valuable thing consumed by the fire was the very newspaper that had struck the match.
You ask: “What do Azerbaijanis want through these uprisings? We closed the newspaper and imprisoned those responsible!” Yet you know perfectly well that the offending newspaper merely provided the immediate occasion for the eruption of our long-suppressed anger.
The principal demands of our people could easily be understood from their slogans: the realization of their linguistic rights and the official recognition of their language—in the democratic sense of the term and without denying other languages and cultures. More concretely, these demands include education in the mother language, the establishment of a nationwide radio and television network broadcasting in Turkish, and the freedom to use Turkish in administrative, judicial, and legal affairs.
Our nation demands the elimination of overt discrimination in the allocation of the national budget so that the imposed and chronic underdevelopment of the country’s national regions—foremost among them Azerbaijan—caused by past discriminatory policies can be remedied.
Our people demand the release of political prisoners, particularly those detained during the successive urban uprisings in Azerbaijan. They also demand freedom of expression, freedom to establish political parties, freedom of assembly, and freedom to hold public demonstrations.
It is evident that these are minimum demands. They do not conflict with the principles of the Constitution and are fully consistent with the ultimate mission of religion. Because they seek nothing more than the extension of justice and freedom to one part of the world, they are likewise consistent with the principles and norms of the international community.
These demands stand in absolute contradiction only to the creed of chauvinism. In your judgment, which is more important: acting in accordance with the law and securing the approval of religion, the world, and your constituents, or satisfying a handful of reactionary, fanatical, and insatiable chauvinists?
You may say: “We were unaware of these demands because they were raised so suddenly.” We ask in response: Were twenty-seven years of patience, accompanied by the rational articulation of the national question, not enough for you?
During this period, not only was no action taken to resolve the issue, but clowns gradually entered the arena and began humiliating the people here and there—sometimes using government resources to do so.
Through hundreds of open letters, resolutions, statements, individual petitions, and personal appeals, Azerbaijanis have demanded the implementation of the constitutional principles concerning the rights of the people, including the linguistic and cultural rights of Iran’s ethnic groups and nations. All these letters were filed away without consideration, and not even the briefest response was provided by the responsible authorities.
Through numerous public events and distinctive patterns of electoral participation, Azerbaijanis have demonstrated their profound concern about their violated national rights. Azerbaijan’s own parliamentary representatives—at least before elections—also present themselves as sensitive to these questions. They recognize them and generally campaign on promises such as “working to preserve and develop the Azerbaijani language and culture” and “striving to eliminate economic, social, and cultural discrimination.”
It is therefore untrue that Parliament or its members are unaware of the problem. On two occasions, during the sixth and seventh parliamentary terms, representatives from Azerbaijan called for the implementation of Article 15 of the Constitution. Each time, however, Parliament disregarded the urgency of the issue and refused to approve the proposal.
Representatives who pass individual provisions to facilitate the work of those in power—and who sometimes spend hours debating schemes to award themselves doctoral degrees—have not managed, in a quarter-century of legislative work, to pass even one law protecting the dignity of the languages, cultures, and rights of Iran’s ethnic groups and nations.
They have left unresolved, and without legal remedies, a series of questions deeply rooted in the identities of two-thirds of the country’s population. Ultimately, the people have been compelled to rise in rebellion at enormous material and human cost.
When our national musical instruments are broken over the heads of visiting musicians; when our ancestral cultural heritage is destroyed to advance the designs of those who falsify our people’s history; when state broadcasting, by producing social distance, actively deepens that distance; when biased directives and regulations allocate only the most minimal airtime to so-called “local languages and dialects,” with one consequence being the degradation of the people’s language; when these same public media refuse even to broadcast speeches by the people’s official representatives defending some of their legitimate demands; when an Azerbaijani student’s chances of entering university are half those of a student in the central provinces; when Azerbaijan—the cradle of modern education in the East—falls from first to tenth place in literacy under the Pahlavi regime and from tenth to twentieth place in the post-Pahlavi period; when the continued practice of motherless education—teaching literacy through a language other than the mother language—produces the highest rates of educational failure in Azerbaijan and the other national regions; when, during the eight years of reconstruction under Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani, the mining budget allocated to a single central province exceeds by more than 300 times the corresponding budget allocated to the four northwestern provinces of West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, Ardabil, and Zanjan; when, because of the absence of development planning and investment, Azerbaijan has remained the country’s largest source of outward migration for the past eighty years; and when our history, geographical names, and even the names of our language and nation are falsified while we are commanded to remain silent—it is hardly surprising that the people should fashion a flag from their outspoken tongues and raise it above their heads.
The honourable members of Parliament are expected to provide the nation with a convincing explanation for why they have thus far been unwilling or unable to implement the constitutional principles concerning the rights of the people—particularly Articles 15, 19, and 48, which they have sworn to uphold.
To what interests or considerations have the indisputable rights of their constituents been sacrificed? If, after twenty-seven years, they still have no intention of implementing these articles, why do they not repeal them so that no basis remains for making further claims?
Why have the architects and executors of discriminatory economic and cultural policies—and those responsible for Azerbaijan’s intensified political repression—not been questioned or impeached?
We expect the honourable representatives of Parliament, at the very least, not to remain silent following the successive uprisings of Turks in Iran. Following the example of that single courageous Azerbaijani representative, they should join their voices with the people’s lawful and legitimate demands. They must not be afraid to challenge the profoundly inflexible and ineffective system of centralized administrative bureaucracy.
Honourable representatives, historical experience demonstrates that when Parliament cannot reflect the demands of the people, the true parliament will take shape outside its doors through the presence of millions.
Remember that Sheikh Mohammad Khiabani, the democratic representative from Azerbaijan, became so frustrated by Parliament’s reactionary atmosphere that he delivered his speech among the people in Tehran’s Sabzeh Meydan. From there, he returned to Azerbaijan and, for six months, separated the cause of our people from that of the reactionary central government.
Remember the momentous events that followed Parliament’s rejection of the credentials of Azerbaijan’s two leading representatives during the 1940s. Pishevari returned to Azerbaijan and declared:
We have chosen the path of democracy. If Tehran wishes to remain in the embrace of reaction, it will lose our cooperation.
You surely also remember the movement to nationalize the oil industry. Mohammad Mosaddegh left Parliament and joined the people, declaring:
The real Parliament is here.
The anti-imperialist movement for the nationalization of oil subsequently gained new life.
You occupy the seats of the first parliament established on the ancient continent of Asia. In this Parliament, the first constitution in Asia was adopted by representatives of the people. Its authors saw no need to designate an official language because the people’s linguistic rights were then regarded as self-evident and were violated by no one.
Today, however, because of the regression imposed upon our society by chauvinists, language has become an instrument for asserting ethnic superiority and displaying the supposed supremacy of one people over another. The authentic cultures of the majority are being sacrificed to the illegitimate interests of an insatiable minority.
Honourable representatives, my sole purpose in these brief remarks has been to offer a warning: while there is still time, attend to your people.
If you detect boldness in my Turkish manner of speaking, do not reproach me. It arises entirely from the heat of the fire now burning in Azerbaijan.
Tehran
May 28, 2006 (Khordad 7, 1385)
Postscript
Gentlemen of Parliament:
You left Parliament at precisely the hour when your constituents approached it to seek justice and redress, surrendering its grounds to heavily armed outsiders.
How could you permit the shameful spectacle of the national Parliament under siege to be repeated, a century after the atrocities committed by Liakhov? You closed the doors of the people’s house to the people—even though it was through the grace of those very people that its doors had been opened to you.
You could not tolerate your guests. You abandoned the house not to those guests but to brutal forces who drove us from Parliament’s threshold and scattered us—a threshold whose foundations and columns were consecrated a century ago by the blood of our fathers and the tears of our mothers.
What answer can you offer your constituents?
Fear the day when the people have become so estranged from you that they no longer approach your doors to seek justice. Fear the day when they count you among the servants of oppression.
You swore to serve the people, yet you refused to hear their suffering and turned your backs on them beneath the protection of weapons. The day may soon come when the people establish their own national parliament in your blessed absence.
The future belongs to us!
Long live the Azerbaijani national movement!
June 3, 2006 (Khordad 13, 1385)
Source: Sahar Student Journal, the cultural, social, and political publication of students at the University of Zanjan, no. 4, Khordad 1387 [May–June 2008], pp. 10–14.