The Crime of Printing a Funeral Announcement in Turkish in Iran

April 12, 2012

Funeral Announcement for Sadegh Avazpour in Turkish with Arabic Script

The late Mr. Sadegh Avazpour, whose home in Tabriz was a gathering place for environmental defenders during his life, might not have imagined that his funeral ceremony would also attract attention in Azerbaijan because of the Turkish language.

Mr. Sadegh Avazpour, the father of three activists from Azerbaijan—Mustafa, Morteza, and Mohammadreza—passed away on April 1st. His children, while preparing for his funeral ceremony according to the common tradition in Tabriz, printed funeral announcements and posted them on the doors and walls of the city. Holding a funeral and printing and posting announcements on the walls of the city are not unusual activities, and nothing unusual was written in the announcement either. The only difference was that the announcement was not in Persian. On the day of the funeral, the agents of the Ministry of Intelligence used this as an excuse to arrest his son Morteza Avazpour, along with his cousin Hassan Ranjbar. They also sent agents to arrest another son, Mustafa Avazpour, who was detained a few days later.

Scan of the summons from the Intelligence Department of the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) in Tabriz for Mustafa Avazpour

For an outsider unfamiliar with the nature of Iran's monolingual/cultural political system, it may seem extremely strange that printing a funeral announcement in Turkish could be considered such a significant and security-related issue that it would lead to the pursuit and arrest of the deceased's children and relatives—especially when one considers that the announcement was written in the same language that the deceased had spoken with his relatives and friends who were invited to the ceremony during his lifetime. The language of the announcement was the same one the cleric used for reading eulogies, and it was the same language the attendees used to offer condolences to the family. In fact, the announcement was not even written in the Latin alphabet, which is the official script for Turkish in Northern Azerbaijan, and the language used was not unusual in Iran, so it is hard to find a valid reason for the security forces to pursue those who printed it. On the contrary, from an impartial observer's point of view, printing the funeral announcement in Persian in a city where the local language is Turkish would be the odd thing.

The pursuit and arrest of the grieving children of the deceased, solely for printing a funeral announcement in Turkish in Tabriz, is, from any perspective, a racist act that can only be seen in Iran today. It is expected that free-thinking and democratic individuals, regardless of any political or ethnic affiliation, raise their voices against this blatant violation of the rights of mourning people and bring international attention to these despicable and racist actions of the Islamic Republic.


Original Text in Farsi