A new wave of mass demonstrations to save Lake Urmia was violently
suppressed by Iranian security forces and riot police in streets of Azerbaijani
cities of Iran such as Tabriz, Urmia, Marand, Marageh and Miyaneh. The
riot police and security forces used tear gas and batons to disperse the
crowd, arresting scores of protesters. In the city of Urmia, the capital of West
Azerbaijan province, tens of detainees were led to police cars and paddy wagons and transferred to unknown locations, eyewitnesses said.
Protesters were chanting slogans in Azerbaijani-Turkish like “Long live
Azerbaijan,” “Lake Urmia is dying; the Majlis [Iranian Parliament] ordered
its execution,” and “Let us cry so that with our tears we replenish Lake
Urmia.”
According to the ADAPP sources, Afsane Toghir, the secretary of the Association of Azerbaijani Studies at Tabriz University and Azerbaijani
civil rights activists Akbar Muhajir, Hasan Mirzakhani and Muhammad
Iskandarzade were among those arrested. Several Azerbaijani activists, such as Hussein Ahmadian and journalist Ali Hamed Iman were arrested a
day before the protests.
The mass protests to save Lake Urmia took place on the sixth anniversary of the May 2006 demonstrations in Azerbaijan, in which tens of protesters were
killed, and thousands were arrested.
The predominantly Azerbaijani Turkish-populated cities of Iran are confronted
by a pending environmental catastrophe that will result in the drying-out of
Lake Urmia, which is situated between West Azerbaijan, and East Azerbaijan
provinces is one of the largest salt lakes in the world.
In recent years, the Iranian government has built dams on more than 20
tributaries feeding into the lake. Environmental organizations and experts
claim that this damming, coupled with an environmentally damaging bridge
linking the cities of Urmia and Tabriz, has reduced the flow of water into
and within Lake Urmia, causing the majority of the lake to evaporate.
The deterioration of Lake Urmia impacts 13 million local inhabitants and the nations of Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iraq, and Armenia. According to
Esmail Kahrom, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of
Tehran, if Lake Urmia dries up, “six to eight cities will be totally destroyed,
covered by layers and layers of salt."
Over the past three years, peaceful protests against the government’s policy
over the Lake Urmia crisis have been harshly cracked down by Iranian forces.
Association for Defence of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners in Iran (ADAPP)
E: info.adapp@gmail.com
Website: http://www.adapp.info