June 08, 2020

The many "forgotten", dying while seeking refuge

topic:	Discrimination
located:	Iran, Afghanistan, USA, Israel
editor:	Shadi Khan Saif

The cold-blooded murder of George Floyd in the U.S.,  the killing of the young Palestinian Iyad El Halaq in Israel and the 14-year-old João Pedro, shot by the police near the city of Rio de Janeiro – these are just a mere few lives lost to police brutality around the world.

Many more underprivileged, persecuted and frightened refugees from some of the devastated parts of the world, like Afghanistan, face the same barbaric oppression in neighbouring Iran.

In the past month alone, confirmed and documented cases of dozens of young Afghan refugees tortured to death have emerged; speaking volumes of new heights of discrimination.

For one, refugees are understandably vulnerable people on the move due to desperation. Their basic human rights are protected under the International humanitarian law, regardless of the legal or irregular routes or approaches they might have opted for the migration process.

It simply does not permit the security forces, in this case, the Iranian security forces, who are often charged for oppressing their own people, to physically and mentally torture them, throw them in rivers or burn them to death.

Clearly shying away from accepting the responsibility, the Iranian regime is not speaking about investigating these reports, but spinning the reports and treating the situation as the ‘new normal’ amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The regime’s foreign ministry and all other permitted loud voices – which can understandably be only the pro-regime ones – are not losing the opportunity to cash in on the George Floyd case to rightly expose the issue of racism in the U.S., but they are criminally turning a blind eye towards the way the ‘Afghan George Floyds” are dealt with inside Iran.

Thanks to the advent of vibrant social media platforms, incidents like the one that took place in Yazd city last week can no longer by hurriedly brushed under the carpet.

The Afghan refugees have long been used as a bargaining chip by the war-ravaged country’s neighbouring Pakistan and Iran for political leverage and meddling. While in reality, both have been receiving hefty amounts of funds from the UNHCR and other aid agencies in the name of the very poor refuges only to be embezzled by the corrupt and authoritarian regimes.

The refugees in return are systematically left to struggle in devalued socio-economic conditions, relegating them to certain ghettos where they cannot pursue the education to rise to a certain stature in life.

The bitter fact remains that we are losing many George Floyds every moment to oppressive regimes and undemocratic systems all over the world. We can only save them by standing for each and every one of them. Because their life matters.