Fears For Fate Of Iran’s Missing Sunni Religious Teachers
Fears are growing for two teachers and activists in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province who have not been seen for 40 days.
Fears are growing for two teachers and activists in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province who have not been seen for 40 days.
Brothers Reza and Abdulrauf Rakhshani, prominent teachers at a Sunni religious school in Zahedan, went missing after what is believed to have been a regime backed forced disappearance.
According to reports from local publication Halvash, the two brothers were arrested by the security forces in Zahedan on February 15 and despite the follow-up of their family, the judicial and security authorities have not yet commented on their condition.
The report claims that the arrest of the two brothers is aimed at "putting more pressure on Mowlavi Abdolhamid, the Sunni Imam of Makki Mosque of Zahedan”.
Civil activists in Sistan and Baluchistan, home to a Baluch majority, have previously reported that during the protests of the last six months a large number of citizens, including children under the age of 18, have been arrested with no charge against them.
There is no accurate information about the situation of many of them due to the disruption of the internet in many areas of the southeastern province.
At least 69 Afghan students who were studying at a religious school in Zahedan, were arrested by the security forces and transferred to a camp on February 13 after having been forced to confess to participating in Zahedan’s weekly protests.
The Sunni city of Zahedan in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province has been witnessing protests against repressions and discriminations in the province following mass Friday prayers during the past 25 weeks.
The Sunni Baluch population have taken to the streets in Zahedan every Friday after prayers since September 30 when government forces cracked down on protesters and killed tens of protesters, known as Bloody Friday. Protests began after the death of Mahsa Amini in ‘hijab police’ custody in mid-September.
In an interview with the reformist daily Shargh, sociologist Maghsud Farasatkhah said that the government needs to find answers to a set of urgent national problems including water shortage, capital flight, emigration of human resources, increase in poverty, diminishing economic stability, gender, ethnic and social inequality, and so on.
"But currently, the government has reduced politics to the unilateral omission of 'others' to reinforce its political power," he said, adding that ignoring the need for dialogue has led all politics into an impasse.
Farasatkhah added that a ruling class should come to power by trying to satisfy the aspirations of the people, but this is ignored in Iran, as all decisions are made by an elite whose relations with the rest of the society can be defined as "patriarchal."
By the word "elite," Farasatkhah means a group of non-elected politicians loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, or those who have been elected to positions through a system of biased candidate vetting that merely serves the leader's interests.
According to Farasatkhah, this elite operates via non-transparent and non-accountable institutions in which there are no checks and balances. This will inevitably bring about a conflict between rulers and society. Examples of this are disagreements between the government and the people, such as compulsory hijab. What is prohibited by the government is permissible in the eyes of the nation. The same duality and conflict also exist in many other areas such as the unrestricted access to the Internet, sports, art, education, and so on.
The unrepresentative elite tries to force its views on the people and deny them personal and political freedoms.
In such a situation, when the people are not allowed to take part in politics, they turn into masses, and masses sometimes act as populist politicians and propagandists want them to act. Farasatkhah said that the society currently acts like a mass which is easily overwhelmed by events in Iran and the world. Any incident can potentially upturn the situation, and this is a cause for concern. "I am worried about the future and stability of the society as eventually the people will be the losers in the chain of events.
Farasatkhah said that the way out of this situation is turn the masses back into a society in which vocational, civil, local, and public institutions could be activated to empower the society, make it rational and rob the populists of their leverage.
However, many dissidents and critics might label Farasatkha’s recommendations as wishful thinking within the ideology and structure of the current regime. Nice ideas have been around in Iran for decades, but the regime has prevented all reforms.
In another interview in the same issue of Shargh, Expediency Council member and a long-time regime insider, Majid Ansari said he can see signs that a part of the government has noticed the threats and understood the need for a review of current policies. Ansari is concerned about the threats but is willing to offer his way out of the problem.
Ansari, an aide to the de facto leader of ‘reformists’ in Iran, former President Mohammad Khatami, said that current protests has put regime politicians and political groups in all factions to test. He acknowledged the people's disillusionment about the factions but still believes that there are still ways to restore people's trust in political groups and even the government.
Iranian protesters have been saying that there is no big difference between the hardliner and reformist factions of the regime and they do not believe in that dichotomy any longer. Regime change, they say, is the only way to resolve the many crises Iran faces.
Ansari also acknowledged that the all-conservative government in Iran has led to "a relative political impasse," but he believes that admitting the mistakes made during the past years and using collective wisdom to make things right will put the nation back on the right track.
However, he did not say why Iran was not able to get on the right track in 44 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.
Ansari's solution is mainly based on holding free and fair elections, but doing so requires changes to the constitution or the combination of institutions linked to Khamenei, including the Guardian Council, and it is not clear who can bring Khamenei to terms with the idea of change as in his latest speech on March 21, he ruled out any change in the constitution and attributed the idea of change to "the enemies."
Although the official inflation rate announced by the authorities is usually less than what it seems in the market, even a 46.5-percent inflation is among the highest in Iran in more than 30 years.
The bank did not disclose the point-to-point inflation for the last Iranian calendar month, which ended on March 21, but it provided the price index of the month, from which the inflation can be extracted. The price index for the month was 794.3, which means a 64-percent point-to-point inflation rate compared to the corresponding period of the previous year at 484.6. It is the second time Iran recorded such a figure since World War II.
The latest CBI report also lacks the price index changes of different groups of goods and services, unlike the usual procedure. Moreover, the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) has not published its inflation report for the past month. SCI has been the only government entity regularly announcing the inflation rate in the past four years.
SCI said on Sunday that the reason behind the delay is the process of changing the “base year” from the year 1395 to 1400, which ended on March 20, 2022. A base year is used for comparison in the measure of a business activity or economic or financial index. It can also describe the starting point from a point of growth or a baseline for calculating financial transactions.
"Due to the changes in the content of the market basket over time, according to international recommendations, it is necessary to change the base year at certain time intervals,” the Statistical Center of Iran said.
Considering the devaluation of Iran’s currency rial from 260,000 against one dollar to about 500,000 this month, the inflation rate is expected to hit new highs in coming months.
The inflation rate factors in numerous commodities and services but the one most important for Iranians is increasing food prices, with some categories doubling or tripling in the past 12 months. Official figures show there was a sharp increase in food prices and most items witnessed a more-than 50 price inflation.
The Islamic Republic has been struggling with high inflation since 2019, but the raging inflation in the past Iranian year which ends on March 20, was seriously different from previous years. Last May, the government eliminated an annual food import subsidy of at least $10 billion, which immediately led to steep price increases.
This was followed by a fall in the value of the national currency, making imports more expensive for the population. The government called its decision to scrap the food subsidy “economic surgery,” but it had no other plans to control prices. Immediately following the announcement, food prices jumped, with some items doubling or tripling in a matter of hours. Pasta is 137 percent more expensive than 12 months ago, while meat prices went up by 76 percent and milk by 80 percent. According to SCI, in some months the inflation rate for food and beverages hit 87%.
In his New Year speech on March 21, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dubbed the new year as “the year of bringing inflation under control”, a promise also repeated by President Ebrahim Raisi, but reminiscent of similar slogans in previous years.
