#Ahwazna – The security forces have badly ill-treated and confiscated the possessions of Ahwazi Arab street hawkers

Ahwazna

The Ahwazi Arab human rights activists have reported that in the past few days, the Iranian security forces have severely attacked Ahwazi Arab street hawkers in streets of Ahwaz capital especially in the area of Ameria and completely confiscated their possessions and obliged many of them to pay financial fines.

The reports added that the security forces have arbitrarily bulldozed and removed the goods of the Ahwazi Arab men and women vendors and peddlers who wish to sell food, T-shirts, and other goods unless most of them obtain legal permits for vending in the streets in reasonable fashion.

In this case, the Tasnim state news agency said an official accord has been signed between police security forces and municipal department of Ahwaz city which aims at nullifying the regulations and the legal trade’s permits which were issued for Ahwazi street hawkers by the municipal department.

This indiscriminate and unjustified decision has come as a step to prevent the Ahwazi sellers particularly the Ahwazi Arab women who are forced to become street hawkers in the Ahwaz’s streets and alleys in order to supplement the family finances just to survive when the male relatives lose their jobs and/or are not paid for their work.   The security forces have always been misusing the law in an arbitrary manner to extort, suppress and crush the Ahwazi Arabs in all spheres of life, including economic and social life.

Despite multiple sources of economic opportunities in Ahwaz including oil, gas, fishing industry, agriculture and many other industrial sectors but the biased occupying regime has seized on these sources and opportunities by granting them to Persian settlers and systematically excluded Ahwazi Arab from having access to jobs and businesses and even restricted the majority of them who are dependent on agriculture by confiscating their arable lands, limiting water for irrigation, and diverting Karoon River’s water to central Persian regions leaving no economic alternatives for the local Arab people who are forced to vending in the streets striving to  meet their daily needs and survive from poverty and hunger under the regime hostile’s policies targeting  every  Ahwazi Arab.