national fabric Iran’s Ethnic Minorities

For much of the 20th century, successive Iranian governments promoted a narrow, Persian-centric vision that excluded and marginalised ethno-linguistic minorities. Now, minority groups are fighting back.

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Iran is home to one of the most culturally diverse populations in the entire Middle East, with Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish, and Baloch peoples amongst the groups that have shaped the historical and cultural development of the Iranian plateau.

Our new report National Fabric: Iran’s Ethnic Minorities showcases some of the ways that ethnic minority communities in Iran are creatively resisting state discrimination, and fighting an ongoing battle to preserve their unique cultural identities. 

http://smallmedia.org.uk/nationalfabric/

http://smallmedia.org.uk/nationalfabric/Nationalfabric.pdf

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The Baloch Activists Campaign (BAC) is a Persian-language

website offering daily updates on the status of human

rights in Sistan and Balochistan Province, along with

information about other Iranian ethnic minorities and the

Sunni community. The website has a section dedicated to

literature and culture, but it remains empty at present.

According to Similarweb analytics, around 3,000 people

visit the BAC website each month.

Visitors can engage with the campaign in a variety of

ways—besides joining the BAC mailing list, it’s possible to

engage with other activists using a number of social media

accounts, ranging from Facebook, to YouTube, Twitter,

Instagram, WhatsApp, and WeChat.

The significance of mobile chat apps for the Baloch

community is something that has been echoed in Small

Media’s discussions with diaspora-based activists. Mehrab

Sarjov, a Baloch campaigner and commentator working for

the exiled Khan of Kalat stated in an interview with Small

Media that:

“WhatsApp is widespread—everybody is using it. For the

content—for writing and those sorts of things, most people

use WhatsApp for communications. You’d need an army

of soldiers to comb through all these conversations and

monitor them” (2015).

Given that Sistan and Balochistan Province has the third-

lowest internet penetration rate of all the provinces in Iran

(Small Media, 2014), this pattern of dependence on mobile

phone apps is not so surprising—with limited access to

internet connections in Baloch homes, it is far easier for

Baloch people to maintain networks via 3G internet access

on mobile phones. It is impossible to verify the number of

users chatting on these WhatsApp and WeChat groups,

though Mehrab Sarjov suggests that many thousands of

Baloch maybe turning to chat apps as a primary means of

communication.

The site’s Facebook page is also a widely-used platform for

Baloch activists, with 5,122 likes and frequently re-shared

and commented-upon content. The page’s users seem to

be a mixture of Baloch activists in exile, and Baloch people

living in Iran and Pakistan.