Human rights activist, expert of the Legal Analysis and Research Public Union Azar Hasrat addressed the session about rights of Azerbaijanis in Iran and Armenia’s ethnic purge.

He expressed regret over the fact that Iran, being one of the officially Islamic states, unfortunately is using the religion as a pretext to suppress the people of other nationalities than of Persian descent.

According to some estimates Iran has around 30 to 40 million Azerbaijani Turks. But unfortunately, these people still have no right to use mother tongue.

Iran has failed to provide schools for this “minority” in Turkish language. He pointed out that “what is more dangerous, if a child approaching the age to start a school does not speak Persian, can’t be registered to get education”.

He underlined that it is regular for the Iranian state media including TV channels to insult all Turkic speaking people of the country in common. Iranian provinces where the majority are the people of Azerbaijani Turkic descent, economic situation is much worse than in other parts of the country.

According to him, even during an earthquake in Khoy city, Western Azerbaijan on Jan 28, 2023, the Iranian government prevented even other people to help the population. The government also failed to support people in need.

Azar Hasrat noted that likewise, Iran’s neighbor – Armenia also is failing to provide basic HR of minorities. Some 230 thousand of Azerbaijanis were ethnically cleansed of Armenia starting from 1988 and afterwards Armenia became one of the very few monoethnic countries of the world.

The session commenced on February 27 and will run until April 4. The event brought together officials, civil society representatives.