MP complains of "discrimination" against Iranian Kurds Tehran

July 10, IRNA

An MP from western city of Mahabad Rahman Behmanesh here Tuesday complained of 
alleged discrimination against Iranian Kurds, saying they were being neglected when it came 
to the allocation of the state budget for national reconstruction. 

The deputy from the border city with Turkey in the West Azarbaijan province also slammed
what he called "biased and self-interested appointment" of officials and the tendency not to
use local people at the head of state organizations in Kurdish areas. 

"The Kurdish people are disfavored from political, economic and civic point of view and
forgotten in the development process," he said during a speech at the open session of the
parliament. 

The MP also asked Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to see to "the improvement of
Sunni clerics' conditions" and those of Sunni seminaries. 

Behmanesh also appealed for a general amnesty from the Supreme Leader for Iranians exiles
"who liked to return to the country." Kurds, said to be of Aryan descent which the majority
Persians in Iran have their roots in, constitute six percent of about 63 million population of
the country. 

Most of them are Sunni in the Shia majority country and are given equal rights in the Islamic
Republic's constitution. 

Iranian Kurds are mostly located in mountainous areas in western Iran, neighboring Turkey
and Iraq. 

There are other ethnic groups in the country, mostly Azaris who number more than 20
million, as well as Turkmen, Arabs, Baluchis, Armenians and nomadic groups. 

There are also small communities of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians in the country, each
having representatives in the  Iranian parliament. 

Surrounded by ethnic strife and separatism in neighboring Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan and the
Caucasus, Iran has remained immune to unrest among its patchwork of Azeri, Kurdish,
Baluchi, Turkmen and Arab minorities as well as other minorities. 

The Islamic Republic however has successfully united its ethnic groups in Islam. 

"Let me express one sentence to you in your own sweet language," 

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an Azari from northwest Iran, said in a speech in
his home region last year. 

"The Turk and the non-Turk peoples of Iran are all brothers, Muslims and devoted to the
Islamic system in Iran," he said in Azari. 
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