Iran International
Monday’s arrest of a top advisor to the popular Sunni leader Mowlavi Abdolhamid has led to more tensions in Zahedan, capital of Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan.
Mowlavi Abdolmajid Morad-Zehi was arrested on the way home in Zahedan by security forces Monday and taken away to an unknown location. The arrest followed reports of increased surveillance of the Sunni Makki Mosque recently where the dissident Abdelhamid’s office is located.
The official news agency IRNA reported that Morad-Zehi was arrested on charges of “disturbing the public’s peace of mind, numerous contacts with foreign individuals and media, and misleading public opinion. State media have also said that Morad-Zehi refused to present himself to security and intelligence bodies that had summoned him several times.
Morad-Zehi’s arrest has given rise to fears of Abdolhamid’s impending arrest for his sermons regularly criticizing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the government for crackdown on protests.
Serious unrest began in Iran more than four months ago over the death in custody of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for failing to wear her hijab “properly”.
Abdolhamid has also criticized the regime for not addressing the problems of poverty, corruption, as well as discrimination against religious minorities, and ethnic groups. He has even opposed execution which is a very sensitive topic for the regime and reiterated that Iranian people have said ‘no’ to execution as a punishment. He also defended the rights of the followers of the Baha’i faith who are considered heretics by some Shiites and Sunnis.
On Tuesday the ultra-hardline Kayhan newspaper which is funded by Khamenei’s office fiercely attacked Abdolhamid for his defense of the Baha’is rights and for demanding peace between Israel and Palestinians.
“What authority does the occupying Zionist regime represent to a Muslim to consider it as legitimate and invite it to peace?” Kayhan’s firebrand chief editor Hossein Shariatmadari wrote referring to Abdolhamid’s latest Friday sermon in which he said Iranians believe that the government of Israel and people of Palestine should make peace so that the Palestinians can have their own government alongside and separate from the government of Israel.
Abdolhamid has delivered fiery sermons every week since September 30 when over eighty of his congregation were shot death after leaving the mosque. Since then, every Friday thousands of his followers have taken to the streets in Zahedan and other cities to protest. Last Friday security forces fired bullets and tear gas at them.
According to local rights groups, hundreds of protesters have been arrested often violently during this time and the atmosphere in the city has continuously been tense with stop and search checkpoints erected in various districts. Security forces have also been flying drones over the city on the days of the protests.
In late December the government appointed Mohammad Karami, the former commander of IRGC Ground Forces in southeastern Iran, as the new governor of Sistan-Baluchistan following the escalation of protests in the Sunni majority areas, particularly Zahedan. Local sources say the atmosphere has become more tense following Karami’s appointment, locals chanting against him in their protests.
A Baluch website said Monday security forces arrested Morad-Zehi to intimidate the leading figures of the Sunni community and gauge the reaction of locals to crackdowns before taking direct action against Abdolhamid himself.
“Silence over the arrest of individuals such as Mowlavi Abdolmajid will normally embolden the government to engage in more crackdown, extensive arrests, and imposing a more severe atmosphere of fear. The only way to counter this is people’s swift and timely reaction,” the website wrote.
In the past two weeks, grassroot groups had called for gatherings on the occasion of Sadeh festival that has its roots in Zoroastrianism and dates back to before the Achaemenid Empire for at least 3 millennia. The mid-winter festival was celebrated with grandeur and magnificence in ancient Persia to honor fire and to defeat the forces of darkness, frost, and cold. Iranians used the symbolism to protest against the oppressions of the clerical regime.
On Monday, in several cities across the country, people held gatherings around big bonfires and chanted slogans against the regime. The festival used to be celebrated mainly in cities such as Yazd and Kerman with a population of Zoroastrians, the followers of the pre-Islamic Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths. However, this year the event was tied to the uprising that has been ongoing since mid-September, when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was killed in custody of the hijab police.
According to social media videos, Sadeh celebrations were held in Tehran, Tabriz, Izeh, Ahvaz, Shiraz, Kerman, Sanandaj, some regions in Hormozgan province, Esfahan (Isfahan), Malayer, Mashhad, and many other cities and towns.
In several neighborhoods of Tehran, people set up fires, singing protest songs and chanting slogans against the regime and its ruler Ali Khamenei. In some cities, such as Izeh, people gathered at the graves of the protesters who were killed during the regime’s crackdown in rallies or in detention.
The ceremonies were held despite intensified pressure on the Zoroastrian associations to keep the event as small and limited as possible but people who gathered Monday night were mostly non-Zoroastrians.
Since the beginning of the current wave of protests, the regime has tried to avoid every possible gathering, including funeral services or wakes, as they tend to morph into antigovernment demonstrations. Among Zoroastrian Iranians, the Sadeh celebration is as important as Nowruz, which marks the new year.
In the Kurdish-majority city of Sanandaj, Sadeh celebrations were accompanied with rallies in protest against the arrest of two Sunni clerics in the city. Mamosta Loghman Amini and Mamosta Ebrahim Karimi Nanleh were arrested by the security forces earlier in the week. The two were the prayer imams of two Sunni mosques and had criticized the regime in support of the protests. Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Norway-based Kurdish rights group, said the two Sunni clerics were "arrested by the security forces on Marivan Road without a court order and taken to an unknown place."
The Islamic Republic has recently stepped up itscrackdown on Sunni clerics and Sunni majority areas, where the protests have been going on regularly and in large numbers, unlike some other parts of the country where protesters hold sporadic and small gatherings. In Sunni-majority province of Sistan-Baluchestan, Mowlavi Abdolmajid Moradzehi, a cleric close to the outspoken Sunni Imam of Zahedan, Mowlavi Abdolhamid, was also detained in recent days. Rallies by Iranian Sunni Muslims in the city of Galikash, in the northern Golestan province, are also being held regularly outside the home of the city’s Sunni cleric Mowlavi Mohammad Hossein Gorgij, the deposed Friday Imam of Azadshahr.