While the explosion in the Tabas mine and the tragic death of more than 50 hard-working miners has plunged Iran into anger and sorrow, the daily killings of Kurdish porters and Baluch fuel carriers reveal yet another facet of the oppression and crimes of the corrupt clerical regime.
Hardly a day goes by without the regime’s brutal forces gunning down Kurdish porters and impoverished Baluch fuel carriers on both sides of Iran, taking their lives as they struggle to provide for their destitute families.
On September 20, a porter died after enduring 18 months of pain and suffering from injuries inflicted by regime’s forces. He had been shot on February 27, 2023, and was paralyzed. All four of his brothers had also been injured while working as porters.
According to human rights reports, in the first six months of 2024, at least 270 porters in the western border regions were killed or injured due to direct shootings by the regime’s forces, stepping on landmines, falling from mountains, or dying in freezing conditions.
The falling from mountains or dying in snow and frost is primarily due to threats from the regime’s armed patrols, whose violent shootings force porters to take treacherous, snow-covered paths full of cliffs and dangers.
The regime’s security forces also have a brutal record in the massacre of Baluch fuel carriers, one of the most savage examples being the killing of dozens of protesting fuel carriers with tank machine guns in February 2021, which sparked an uprising in Saravan.
The flames of Saravan’s bloody and fiery uprising began on February 22, 2021, and quickly spread across Sistan and Baluchestan Province, expanding beyond the region in just three weeks.
On September 21, a Baluch fuel carrier was killed in flames after security forces shot at a fuel tanker near Iranshahr, causing it to overturn and catch fire.
Since the start of the new administration under Masoud Pezeshkian, a quick review of media reports shows that more than 40 fuel carriers have either been killed by direct gunfire from regime’s forces, burned to death in vehicle fires, or died from thirst, hunger, and heat.
This is the story of people who, to meet the basic needs of their families, must risk their lives every day.
In such conditions, Pezeshkian is attempting to deceive the oppressed Kurdish, Baluch, and Sunni populations by appointing loyalists from these groups to government positions in manipulative schemes.
Kurdish, Baluch, Sunni, and other people across Iran have clearly seen that nothing but evil, crime, and plunder can be expected from this regime in all its factions. This is why Iran’s people are uniting along with the Resistance Units and the Iranian Resistance to overthrow this regime and put an end to this cycle of corruption, violence, and depravity.