Date (Tarix) 3 June 2006
Ref (Muraciət): Press Release 3
BULLETIN:
EXPRESSING SOLIDARITY WITH
The Azerbaijani community in the United Kingdom expressed its solidarity with mass protests ongoing in Southern Azerbaijan. These protests, which began on 22 May 2006, continue throughout Southern Azerbaijan without abatement and are the culmination of dissent against the abuse of non-Persians in an official state newspaper on 12 May 2006, deemed a flagrant racist provocation.
A large number of British nationals of Southern Azerbaijani origin and those from the Republic of Azerbaijan, echoed slogans reverberating across Southern Azerbaijan. The slogans were both in English and Turkic Azerbaijani and the participants were a mixture of old and young, men and women. The slogans stressed Azerbaijani dissatisfaction at racism against them in Iran and demanded official status for Turkic Azerbaijani as a national language in Iran.
Towards the end of the protest, three young men originally from Southern Azerbaijan, chained themselves to the railings around the House of Commons as a means of bringing attention to Iranian racist policies against Southern Azerbaijan and the detention of Azerbaijani political prisoners by the Iranian authorities. The actions of these three men attracted considerable attention and invoked the curiosity of passers-by as to the location and cause of Southern Azerbaijan. The police responded with admirable restraint and after an hour, extricated these three protestors.
Events in Southern Azerbaijan are unfolding rapidly and to ignore them would be foolhardy. Faced with a recalcitrant Iranian regime that does little to hide its nuclear ambitions, Southern Azerbaijanis are speaking out with a voice that is clear and rational. The media both within Britain and across the world are encouraged to take notice and convey this to a wider arena.
South Azerbaijan Campaign
Group
P.S.
For further information, please refer to the attached information package