MP reports 166 kolbars killed and injured in one year

The Mahabad MP criticized the shooting of Kolbars, saying that nearly 14 of them are killed and injured every month. He accused the Rouhani government of blocking two officially defined routes for Kolbars in 2017 and 2018.

Jalal Mahmoudzadeh says that when the government closes a job, it should define an alternative job for it, but it has not done so, which has caused the kolbars to go to the border and unofficial crossings for a living.

On Monday, September 21, the Shafaqna news site, quoting a representative from Mahabad in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, wrote that these unofficial crossings are usually controlled by law enforcement and border guards, who sometimes shoot at the kolbars.

Mahmoudzadeh says that the government was expected to designate official crossings for transporting goods in border areas so that kolbars could use motorized vehicles and cars to move goods, but not only was this not done, but they also blocked the crossings that were officially defined in 2018 and 2019.

Stating that 166 Kolbars have been killed or injured by officers in the past year, he said: "These Kolbars are Iranian youth and children of this land, and it is not fair that Iranian youth are killed and their families displaced by Iranian bullets. This has consequences and is not in the interest of the system in terms of security."

On the morning of September 12, three young Kolbars were shot by border guards from West Azerbaijan Province in the Sardasht border region near the Iraqi border and lost their lives.

Two days after this incident, Amanollah Hosseinpour, a representative of Sardasht and Piranshahr, wrote a letter to President Hassan Rouhani asking him: “Why should the defenseless and oppressed youth of Kurdish regions be forced to work as kolbaris and be killed for a piece of bread? Unfortunately, your government has not only failed to create jobs, but has also closed official markets and official kolbari routes and moved production workshops to central and prosperous areas.”

Reminder to the Minister of Interior

The next day, in a written reminder to the Minister of Interior, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, Hosseinpour called for the dispatch of experts from the ministry to the region to "organize the official borders, markets, and official Kolbari passages" and deal with those responsible for incidents such as the murder of Kolbari.

Kolbari is a very difficult and dangerous job that thousands of people in the western provinces of Iran engage in to support themselves and their families due to unemployment and lack of jobs.

Falling off a cliff, drowning in a river, freezing in snow and blizzards, getting caught in avalanches and landslides, stepping on landmines left over from the Iran-Iraq war, and finally being shot by border guards are among the dangers that threaten the lives and health of kolbars.

Border guards often identify injured and killed kolbars as smugglers or members of “counter-revolutionary” groups. Osman Mazin, a lawyer and attorney, says that kolbar work is not a job and is clearly degrading to humans, “but this undesirable job has been imposed on the people of these border and Kurdish areas due to the lack of employment conditions.”

“ Why are Kolbars killed instead of arrested? ”

He recently told the website Event24: "In the Kolbari laws, there is no crime, punishment, or punishment for killing or murdering, so a law enforcement officer does not have the right to take people's lives without a final order from a competent judicial authority. Of course, as far as I know, no officer has been questioned or summoned for shooting at Kolbars so far; this means that some people give themselves the right to publicly consider Kolbars deserving of murder."

Most lawyers and human rights activists have repeatedly emphasized that if some Kolbars are also involved in smuggling goods, shooting them directly, instead of arresting them and handing them over to the judiciary to prove their crime, is not justifiable.

The representative of Sardasht and Piranshahr in the parliament, in response to the killing of three Kolbars in this region, said: "My message to the president, the border regiment, and the governor of West Azerbaijan is that if someone has committed a crime or even smuggled, they should be dealt with legally. Such a person should be arrested and tried. Why are they killing?"

So far, neither the authorities have given a clear and convincing answer to this and similar questions, nor has the government fulfilled its duty to create employment and its promise to organize and support the Kolbars.

Source: DW