I cannot let go of the enchantment of those glances, and I cannot understand the bright light in the eyes of the children who were forever bound in the attack of Pakistan’s missiles on a village in Saravan, located in Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran. I cannot understand which race, nationality, or ethnicity the flow of blood resulted from, that they could never put on the garment of Iranian citizenship. I cannot understand why in the 21st century, humanity is still burdened with these venomous titles, and why the rulers of Iran continue to perpetrate fundamental violence against humans, poisoning every moment of the lives of marginalized people with their obsessive and sickening line-drawing.

“What difference did it make which race or nationality those children were born into, really? They didn’t understand the concept of borders, or the meaning of political systems and integration within them, or the concept of citizenship and the rights that come with it. But they did know that there was an empty void in their identity and social structure that caused them to be deprived of something as valuable as a birth certificate, and unable to go to school. They were always like wandering shadows on the border between existence and non-existence – without knowing who they were – traveling hopelessly. They knew that their mothers always carried a lost plastic bag in their hands, going from one checkpoint to another, from one office to another, from one city to another, to prove that their children were worthy of joining the nation they were born into, grew up in, spoke the language of, and lived with the culture of. They didn’t know who they were; their names were “Babar,” “Hani,”

The truth is that in the eyes of the security-minded officials of the Islamic Republic, they were potential enemies who were feared to have foreign blood running through their veins and one day rise up against the system. They were prisoners trapped within borders, caught in the middle and tortured, but they were unaware of this and were therefore labeled as “foreign followers”.

The Islamic Republic, in its exercise of its secure sovereignty over Iran, has never forgotten its paranoid fear of foreigners and has therefore severely restricted citizenship regulations. Many groups of Iranian residents, who have lived on this land for generations, speak Persian and are immersed in its culture, and insist on their Iranian identity in every aspect of their existence, have been deprived of their fundamental right to citizenship under the pretext of identity infiltration into the political system. Many Baloch people, who have been excluded from education due to extreme poverty and distance from the dominant culture of their ancestors, are among these people. “In order to construct the people and demonstrate their presence in the city government, and in fact, to represent the ideological concept of the people, there is always a need for others to be excluded from the population. It is only in the face of the threat of these external others that the people come together.” (1)

The Islamic Republic oppresses its people by eliminating and demonizing ethnicities and religions, and using its security policies to instill fear and paranoia towards outsiders. This has led to many Iranians living in a state of uncertainty and anonymity, as they try to escape the discriminatory laws and regulations imposed by the government. The Baloch people are particularly targeted by these policies. The Islamic Republic has deliberately kept them deprived of resources, creating a harsh and merciless poverty in their region, while also preventing many from legally joining the political system and denying them citizenship. This systematic discrimination has caused the Baloch people to constantly live in fear and be at the mercy of the government, to the point where they are often executed without a fair trial. Their lack of identity has made them easy targets for the government to oppress.

Sadder than what we have listed, is the story of women who have made marriage contracts with foreign men on the outskirts of cities, or have been sold to refugee or immigrant men as children, who sometimes only had a short stay in Iran, under the guise of marriage and with legal contracts. The men have often left and left behind several children in the arms of helpless women. These children, whose fathers have left and have not left them with any proof of identity, nationality, birth certificate or passport from their home country, and their mothers do not have the right to transfer their nationality to them. Therefore, according to the laws of the Islamic Republic, they are not considered Iranian, but since they have no reason to join their father’s regime, they have even fewer rights than foreign children who live in Iran, even illegally.

The extensive efforts to address this issue resulted in the approval of the law determining the citizenship of children born to Iranian women and foreign men in 2006. However, due to deliberate limitations, its implementation was unsuccessful. When a series of civil actions and public demands led to the approval of the amended law, before these children could obtain their birth certificates through the legal process, the law was declared “null and void” based on the National Migration Organization Law, which had been approved within the framework of the Seventh Development Plan. According to the lawmakers, apparently only fourteen thousand people were able to benefit from this law. The dreams of these children were once again shattered and according to the new law, they were pushed to the bottom of the human hierarchy, defined by the system, and deprived of any rights, even as refugees.

“The tragedy of the oppressed and marginalized individuals is not that they are deprived of a life of freedom and pursuit of happiness, or equality before the law, or freedom of thought. The formulas designed to solve problems within existing societies are not meant to exclude them from any type of society, but rather to show that they do not belong to any society and that there is no law for them. It is not that they have been wronged, but that no one even wants to wrong them. Only in the final stage of a relatively long process is their right to life threatened; only when they become completely superfluous and no one wants to stone them. (2) Hannah Arendt believes that the integration of these people into the legal system of a country is possible through the commission of a crime: depriving fundamental human rights and, above all, depriving them of a position; a position that makes beliefs important and actions effective. When belonging to the society in which one is born is not

This biopolitics, or as Foucault puts it, biopower, politicizes the lives of these children and does not respect their right to life unless by killing them.

They are an example of the concept of “homo sacer” or the naked life of the Agamben; a legal term in the ancient Roman legal system that referred to a person who was banished from the city due to a serious offense. (3) By holding the ceremony of issuing the “homo sacer” verdict, people could kill the criminal and be immune from punishment, but they did not do this in the sacrificial ceremony, which required taking a life, because they could not sacrifice something that was worthless to them. Therefore, this “sacrificial human” was excluded from the circle of social activity and collective laws, and the only law that applied to them was the one that exiled them permanently.

Notes:

1- Mehragan, Hope, Class Politics, and the Concept of People, from the book: Law and Violence (Selected Articles), Tehran: Nashr-e Rokhdad-e No, First Edition, 1388.

2 – Arnt, Hannah, The Decline of Nation-States and the End of Human Rights, translated by Javad Ganji, from the book: Law and Violence (Selected Articles), Tehran: Nashr-e Rokhdad-e No, first edition, 2009.

3- Agamben, Giorgio, Law and Violence, Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Morad Farhadpour and Omid Mehragan, from the book: Law and Violence (Selected Articles), Tehran: Nashr-e Rokhdad-e No, first edition, 1388 (2009).