As classrooms are supposed to be spaces for building the future, public schools in Al-Ahwaz have transformed into tools of financial oppression and forced extortion, as part of a systematic policy to enforce apartheid and keep emerging Ahwazi generations uneducated.
Field reports and live voice testimonies held by the organization document a catastrophic reality: Ahwazi families are forced to pay exorbitant registration fees for their children, ranging from 20 to 30 million Iranian Rials for mandatory school uniforms, in addition to millions of Rials for books and compulsory health insurance. These hefty sums have effectively rendered impoverished families utterly incapable of payment, driving their children reluctantly toward “forced school dropout,” especially younger siblings down the family birth order. In contrast, incoming and settler populations bask in high salaries and sovereign privileges within the oil sectors, clearly exposing the falsity of equality as the native citizen is crushed under the weight of impoverishment while outsiders enjoy the land’s wealth.
This economic and educational targeting is neither arbitrary nor a product of administrative coincidence; rather, it is a link in an integrated security project. Documented political confessions by Jabir Rajabi, a former advisor to the office of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a defector from the Quds Force, via Sky News, bare the naked truth when he publicly admitted that keeping Ahwazis trapped in a cycle of poverty and systematic marginalization is a “deliberate security decision” to prevent them from possessing financial capacity, demanding their rights, or determining their own destiny.
This exclusion does not stop at school gates; it extends to assassinating the future of young graduates. Employment doors in wealth sectors are shut in their faces and handed over to settlers, leaving higher education degree holders with no choice but to work as taxi drivers or street vendors. This horrific vocational and class discrimination has led to the collapse of education’s returns and spawned a state of despair that has driven the younger generation to early disengagement from studies—a practical implementation of deliberate ignorance policies.
While documenting these structural crimes that violate the most basic rules of international human rights, the Alahwazi Organization for Human Rights sounds the alarm and demands that the international community and UN bodies assume their legal and moral responsibilities. It calls for immediate intervention to pressure the Iranian authorities to halt these grave violations, apartheid policies, and disguised discrimination that are swallowing the future of Al-Ahwaz children.
