Reports have suggested that a number of ethnic Armenians and Georgians have been killed in ongoing anti-government protests in Iran.
On Thursday, the Armenian High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs, Zareh Sinanyan, said that his office did not have direct contact with Iran’s Armenian community in the midst of an ongoing internet blackout in the country.
However, he said that he knew of two deaths to have been confirmed, with no known casualties.
‘But there is no concrete information’, he said, according to state-run media outlet Armenpress, noting that they receive information about the Armenian community in Iran ‘thanks to people coming from Iran to Armenia’.
‘We have no direct contact. The internet and communication channels there are shut down; as of yesterday, we did not even have contact with our embassy’, he said.
Asked about whether Armenia was capable of evacuating Iranian–Armenians, Sinanyan said that it would be ‘impossible to discuss such issues in a vacuum’, and that Yerevan needed to ‘understand the situation on the ground’.
He did however say that there was not a large influx of people escaping Iran into Armenia.
Georgians from the Isfahan province have also said that they were aware of casualties among the Georgian community in the province, but that they cannot say the exact number.
Isfahan’s Fereydan region is home to a sizable Georgian community — often called Fereydani Georgians — with they’re also living in other parts of the province.
A representative of the organisation From Fereydan To Georgia, who is residing in Georgia, told OC Media that the information was brought by ethnic Georgians who crossed the Iranian border in recent days.
Among the reports the representative has received are claims that up to 15 Georgians were killed in the small provincial town of Yazdan Shahr. However, due to the Iranian authorities’ shutdown of the internet and other communications, verifying the information and confirming the death toll remains difficult.
According to the representative, it has been confirmed that a 70-year-old ethnic Georgian woman was killed near a hospital in the small town of Shahin Shahr, where the wounded had been taken. She was there with her grandchild, the representative said, though the exact circumstances of the incident remain unclear.
He also told OC Media that amid the communications blackout, contact with relatives inside Iran is possible only briefly. He added that people inside the country fear gathering and sharing information.
Iranian Georgians residing outside Iran also rely on family members living at the Iran–Armenia border, where communication is somewhat easier — but still complicated — to establish.
This was how Fereydani Georgian Lika Gogichashvili learned about the situation of her family and some other Georgians. According to Gogichashvili, her brother called a friend living near the border, who informed them about deaths among the Georgian community.
‘Thank God, everyone in my family is safe, but I know of several Fereydani Georgian family names from which the people died,’ she told OC Media.
Very scant reports about casualties from Iran’s Azerbaijani community have come out.
However, Modern.az, an Azerbaijani media outlet, reported on Wednesday that an ethnic Azerbaijani footballer, Mojtaba Tarshsiz, was killed by government forces along with his wife.
Estimates have indicated that Azerbaijanis could make upwards of 16% of Iran’s population, making them the largest non-Persian ethnic group in the country. Other people from the Caucasus, including Armenians, Georgians, and Circassians, are believed to make up less than 2% of the population.
As chaos continues to unfold in Iran as anti-government protests erupt throughout the country, several thousands are believed to have been killed during the protests, with estimates ranging from 3,000 to 20,000.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
