Two More Iranians From Sardasht Lost at Sea: Why the Exodus?

With the world still reeling from the tragedy that befell an Iranian family who drowned in the English Channel last week, a Kurdistan human rights organization has revealed that two other people from Iran are also missing at sea.

On Tuesday, October 27, five members of the same Iranian Kurdish family were killed when their small boat capsized during a crossing from the French coast to Britain. Rasoul Iran-Nejad and Shiva Mohammad Panahi, and their children Anita, 9, Armin, 6, and 15-month-old Artin, had boarded the people smuggler’s vessel in 47mph winds along with around 20 other desperate would-be migrants.

In the days that followed, harrowing details about the family’s arduous journey from Sardasht Country in West Azerbaijan were reported in the English and French media, and their fate unanimously pronounced a tragedy. Now, the story has taken yet another dreadful turn. According to human rights group Hengaw, two of the other passengers, named as Yousef Khezri and Shouresh Souri, have also been also unaccounted for since most of the boat’s occupants were pulled from the water.

IranWire has spoken to the families of these two missing asylum seekers. Yousef Khezri was reportedly 32 years old and formerly lived with his parents in the village of Gravis in Sardasht County. Prior to leaving Iran he did not have a steady job and did basic agricultural work to sustain the family. Two months ago, a relative said, he had boarded a plane from Tehran to Qatar in search of “a normal life”: a relatively low expectation that nonetheless never materialized for him in Iran. His last contact with his family was on October 26, the day before the fatal crossing.

Shouresh Souri was 38 years old and a resident of Maraghan village, also in Sardasht. He had two sons, aged 17 and six, and a six-year-old daughter, for whom he planned to build a life in Britain before sending for them to join him.

According to a family member, Souri was “under a lot of psychological pressure”. “He had been building houses on his own land in the village for several years,” they added, “but every time the forestry authorities stopped him from finishing the construction work. He went to court in the last few years of his life in Iran."

Finally Souri traveled to Istanbul, Turkey on September 6 and a few weeks later struck out for Italy by boat. He was detained in Italy and held in quarantine there for a week, but then managed to get to France with the help of a people smuggler. Souri had tried to reach Britain several times, but failed. In his last contact with his family, he told them that he had decided to “try his luck” in a boat.

The boat, however, overturned all their dreams. Not only did it not reach its destination, but it took away seven civilian lives – one of them just a toddler, whose body has not been recovered from the waves.

Survivors of the disastrous crossing say the people smuggler had not provided all of them with live jackets, despite an earlier promise to do so. They said that the boat had capsized about three kilometers offshore, and unlike most of the other passengers, who trod water near the boat and waited for rescue teams to arrive, Yousef Khezri and Shouresh Souri apparently tried to swim ashore. But the waves that morning were one to two meters high. Bereft of any news of them since, their families now fear the worst.

Some of the survivors reported that the people smuggler was also from Sardasht. Last week a 37-year-old Iranian man, apparently the driver of the boat, was arrested and appeared in a French court charged with aggravated manslaughter over the deaths of the Iran-Nejad family. But the skipper’s full identity is not yet known, and there is every chance he is not the one in charge of the criminal gang that took these vulnerable people’s money in exchange for passage across the Channel. In most such cases, the boat driver is themself an asylum seeker, ideally one with experience of sailing who is recruited in exchange for a lower smuggling fee.

In recent years, however, several Iranian people-smuggling outfits have been identified and arrested in France. Some Iranians and Iranian Kurds have received lengthy prison sentences in France for trafficking people across the Channel, often at a cost of more than 10,000 euros per head in exchange for so-called “guaranteed passage”. But if he is found guilty, the captain of this vessel will be the first to be sentenced for manslaughter over people-smuggling between France and the UK.

"The game was good," the man was quoted as saying by the surviving passengers. "It's a pity they died."

It is unclear on which shore the sea may eventually deliver Artin's lifeless body, nor whether this event will, in turn, be captured by a photographer – as was the case for Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach in 2015, cracking the heart of the world. The whereabouts of Yousef Khezri and Shouresh Souri are utterly unknown. And for the Iran-Nejads’ relatives back in Sardasht, who face a bill of up to £90,000 to get the other four bodies of their loved ones home, it is not even clear whether they will have a chance to say goodbye.

What could possibly compel a young family, and two men in with dependent families back at home in Iran, to make such a dangerous journey? The Saturday before the fateful crossing, Shiva Mohammed Panahi reportedly have texted a friend from France in which she said the family had “no choice” but to strike out for Britain. To understand what this family and others may have been going through, IranWire has examined the situation back in Sardasht, West Azerbaijan: the place they left behind.

 

Why Are So Many People Leaving Sardasht?

One of the few Iranian politicians to have spoken about the Iran-Nejads’ fate is Kamal Hosseinpour, the MP for Sardasht, who on Saturday was quoted by the Asr-e Iran news website as saying more than 1,000 Iranian citizens had been pushed out of the country by poverty in the past five months.

"The situation in Sardasht is such that people like this family would sell everything they have to get to Turkey with the help of smugglers – and from there to Europe,” Hosseinpour said, adding: “There are no industries, no agriculture, no jobs in Sardasht.”

It was not the first time Sardasht’s elected representative has decried the dire economic situation in his constituency. Last month, after three kulbars (border couriers) were shot and killed by Iranian border guards, Hosseinpour used a fiery address in parliament to warn high unemployment was forcing many Iranian Kurds into smuggling.

The population of Sardasht city stood at about 118,000 at the time of the last census four years ago. In an interview with KurdPress in April this year, Veria Hassanpour, a member of the Sardasht City Council, stated that Sardasht County has the highest unemployment rate in the province, standing at 23 percent: twice the provincial average.

In the same interview, Hassanpour described a catalogue of socio-economic issues plaguing Sardasht, from joblessness to mental health crises, high divorce rates and health deprivation. He claimed that some 90 per cent of working people in Sardasht city are in informal or illegal employment, and that in 2018 Sardasht County had ranked first in the whole of Iran for the number of suicides that led to death.

An economist based in Sardasht, who asked not to be named, told IranWire that simply “finding a piece of bread” would be motive enough for some young people from Sardasht to try to emigrate. "In border zones and deprived areas such as Sardasht,” he added, “the lack of economic infrastructure, widespread unemployment, the blocking of border crossings, the weakening of agriculture and animal husbandry roles, and of course the negligence of decision-making bodies, have caused a new wave of emigration – especially among the youth. At the same time, this emigration has drained the region's productive capacity.”

Sardasht is one of the largest and most important cities in West Azerbaijan and despite being considered a disadvantaged and deprived area, is thought to have great potential for future development. It has fertile lands, irrigated with high annual rainfall, and three border crossing points with Iraqi Kurdistan that could become formal import/export corridors if they were formally established. Its favorable climate and unique historical landmarks could also make it a viable tourist destination some day. But so far, no comprehensive plans for the development of this county have been drawn up or implemented.

Even well-educated and comparatively better-off young people in Sardasht are frustrated at the lack of opportunity. Bahar Abbasi, a political science and sociology postgradate, told IranWire: "The efforts of civil activists to create minimal facilities here have always been met with resistance by security officials.

“We have warned the local government in Sardasht to pay more attention to the people of this city, but they just make promises that are never fulfilled. Sardasht has a highly educated population, but there is no possibility of employment. I know well-educated young people from good universities who have either become kulbars or felt forced to emigrate. My brother was one of them. The Iran-Nejad family another.”

About 70,000 kulbars are active in this region and every year, hundreds are killed or wounded by Iranian border guards and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. On September 2, three men were shot and killed near the village of Kalarash in Sardasht: Zanko Ahmadi, 22, Soroush Makari and 25-year-old father-of-one Zanest Hassannejad. It came just days after guards killed 40-year-old father-of-three Jalal Khedzri as he tried to transport livestock through the mountains from Iran into Iraqi Kurdistan.

In June 1987, Saddam Hussein's warplanes dropped chemical weapons on civilians in Sardasht, killing more than 100 civilians and exposing some 8,000 people to the potentially fatal effects of mustard gas. Exposed to the war due to their border location, citizens had no idea how to defend themselves from a chemical attack. More than 30 years later there is still no specialist treatment center in Sardasht for the victims, up to 3,000 of whom have no record of their chemical exposure and so find it difficult to obtain government benefits.

Bahar Abbasi also claimed young people in Sardasht are developing drug addictions because of the lack of opportunity. “There is no entertainment for young people in Sardasht,” he said. “There aren’t any accurate statistics, but a glance at the city will tell you plenty of people are addicted to drugs, especially meth, and that the problem is getting out of hand. Unemployed graduates from laboratories in Sardasht are resorting to work in meth kitchens, thereby endangering their future and that of the city's youth."

In his recent comments on the Iran-Nejad family’s deaths, Kamal Hosseinpour repeated that not one factory is presently active in Sardasht’s industrial quarter, and two out of the three border markets have closed down.

A citizen of Sardasht, who asked not to be named, told IranWire: "Not only are there no factories in Sardasht, but neither is there any possibility of real agriculture in this city. The only product of the regional farms is grapes, which is transferred to the factories in surrounding cities, especially Urmia.”

Native citizens of Sardasht with the right qualifications, he added, are not employed in local government offices if they cannot demonstrate a pre-existing affiliation to the government. As such, he said, most people turn to “fake jobs” – informal ones – such as peddling or working as kulbars, or if they have the money, they take the risk and leave the country.

 

Related coverage:

An Iranian Family's Dream of a Better Life Died in the English Channel

Tragedy of Drowned Iranian Family Laid Bare in English and French Media

Poverty in Iran: West Azerbaijan

Across Mountain Borders: The Story of Iranian Illegal Immigrants in Turkey