Shervin Omidvar ‎

One of the most senior Sunni clerics in Iran, Molawi Abdulhamid has said that if obstacles ‎facing the Sunni community are not addressed the Sunni community may consider boycotting ‎the upcoming presidential elections in June of 2009.‎

Blasting recent crackdowns on the Sunni community and the increasing religious discrimination ‎in the country, Molawi Abdulhamid, speaking at the Eid-e Fetr gathering of members of the ‎Sunni community in the town of Zahedan in Sistan and Baluchistan province of Iran, announced ‎the possibility of boycotting next year’s presidential elections in Iran, and noted that, "If the ‎present obstacles are not resolved, the Sunni community would reconsider its decision to ‎participate in the upcoming presidential elections." ‎

The possibility of boycotting the election is announced at a time when members of the Sunni ‎community have had among the highest participation rates in two recent presidential elections of ‎‎1997 and 2001, where 98 percent of the Sunni community voted for reformist Seyyed ‎Mohammad Khatami. ‎

Even Mostafa Moein, the reformist presidential candidate in the 2005 presidential election, ‎received the most number of votes in Sistan and Baluchistan province with 479,102 votes out of ‎the total of 874,352, with Hashemi Rafsanjani in second place with 155,000 votes. Mahmoud ‎Ahmadinejad received only 47,070 votes in Sistan and Baluchistan province. ‎

Mostafa Moein also received the highest number of votes in Sunni areas in Khorasan, Golestan, ‎Western Azerbaijan, Gilan and parts of Kurdistan and Kermanshah during the first round. If ‎elected, he had promised to appoint Sunni ministers to his cabinet for the first time in the 30-year ‎history of the Islamic Republic. Molawi Abdolhamid and several other Sunni clerics had ‎supported Mostafa Moein's candidacy. In the second round of the 2005 presidential elections, ‎following the announcement of support of Sunni clerics for Hashemi Rafsanjani (against ‎Ahmadinejad), he received the highest number of votes in Sistan and Baluchistan province. ‎

Noting the size of the Sunni community in Iran, which comprises 20 to 25 percent of the total ‎population, Zahedan's Sunni Friday Prayer Leader, in his Eid-e Fetr speech, spoke about national ‎unity, the participation of Sunnis in the 8-year war with Iraq, and their 30-year deprivation of ‎legal rights, adding, "The Sunni community has been absent in macro-management of the ‎country in the past 30 years and has played a small and insignificant role in regional ‎governance." ‎

According to Molawi Abdolhamid, "In some ministries the Sunni community is not present even ‎in the lowest levels of management and the military, police and armed forces have been cleansed ‎of the Sunni community and these forces are emptied of the Sunni community." Citing national ‎laws and international agreements, he said, "In Islamic Iran, government’s hiring practices and in ‎applications for employment or admission to hospitals and in judicial trials people are asked ‎about their religious affiliation." ‎

The Imam outlined what the demands of the Sunni community in the south eastern province of ‎Iran are in these terms: "We are citizens of Iran and love Iran and are willing to die for the ‎independence of our country and Islam and defend the Islamic Republic regime, thte country’s ‎national unity and its territorial integrity," Molawi Abdolhamid said, "We are not in enmity with ‎any ethnicity or religion and want our rights to freedom. We are asking that our freedoms not be ‎taken away from us and request that our citizenship rights as provided by law be respected. We ‎want to live in respect and with dignity, and an undignified life is bitter to us and we prefer death ‎to an undignified life." ‎