Like many other residents of the Seattle area, Mohammad Ahadi loves to camp. In the last five years, he and his friends have pitched tents in Yellowstone, Olympic and Mount Rainier National Parks. However, he started camping for a different reason than most; back home in northwest Iran, it gave him a way to meet with coworkers free from government surveillance.
Ahadi reported on anti-Azeri discrimination in Iran until harassment, imprisonment and torture at the hands of the government forced him to continue his work as an exile in Turkey. After receiving refugee status and resettling in a Seattle suburb, he fears for the future of his people, but a lack of funds has stymied his work for now.
A dystopian reality
Raised in a conservative religious family, Ahadi says everything changed when he read two books as a student at the University of Tabriz. As he read “1984” by George Orwell, he felt the novel’s dystopian state exactly described his own experience in Iran. The second, “Borders and Brethren” by Brenda Shaffer, brought him to terms with his Azeri culture and identity.
Today, more ethnically Azeri people live in Iran than in the country of Azerbaijan. Ahadi compares his life in Iranian Azerbaijan to Mexican Americans living in New Mexico – a historically unified people divided by an international border. While Ahadi’s parents are Iranian born, his wife is from Azerbaijan.
“We are the same people. My mom can talk, can laugh, can cry with my wife,” Ahadi said.
Mohammad Ahadi describes his ordeal at the hands of the Iranian government that drove him from his homeland and eventually put a stop to his reporting. (Photo/Daniel Hart)
Iranian Azeri cultural identity is historically complex and today, politically controversial. Yet Ahadi soon came face to face with an unquestionable reality: for years, the Iranian government has violated human rights in its suppression of Azeri activists.
In 2006, a newspaper cartoon depicting Azeri people as cockroaches sparked protests across the region. Government security forces’ brutal response left at least five people dead. The following years brought more protests against media bias. Amnesty International confirms Ahadi’s assertion that the government prohibits education in the Azeri language, contrary to Article 15 of Iran’s constitution:
“The use of regional and tribal languages in the press and mass media, as well as for teaching of their literature in schools, is allowed in addition to Persian.”
Ahadi applied for permission from the government to publish a newspaper at his university. After being denied five times, he decided to do it anyway. Soon he was sending a monthly, four to five-page publication covering Azeri culture, history and language to 5000 email addresses.
Crackdown
As Ahadi began to join the activist community, the government took notice. After meeting the family of a protester killed during the 2006 demonstrations, he was stopped at a roadblock, detained for three hours and questioned. When he attended the funeral of another activist killed in an accident, he was detained for a night and formally charged for conspiracy against the government.
He graduated in 2011. One month later, authorities came to his home, took his computer and books and arrested him. They blindfolded him and took him to prison, where he was tortured and sentenced to one year for producing anti-government propaganda.
When he was finally released, he faced regular government harassment. Authorities listened to his calls, threatened him and warned him to mind his own business. He feared he would be imprisoned again. In March 2013, he decided to escape to Turkey, where he could apply for refugee status. After asking a friend for help, he waited in a city on the border for five days. A smuggler paid off the guards and drove him across the border at night.
Ahadi traveled to Eskisehir, a city in northwest Turkey. Although he couldn’t legally work, he found jobs as a dishwasher, a tour guide and a security guard where he was paid under the table.
In the rest of his time, he and a friend he had met in prison created a website: Oyan News. The word means “wake up.” They published in Azeri, English and Turkish but spent most of their energy on Farsi. About half their articles were reposted from other news sources. Their own work was mostly about government detainees. Otherwise, they reported on the conditions of hospitals, schools and roads in Iranian Azerbaijan.
“The corruption in our country is like sun. You can see it. You can feel it. Corruption in all levels is very visible,” Ahadi said.
About 60 percent of Iran’s economy is centrally planned through state-owned businesses. Ahadi said Iranian Azerbaijan and other areas of ethnic minorities are underfunded by the state budget, leading to infrastructure problems. For example, road conditions are very poor.
“When you drive, you risk your life,” Ahadi said. “My own father had an accident twice.”
Iranian Azerbaijan has several large gold mines. Yet Ahadi said the gold is sent to other provinces without benefiting locals.
Unfinished work
In Turkey, Ahadi and his friends were making no money from the website. A friend in Vancouver, Canada sent money for a while until he could no longer afford it. Finally, after two interviews with the UN’s refugee agency and two with the US Department of Homeland Security, Ahadi was granted refugee status and accepted for resettlement in the US.
On Aug. 21, 2016, he arrived in the US. The last six years have been hard. Instead of reporting, Ahadi delivers packages for Amazon. While he is glad to be able to work and make money, he and his friends had to hold a long discussion about the website. Facing a lack of funds and with no one to continue the work for them, they decided they could no longer update it. This unfinished work is his biggest regret.
“We built that website word by word. We put a lot of time into that website because we believed in journalism. We believed in – yeah, we love that country, we love that people. But when you report on something, you have to report the facts, not your feelings,” Ahadi said.
Mohammad Ahadi poses in Baku by a statue of Ja'far Pishevari, the leader from 1945-46 a short-lived secessionist Azerbaijani state in modern-day Iranian Azerbaijan. (Photo/courtesy of Mohammad Ahadi)
Ahadi is critical of international news outlets that cover Iran such as Voice of America, Radio Farda, BBC Persian and German broadcaster Deutsch Welle. He said although they question the Iranian government’s other actions, they fail to report on discrimination against minorities. Voice of America and Radio Farda are both funded by the US government.
“As a United States taxpayer, I pay to that news site to report fairly, but they don’t!” Ahadi said.
Although Ahadi cannot return to Iran, he hopes his parents can join him in the US someday. His wife, who lives in Baku, has been waiting on her US visa application for two years. Also a journalist, she worked as a broadcasting producer until losing her job due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While he has loved time spent in Baku and praises Azerbaijan’s religious diversity and tolerance, he can’t say the same of his homeland.
“I can’t remember any positive thing, for real,” he said, laughing. “Maybe the day they release us from prison, maybe that day.”
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