BBC Farsi Services with Hidden Agenda – an Exclusive Iranian Club within a British Organisation

We the undersigned individuals of British Azerbaijani communities & Azerbaijanis around the world wish to make a representation against the very un-British way of the Persian services of the BBC for its promotion of the Iranian values tantamount to tribalism. Please allow us to explain the situation and thereby to substantiate our claims.

Iran is a multinational country and consists of:

⦁ The Azerbaijani Turks, a “minoritised” majority of the country, who are still being recognised as the largest ethnic nationality with a population of about 30 million;

⦁ The Persians, a “majoritised” minority of the country, who are given unrepresentative privileges; and

⦁ Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis, Turkmens and other smaller minorities.

The Persian services of the BBC only reflect the Persian nationality with little respect to the diversity we reflected above. Therefore, we believe that this service is not true to the British journalistic values of fairness, balance and transparency. We very much hope that that higher authorities of the senior management of the BBC will ask critical questions on the gap within the coverage of the Farsi services not being proportional to all nationality composition in Iran. These services appear to know the truth by acting self-righteously but put little effort to reflect the reality. As it stands, this is a very Iranian mindset within the British establishment. Let us illustrate the above claim by the following examples:

⦁ The coverage of the death of Simin Behbahani (1927 – 2014), a Persian poet who died in August, the 19th, was at the same day and her death was broadcasted by the BBC Farsi services at the same date (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28857014).

⦁ The Azerbaijani philanthropist, Professor Javad Heyet (1925-2014) died in August, the 12th but to date there has been no news on him to be published by the BBC services to South Azerbaijanis through the Persian services. Yet Prof. Heyet was the first heart surgeon in Iran and an honorary member of International organisations. There are a number of interesting aspects in the biography of this renowned doctor: the Iranian authorities did not allow his funeral to take place in Tebriz, the Iranian news media were silent on this issue and unsurprisingly, the BBC Persian services conformed with the Iranian media (in fact this was not conforming to but pursuing an identical mindset). One other aspect in the biography of Prof. Heyet is that being an Azerbaijani, he is a renowned Turkologist, but this is labelled as Pan-Turkism in the language of foul-mouthed Iranian racists and explains why the BBC Farsi services did not broadcast and cover the news on his death.

⦁ We would like to remind you that the BBC coverage of the Azerbaijani football games in Madrid. In this instance, the Iranian propaganda machinery managed to remove the word Azerbaijan from the true pictures (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27343540). So, this was a news-worthy item reflected by the BBC proper to the world. Therefore, it is inexplicable that, the BBC Persian service did not present this news item, where within Iran there are more 30 million Azerbaijanis. We consider this as self-righteousness exercised by the BBC Farsi services.

Such services emulate the discourse spearheaded by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is still trapped in the mindset of the Aryan race and its supremacy. The similarity between the recently emerged word of Iran and the fictitious term of Aryan gives them the legitimacy to proclaim the ownership of the country against all the other nationalities within the country. Regrettably, the BBC Farsi services emulate this discourse and thereby legitimise the official Iranian discourse and this effectively kills off the strive by all the other nationalities to ferment a culture of inclusion, without which Iran and the Iranian culture has been transformed into an extremist force as one of the greatest global risk.

Our British Azerbaijani community enjoys the British way of life, rich for its promotion of inclusion. This is the principle that we have come to realise how it creates coherence in a society. In comparison with Iran, we are able to see how the absence of inclusion creates distrust, ignorance and arrogance, as in Iran. Our community in the UK regards the BBC as a formidable source of information. Naturally, we also monitor your Turkic and Farsi services and we are confident that the gaps between the Farsi services of the BBC and its other services are extraordinarily alarming.

It is regrettable that your monitoring checks have not yet picked up these signals. We therefore have to flag for your attention the existence of an exclusive club of the BBC Farsi services within the BBC establishment running their hidden agenda. Our expectation is to hear and read news about Iran encompassing all its diverse peoples and their strife towards the conservation of their identity. Unfortunately, the outputs of the BBC Farsi services are manipulated towards parochial aims of the singular racial discourse in Iran. These services are very discriminative in terms of reflecting the news about the national movement of South Azerbaijanis to the extent that even the formidable culture of human rights defence by South Azerbaijanis is swept under the carpet. What use is a new service focussed on Iran, that ignores the fate of a human right activist such as Seid Metinpur, who is suffering an arbitrary imprisonment of 8 years and was released temporarily for the first time recently for three days. Of course, the BBC Farsi services was silent on this news-item.

Iranian government have been applying intensive censorship & boycott policies against South Azerbaijan. The discrimination from BBC Farsi services is in par with the Iranian mindset and we hope this is a food for thought and you will not dismiss lightly this open letter.

We strongly believe the BBC was one of the most popular media in Iran but other ethnic nations in Iran are increasingly disenchanted with seeing the Iranian empire hidden within your organisation. If you do not put the management of the BBC Farsi services in order, this service will undermine the credibility of the BBC; will be seen as biased; and unwittingly you will undermine British interests.

Furthermore, we call on your attention to the incalculable impacts of the BBC Farsi services in undermining global security by playing subtle Iranian games in the name of the BBC. We are confident that this does not meet your approval and hope that you will set up an enquiry to ensure that the British values prevail even over the self-righteous BBC Farsi services.

Kind regards

The British Azerbaijani Communities & individuals