Xenophobia and racism in Iranian media foment mob attacks on Afghans
In recent months, anti-Afghan refugee sentiment has surged to dangerous levels in Iran. The hashtag “deportation of Afghan refugees is a national demand” has been shared hundreds of thousands of times, accompanied by derogatory name-calling and portrayals of Afghan refugees as burdens and menaces to Iranian society.
Discrimination and racism against Afghan refugees in Iran are long-standing issues, as are the well-documented discriminatory policies of the Iranian government. The current upsurge in racism reveals the central role played by the Iranian media in organizing and promoting anti-Afghan xenophobic propaganda.
Following the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, the number of Afghan refugees in Iran increased by a million. Almost immediately, anti-refugee discourse began to brew in the mainstream Iranian press. The newspaper Islamic Republic, which is affiliated to the reformist wing of the clerical regime, was one of the first official media outlets to publish anti-Afghan rhetoric. In April 2022, it claimed that 50 to 70 percent of women giving birth in Tehran hospitals were Afghan refugee women. The false claim was debunked by fact-checking sources (the actual share was under five percent). Other media outlets jumped onboard and published content about the dangers of demographic changes in Iran, even suggesting that the Afghan Taliban would enter the Iranian parliament. Islamic Republic even ran a headline “South Tehran under the occupation of Afghans.” Overall, the media coverage of Afghan refugees presented them as both a danger to society and a security problem.
This media onslaught happens against the backdrop of systematic, and discriminatory practice and policies against Afghan refugees in Iran. They are barred from working in many sectors, living in certain localities, and their children are often denied education. Reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, Afghans are even banned from visiting certain public parks on occasions. Those harsh restrictions, denial of rights, and threat of deportation apply even for those born in Iran. Reports suggest that Afghan women refugees suffer the most.
Currently, Iranian police round up undocumented refugees, with thousands deported to Afghanistan every day. Heart-wrenching videos show Iranian police insulting, abusing, and even killing refugees, including instances when vehicles carrying refugees were set ablaze or Afghan refugees were dumped into rivers by the Iranian police. This government repression, combined with widespread societal racism, had created a suffocating environment of fear and oppression for Afghan refugees who must live among a population who look down on them and subject them to racial taunts and insults.
The Iranian media’s anti-refugee campaign seems to have taken the existing discrimination and pumped it up to a far more dangerous level. Anti-refugee rhetoric exploded on social media, where Afghan refugees are blamed for social and economic issues ranging from poverty, unemployment, inflation, and rent increases to crime and being a threat to Iran itself. This anti-Afghan sentiment was further inflamed during election debates, in which candidates promised to solve the “problem” and close the borders.
Afghan refugees are perceived by Iranians as dangerous “others” who pose a growing danger to the nation. And historical precedents suggest that this rhetoric generates heinous crimes, which is occurring as violence against Afghan refugees is normalized. Afghan refugees are being systematically attacked on the streets by knife-wielding mobs. Scenes of such mob attacks have been reported in several cities, including Tehran and Qazvin, where Iranians attacked refugees and burned their homes.
It is telling that the Iranian media report no arrests of those responsible for the violence against Afghan refugees. That lack of official response means the instigators have impunity and their crimes will go unpunished. Yet, the anti-refugee sentiment is not exclusive to the government-backed mainstream media but also used by some self-proclaimed Iranian nationalists who are opposed to the clerical regime. A bizarre theory prevalent among these “nationalist” circles is that the increase in Afghan refugees is actually a plot devised by the regime. In this conspiracy theory, they claim that Afghan refugees are providing soldiers and a social base for the regime, which, they argue, is isolated from the more civilized and secular Iranian people.
In a recent article published in the Atlantic Council, two Iran commentators wrote: “Afghan refugees en masse have been granted Iranian passports, national identity cards, and full citizenship rights — including the rights to work, vote, and own homes … how the Islamic Republic is proactively using Afghan migrants to foster a loyal constituency and fill the widening gap between the state and Iranian society … Against this backdrop, the pace at which Afghan Shia migrants have been incorporated into the Islamic Republic’s ideological and propaganda pillars raises serious questions. Is the regime deliberately manufacturing demographic changes in Iran through migration to engineer the supreme leader’s long-held objective of achieving a so-called ‘Islamic society’?” Of course, this is not based on facts and runs contrary to actual reports of the Iranian regime’s misdeeds against Afghan refugees.
The thoughts expressed by those Iranian commentators in the Atlantic Council is the intellectual version of the less polite rhetoric poured out online with that hashtag of “deportation of Afghan refugees is a national demand.” The inflammatory beliefs are just as sinister as they are dangerous.
One question worth asking is why the Iranian government-backed media is playing such a central role in promoting anti-Afghan racism? Does it have to do with diverting attention from other, more pressing issues? The regime is again facing opposition and protests, the most notable being “Women, Life, Freedom.” For the Iranian regime, what could be better than to blame Afghan refugees for some of its own failures?
“We are the third generation of refugees in Iran, we never migrated, but we are born refugees without rights,” an Afghan refugee told BBC Persian. Another who has been there 40 years explained, “After all these years of living in Iran, we are faced with only two options: Afghans are either deported or have no right.”
Hamayon Rastgar is the communications officer at Zan Times.
