• AFP News Agency: Most of the aid that was distributed among the people belonged to private individuals
• Obstruction in the distribution of popular aid and theft by repressive forces
Remarks by the regime’s MP from Kermanshah, Ahmad Safari, 72 hours after the earthquake, is a clear confession to the fact that the only thing that does not matter to the corrupt and criminal leaders of the regime is the suffering of the people. On Wednesday November 15, after visiting the Sarepol-e-Zahab, Qasr Shirin and Salas Babajani, Safari said: ‘This is the Day of Resurrection. More than 1,000 people died …. I went to a village where they said they had buried 20 people on the first day. These people are not included in the death toll. In just one alley in Sarepol-e-Zahab, 70 people were killed. More than 250 people died in Mehr housing.
…. After 72 hours people are hungry. There are no aid to some villages, the village of “Gholmeh Zahab” has a population of 80 households and nothing has yet reached them. The same is true for the village of Beyamah Oliya. Perhaps only 10% of the villages received tents. There are villages where 90 percent of them are gone. The national Radio and TV covers everything as if everything is in order ‘(ILNA news agency).
In such circumstances, Rahmani Fazli, the interior minister of Rouhani, said: ‘One of our priorities was security and order. In terms of organization, in terms of the distribution of facilities and in terms of inventory, facilities were not suitable. Electricity was out. Water was out. Gas was out, and the bakeries could not of course bake bread. ‘(Radio Farhang-November 15).
These confessions are part of a catastrophe that the regime has the most role in its expansion and prolongation. The scale of the disaster is much greater. A young woman says 75 dead bodies are buried in their village. A young boy tells about the death of his parents, siblings, uncle and aunt, grandmother and cousin… All 34 participants at a celebration have died. 9 people were killed in a 10-member family. A large number of injured people have died due to the wretched condition of hospitals and lack of blood supply or even serum injections in the presence of their relatives. Several people died due to the cold in the cold at night, with three young children and a woman being seen among them. “Survivors in Iran were protesting the lack of shelter and food,” said Reuters news agency on November 13, in a report on the state of earthquake-stricken people in western Iran. The Iranian regime’s officials have stopped the rescue operation on the pretext that it would no longer be possible to find people (alive). They spent a hard day meeting their food, water and shelter needs. Maryam Ahang, who lost 10 family members in the city of Sarpol-e-Zahab, told Reuters with her cell phone while crying: ‘We are hungry. We are in the cold, we are homeless, we are left alone in this world. Reza … said we spent two nights in the cold. Where are the donations? … Some people are angry at demolishing their buildings that were built on the Mehr Housing Plan. ‘
Meanwhile, the suppressive forces have prevented the arrival of popular aid to Sarpol-e-Zahab, and have taken the donations off the trucks and vehicles and take possession. At the exit of Divandareh, they have stopped the trucks carrying public aid stole tents on the pretext that the aid should be distributed through the Red Crescent … On the route from Kermanshah to Sarpol-e-Zahab, the regime agents stole about 2000 tents and blankets.
If the regime did not steal people’s aid and did not obstruct their distribution, the earthquake problem would be solved. ‘In rural areas, 10 kilometers north of Sarpol-e-Zahab, where the AFP (Agence France Presse) team was passing through, most of the aid distributed to people on Wednesday belonged to private individuals,’ the agency said.
The government’s Entekhab site also wrote on November 15: ‘Still, more than thousands of displaced people have had to go to the streets tonight without shelter and have not yet received a relief tent … Relief aid is entering the earthquake cities and it is unclear then what happens to it… There are still people in villages where 90% of their homes have been destroyed and no official has visited them, and they are forced to spend their nights with their children at nights in damp agricultural lands.’
“The tent, blanket and fear of cold, is a repeating tale of earthquake-stricken areas. Most people first point out to the distribution of tents, blankets and heating appliances,” the ISNA news agency said on November 16.’
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
November 16, 2017
