Five-year-old Alireza Pourdad was scared, lying in a hospital bed in the burn ward between two adults who had been burned beyond recognition. Alireza had been injured in a blaze in his parents’ tent in a shantytown outside the Iranian capital in May 2012, and was in critical condition.
Alireza’s parents are ethnic Balochs from Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Like many others in Iran — most of them Balochs — who have no identity cards for legal and historical reasons, they had left their hometown 15 years earlier in search of work. As day laborers, the couple traveled between Tehran and Gorgan near the Caspian Sea throughout the year looking for seasonal work. Because they lacked the ID cards necessary to rent a home and access government services such as monthly cash subsidies and education, they were left living in deplorable conditions on Tehran’s outskirts. To add to their misery, the police conducted raids there a few times a year in efforts to clear the area of stateless families, leaving tents burned and residents beaten.
Without ID cards, Alireza’s parents, Maryam and Nader, had no way of proving that Alireza was their child, and so were refused entry to the hospital once he was admitted and they had returned from searching for work. The security guards reported the parents to the police, who arrested them promptly on suspicion of being illegal Afghan immigrants. It would take six months before they were released.
Zohreh Sayadi, a children’s rights activist, spent time with Alireza at the hospital and read him stories. Sayadi, an ethnic Baloch herself, for the past two years had been commuting between Tehran and the shantytown, engaging with families and teaching children how to read and write.
“One day as I was reading ‘The Ugly Duckling’ to Alireza,” Sayadi said. “He raised his head and said, ‘I am tired,’ and then he died.” In a photo given to Al-Monitor, Alireza is seen wearing a green sweater and looking into the camera holding a toy — a duckling. The photo is inscribed with the words: “Date of death: 18/6/2012.”
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