Kolbar killed on Kurdistan Region-Iran border by Iranian border guards

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian border guards opened fire on a group of Kolbars on Monday on the border area of Iran with the Kurdistan Region, killing one of the members of the group. 

Thirty-Three year old kolbar Solayman Ebrahimzadeh was killed on the Sardasht border’s Betusha village by Iranian border guards on Monday, while transporting a package to the Sarshiw border in the Kurdistan Region. Ebrahimzadeh was shot once in the arm, and once in the head.

“They have killed my uncle very brutally. His entire body was covered in black marks, it looked as if they had thrown him down from a mountain,” Ebrahimzadeh’s nephew, Soran, told Rudaw on Tuesday, without disclosing his last name.

At least 12 kolbars were wounded on the Nawsud border on Sunday, raising the toll of injured kolbars to at least 21 in under a week, according to Hengaw Organization for Human Rights.

Kolbars are semi-legal porters who transport untaxed goods across the Kurdistan Region-Iran border and sometimes the Iran-Turkey border. They are constantly targeted by Iranian border guards and are sometimes also victims of natural disasters. 

Many are pushed into the profession by poverty and a lack of alternative employment, particularly in Iran's disenfranchised Kurdish provinces.

Ebrahimzadeh lived in a poor neighborhood in Sardasht with his wife of six years and three-year old daughter, and started working as a kolbar due to a lack of job opportunities in the area.

His family has so far abstained from filing legal complaints as Sardasht courts tend to be very biased towards Iranian armed forces and against kolbars, according to Usman Muzayan, a Sardasht lawyer who has represented a number of kolbars in the past.

“The court knows they [Iranian armed forces] have violated the [Iranian] laws of the use and possession of weapons, and if it treats them according to the law, the crime would be intentional murder,” Muzayan told Rudaw on Tuesday, adding that “a few years ago, an injured kolbar filed complaints, but he has not received any responses from anyone from the Sardasht court.”

Muzayan clarified that according to the Iranian laws of the use and possession of weapons, the armed forces can only shoot at someone during conflicts or who’s a suspect, and even then they have to first fire at the sky to alert them, and if that doesn’t work they have the authority to shoot them from the waist down.

Former Deputy of Iran’s Ministry of Interior Hussein Zulfaqari stated in October of 2018 that “there is no such thing as ‘kolbars,’ those who are traveling on the borders are smugglers,” warning that anyone partaking in such an activity will be shot.

In their monthly report on human rights violations in Iran’s Kurdish areas, the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) said that at least 18 kolbars were injured during March, either due to various accidents or in shootings by Iranian border forces. Two kolbars also lost their lives: Rostam Khezri after being shot by border forces and Mohammad Omidvar from frostbite.

“At least 52 Kolbars were killed and 163 Kolbars were injured in the border regions of Iranian Kurdistan in 2021,” reported Hengaw.

Additional reporting by Chenar Chalak