Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎574r] (1150/1237)

Ik
ojj
'Tp.'b'f't-
ppapms^pi
THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT
V
ML
A
^ PERSIA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[E 2793/163/34]
FILE COPY
With the Compliments
Under Secrete:r^oLStape
for Foreign Affair*
07H7
9^
May 5, 1942.
2
/
Section 1.
2 3 MAY 1942
Copy No. 1()2
Sir R. Bullard to Mr. Eden.—(Received May 5.)
(No. 113.)
HIS Majesty’s representative presents his compliments to His Majesty’s
Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and has the honour to transmit
herewith a copy of despatch No. 9 from the British Consulate at Tabriz on the
subject of the internal situation in Azerbaijan.
Tehran, Afril 11, 1942.
Enclosure.
Consul Cook to Sir R. Bullard.
(Ol/xo^
4aJq»— dMx^JiL •
(No. 9. Confidential.)
Sir, Tabriz, March 24, 1942.
I HAVE the honour to report that the situation in Tabriz has become much
calmer during the past fortnight, and the police authorities themselves appear
to think that the danger of the political clubs has disappeared or is disappearing
for the time being. [
2. No doubt the Chief of Police is congratulating himself on this result,
but in my opinion the improvement in public order is due largely to the Russian
authorities having let it be known that they were not supporting the band of
nondescript demagogues who were running the clubs or committees, and partly
to the character of the demagogues themselves. Their funds are getting low and
(as I foretold) they are beginning to quarrel among themselves. The Chief of
Police, who was complaining a few weeks ago of their malevolence and of the
danger they constituted to the town, now that the Administration is no longer so
worried by or afraid of them / talks of the advisability of not taking unnecessarily
stern measures against people who are doing no real harm.
3. In this somewhat surprising lenient attitude towards fellow-Persians,
who are officially undesirable and at the same time unprotected, he appears to
differ temporarily from his widely-hated colleagues in the gendarmerie, who are
said on all sides to be perpetrating continual cruelties and excesses on the wretched
peasants and villages in districts unfortunate enough to be the scene o¥ their
operations. Numbers of these people come miles into Tabriz to bewail their treat
ment at the hands of their own authorities, and often finish up at the Soviet
Consulate. My Soviet colleague tells me that he knows for an unimpeachable
fact, with names and full details, that the eyes of two villagers were recently
put out by the gendarmerie—now so full of zeal where they were so abjectly
cowardly six months ago. The Soviet political officers seem to have moderated
their activities to a remarkable extent during the last few weeks, and certainly
they need not spend so much effort as is alleged against them on subverting
the'local peasantry while the Persian Government's minions will stir up hatred
against itself so much more efficiently.
4. After the departure of the allegedly corrupt and worthless Colonel Basti,
who has been openly accused in a Tabriz newspaper of having extorted £7,000
during his tenure of three months in Azerbaijan, a new Chief of Gendarmerie
has been appointed in the person of Colonel Rashimi, until recently an army
officer, of a well-known local family, reputed to be energetic and to have a thorough
knowledge of Azerbaijan. His first task has been to drive out a number of
Shahsevan marauders from the Maragha district; they ^are reported to have
retreated after some fighting to the neighbourhood of Sain Kala, where they
can efface themselves among other Shahsevans who have settled peaceably there
as agriculturists.
[29—18]
RECd. POL, DEPr.
?3MAY1942
IND*& OFFICE