Iranian border guards have shot dead dozens of horses that they confiscated from Kurdish Kolber workers in the town of Baneh in the country’s Kurdish region.
The border guards confiscated the horses from the Kurdish Kolber workers in the neighbourhood of Kooteh Rash in the town and killed the horses in the same place on 2 August, locals said.
The horses were rounded up and killed after the Iranian border guards confiscated items of the the Kolber workers that included tobacco and alcohol.
Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) obtained the following video showing aftermath of the slaying of the horses by the Iranian security forces.
Kolber workers are low-income poor Iranian Kurdish workers, whose work involves transporting items on their back or on the back of horses while crossing the border areas of Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
They work the job to earn a very small income to make a living as employment in the Kurdish region is higher than anywhere else in the country.
Iranian security forces usually open fire to deliberately targets Kurdish Kolber workers and their horses without any initial warnings across the country’s Kurdish border areas.
The security forces deliberately shot dead at least 44 Kurdish Kolber workers and seriously wounded 21 in 2015, when at least seven of them had also died drowning or died as a result of other incidents such as hypothermia and accidental fall from the peak of mountains, according to KHRN’s 2015 annual report on Iran’s Kurdish Kolber workers. .
