ILAM, Iran — The crime rate in Iran’s majority Kurdish Ilam province is soaring and has become the highest in the country, according to Iranian judicial authorities.
On Tuesday, Hamid Shahriari, the head of the statistics department at the Iranian Ministry of Justice, announced Ilam had 8,220 criminal cases, putting it at the top of the country. The crime count in the small province of only 557,599 people is greater than that of the country’s biggest city, Tehran, with more than 12 million residents. In Tehran, 6,109 criminal cases were recorded last year.
However, Saleh Nikbakht, a prominent Iranian Kurdish lawyer and scholar, told Rudaw the Iranian official figure is inaccurate and unreliable. He did agree though that it is still a devastating crime rate for such a small province. “About 40 percent of the criminal cases are solved by the elders, which remains unrecorded,” he said.
Nikbakht added that most of those who commit crimes are impoverished, and their criminality is rooted in socioeconomic problems. “The central government has neglected Ilam province and done very little to help the development for the people there,” he said.
Apart from government negligence, tribal conflicts in the province over grazing rights have also caused lots of tension among the inhabitants of the area, the lawyer continued.
According to the 2006 census, Ilam is the third biggest Kurdish city in Iran. It is located in western Iran and its population is predominantly Feyli Kurdish. Other minorities include Laks and Lurs living in the southern and eastern parts of the province.
