NCRI – Mounting numbers of asylum seekers, including religious minorities and academics seeking work abroad, have fled Iran this year, the latest figures have revealed.
Germany said more than 2,000 Iranians had made asylum applications in the country by the end of May 2013. And in 2012, around half of those were Muslims and around 28 per cent were Christians, revealing a steep rise in the exodus of members of persecuted religious groups.
Dian Wirengjurit, the Indonesian Ambassador to Tehran, said on July 29 that there were currently 5,000 Iranians are being held in Indonesian detention centers – mainly those who had illegally entered Indonesia in an attempt to reach Australia.
And half of all Iranians that come to Indonesia never returned to Iran, Mr Wirengjuirt said.
The Australian newspaper also reported on July 23 that: “So far this year, 5,677 Iranians have arrived in Australia, more than one third of the total of 15,912. This includes a growing number of families rather than single men.”
Australasian officials said these were ‘largely urban Iranians who profess dissatisfaction with the conservative religious leaders and who often have a sophisticated knowledge of the systems to arrange a boat passage to Australia’.
Officials said there was also a sizeable number of middle-class Iranians arriving, including in recent months dentists, IT specialists and teachers.
Since 2013, a large number of Iranian refugees have lost their lives in shipwrecks in Australian and Turkish waters.
Qasem Ahmadi, a member of the Education Commission in Iran’s parliament, also said ‘brain drain’ of Iran’s most highly-educated students was intensifying, which he blamed on ‘neglect’ of the nation’s most gifted people by the ruling elite.
He told the parliament’s website on July 16: “Many of those ranking first to tenth in college entry exams in the past 15 years have fled the country.
“It is very unfortunate for an education system to lose a student or university student that it has invested in for two decades. The issue of the brain drain and migration of the elite has long been regarded serious damage to the education system, but today it is affecting the country’s scientific community.”
According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran lost 15 per cent of its most highly educated people in the early 1990s, when more than 150,000 Iranians left the country every year and 25 per cent of all Iranians with post-secondary education lived abroad in ‘developed’ countries.
A report by the International Monetary Fund in 2009 also found that Iran topped the list of countries losing their academic elite, with an annual loss of 150,000 to 180,000 specialists – equivalent to a capital loss of $50 billion. The political crackdown following the 2009 election protests is also said to have fuelled the exodus of Iran’s academic elite.
