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LinkedIn has admitted it can make mistakes after becoming embroiled in censorship accusations. This week the accounts of three prominent Scottish hospitality leaders were removed following viral posts calling out the Scottish government's Covid-19 policies.

In a statement to The Drum about the individual cases, a LinkedIn spokesperson said: "We know we wont always get it right and when we do make a mistake, well work directly with the member to correct it.

The LinkedIn accounts for the Scottish Hospitality Group (SHG), founder of The Scottish Gin Society Steven White and Bucks Bar Group owner Michael Bergson have been suspended with limited communication from the platform.

LinkedIn's statement added: We are focused on keeping LinkedIn a safe, trusted, and professional platform. We have clear terms of service and Professional Community Policies that outline what we expect from all our members, including that member profiles must represent a real name and identity."

On Tuesday (December 14) Stephen Montgomery, leader of the SHG, was unable to access the SHG LinkedIn account and asked to verify his identity by submitting a passport photo. The SHG account was also not searchable for the time Montgomery was blocked from the account. At the same time, Twitter took down Montgomerys personal account which was later restored.

Montgomery told The Drum the SHG account had ramped up its communications on both Twitter and LinkedIn over the weekend to campaign against government guidance change on hospitality.

When youve got three big voices in hospitality saying the exact same thing it begs the question why certain social media platforms are taking down our posts and locking down our accounts, Montgomery said. Nothing Ive posted is derogatory or defamatory, its all issues relevant to the pandemic to give people information.

White, a less vocal member of the Scottish hospitality community, claimed his most recent posts had been taken down on Wednesday (December 15) and his account deactivated. He raised a complaint to the platform but was told there was nothing wrong with the account, the posts and account have since been restored.

The missing entries followed Whites LinkedIn post on Friday (December 10) calling out the Scottish government's guidance to cancel Christmas parties. By Sunday the post had been viewed 130,000 times and White was featured on the front page of Scotland on Sunday.

I cant find another explanation for it other than someone making some serious complaints to LinkedIn about our activity, White said. I never use foul language or make accusations or do anything that would get me in trouble Im acutely aware of that stuff.

He added: Yes Im criticizing the Scottish government but Im very measured.

The third hospitality leader, Bergson, has had his account taken down for up to 14 days while LinkedIn reviews his appeal. After two days of his account being deactivated LinkedIn sent an email which said: Your account was restricted due to multiple violations of Linkedlns User Agreement and Professional Community Policies against sharing context that contains misleading or inaccurate information.

The posts in question were as follows:

Bergson admitted he had been vocal about the Scottish government's Covid policies on LinkedIn but said in the days preceding the account deactivation his posts were becoming more viral. He says the trio didnt have any article simultaneously shared, we dont collaborate in what we are saying.

Reported LinkedIn content is reviewed by its Professional Community Policies based on four pillars: Be Safe which includes sharing harmful material or inciting hate; Be Trustworthy which includes sharing misleading information and creating fake accounts; Be Professional includes sharing explicit or inflammatory content and Respect Others Rights which covers intellectual property rights and privacy laws.

In October Microsoft closed LinkedIn in China after it was called out for blocking access to US journalists for its China-based users.

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LinkedIn hit with censorship accusations for removing critics of government Covid policies - The Drum

The corruption-plagued Cyprus government is tearing up textbook pages and seeking to censor artist Giorgos Gavriel.

Dr. Miranda Christou is a Senior Fellow at CARR and Associate Professor in Sociology of Education at the University of Cyprus.

The far-right party of ELAM is growing in Cyprus, the government is mired in corruption scandals and the Ministry of Education is tearing up textbook pages because they mention Atatrk. The artist and teacher, Giorgos Gavriel, has been capturing the spirit of the times in his provocative art, only to face disciplinary action for offending national figures. His artwork is featured in this article

The National Popular Front in Cyprus (Ethniko Laiko Metopo) ELAM doubled its representation in the Cyprus Parliamentary elections in May 2021, with a share of 6,78% (4 MPs). ELAM, an offshoot of Golden Dawn in Greece, is an ultra-nationalist, nativist and anti-immigrant party that maintains a hardline opposition to the bizonal, bicommunal federation as a solution to the division of Cyprus despite this being the official, established framework since the 1970s. More importantly, it has kept itself under the radar by avoiding the brazen neo-Nazi symbolism and violent outbursts of Golden Dawn, focusing instead on building an image of the good kids as the Cyprus Archbishop once called them.

This serious Golden Dawn of Cyprus is now heading an ad hoc parliamentary group on the demographic problem after tipping the scale to help the centre-right party of Democratic Rally (DISY), currently in power, win leadership in the Parliament. This move reflects a mainstreaming of ELAMs alarmist rhetoric on the arrival of refugees and asylum seekers whom they refer to as illegal migrants.

In their Fascism is website article, ELAM claims that: Fascism is when your country is in danger because of low fertility rates, when citizens are deprived of basic things but you continue to accept illegal immigrants, and, on top of that, to give them money when you have clearly exhausted the limits of your hospitality.

This twisting and upending of words by ELAM pushes further to the right the boundaries of public discourse on human suffering in a country that has constructed its ethnic identity around the pain and trauma of 1974 refugees. Recently, the Minister of Interior rushed to defend the government amidst reports that the authorities have been illegally pushing boats of asylum seekers back to the Lebanon shores or callously endangering children and minors by keeping them waiting at sea, under the harsh Cyprus sun. This same Minister had dabbled in apartheid politics and the Great Replacement language when he issued a decree that asylum seekers were not allowed to settle in a village area because their arrival caused social problems and demographic change.

Moments like these require unrelenting truthtelling. We take pride in being reader-funded. If you like our work, support our journalism.

The hypocrisy of those who proclaim faith in Christian values but maintain racist posturesELAMs slogan is country, religion, familyis called out by one of Giorgos Gavriels paintings which shows Christ in a refugee holding facility. Much of his work is provocative: a painting of Christ naked or a dog urinating on the Archbishop.

In September 2021, the Ministry of Education and Culture announced that Gavriel had to appear before the Educational Service Committee to apologize for an array of disciplinary charges, including insult to civil-religious institutions, religious symbols and historical-national figures of Cyprus. Following intense public outcry, the Presidents cabinet called off the investigation. The government was already exposed since the issue went all the way to the European Parliament and the Chair of the Committee on Culture and Education had raised concerns about violations of Gavriels freedom of expression.

Around the same time, officials at the Ministry of Education spotted a blurb in the English Language Textbooks (Oxford University Press) for Lyceum which read Turkeys greatest hero, and included a photo of Atatrk. This apparently rattled some high-ranking officials who issued a memo to schools to tear off that particular page. As the Ministry scrambled to save face, they decided to withdraw the book and order an investigation into decision-making procedures. Throughout all of these, ELAM insisted on censuring Gavriel and ridiculed those who condemned tearing off the pages of the book.

In Al-Jazeeras scathing video The Cyprus Papers, the (now former) head of the Cyprus Parliament was secretly recorded raising his wine glass and winking to seal the deal as a prominent lawyer explains in another scene: This is Cyprus! The context was the orchestration of a fake backroom deal where undercover journalists investigated whether Cypriot lawyers and officials would break the law in order to provide a passport to a shady billionaire character through the so-called Cyprus Investment Program. The answer was: absolutely.

After Al-Jazeera dropped the video, Anastasiades government scuttled to cancel the program and run an investigation. While the President distanced himself from the fiasco, his Golden Passports connections through the family law firm have been called out by anti-corruption groups.

But Anastasiades remains fully exposed: a European Parliament draft resolution on the Pandora Papers deplored his specific naming in the papers which provide financial documents linking political leaders to fishy transactions. The depth of the corruption problem in Cyprus has been duly recorded in Makarios Drousiotis book The Gang. An investigative journalist, Drousiotis had a front seat at the 2013 Eurogroup deals and argues that Anastasiades prioritized the interests of his Russian oligarch clients instead of the well-being of his own people.

Drousiotis was scheduled to appear on a national TV program after the Pandora Papers revelations strengthened his argument in The Gang which is still curiously ignored by the local mediahis appearance was canceled at the last minute due to scheduling conflicts.

Interestingly, in the summer of 2020, a few months before publication of The Gang, Drousiotis reported that he had been the victim of years-long surveillance into his documents and home security system. Drousiotis upcoming book Crime in Crans-Montana seals the deal: it argues that Anastasiades tanked the talks and that he was the one who proposed the two-state solution; an anathema to Greek Cypriots.

These revelations are not your average type of clientelism that has been battering Cypriot life and politics for centuries. They put Cyprus squarely on the level of a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government the way Sarah Kendzior describes USA politics in Hiding in Plain Sight. Notably, ELAM voted with Anastasiades party against registering the issue of Pandora Papers for Parliamentary discussion.

There have been glimpses of hope: Os Dame, (meaning enough!) a loosely connected network of progressive youth groups, organized rallies condemning government corruption and racist politics. In February 2021, the police used a water cannon to disperse their peaceful protest causing severe injuries and the partial blindness of a singer. Gavriel captured the scene: the Minister of Justice and Public Order (until recently, a close friend of Anastasiades daughters) standing over the singers wounded body.

All of these find ELAM in prime position: their rhetoric infiltrates the highest levels of government while they maintain their opposition to Anastasiades handling of the Cyprus problem. In the meantime, they can continue feeding off of the nihilism and disillusionment that has been eroding Greek Cypriot society that comes with the realization that the national interest is secondary to some politicians own self-interest.

This article is brought to you by the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). Through their research, CARR intends to lead discussions on the development of radical right extremism around the world. Rantt has been partnered with CARR for 3 years. Weve published over 150 articles from CARRs network of PhDs, historians, professors, and experts analyzing extremism and combating disinformation.

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The Rise Of Far-Right Educational Censorship And Corruption In Cyprus - Rantt Media

There is a new scourge befouling the media landscape, one that our self-appointed mandarins have declared themselves eager to combat: misinformation.

The Aspen Institutes Commission on Information Disorder recently released a report that blamed misinformation for a range of social problems: Information disorder is a crisis that exacerbates all other crises Information disorder makes any health crisis more deadly. It slows down our response time on climate change. It undermines democracy. It creates a culture in which racist, ethnic, and gender attacks are seen as solutions, not problems. Today, mis- and disinformation have become a force multiplier for exacerbating our worst problems as a society. Hundreds of millions of people pay the price, every single day, for a world disordered by lies.

With $65 million in backing from investors such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman, the newly organized Project for Good Information also vows to fight fake news wherever it roams. As Recode reported, the groups marketing materials claim, Traditional media is failing. Disinformation is flourishing. Its time for a new kind of media. The project is run by Democratic operative Tara Hoffman, whose company ACRONYM created the app that spectacularly bungled the Iowa Democratic caucus vote in 2020.

And as Ben Smith reported in the New York Times, the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University has been hosting a series of meetings with major media executives to help newsroom leaders fight misinformation and media manipulation. Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologized for his platforms role in spreading misinformation.

The origin of this new wave of portentous declarations and hand-wringing can be found in the Trump years. In an insightful piece in Harpers, Joseph Bernstein labels this effort Big Disinfo.

Its a new field of knowledge production that emerged during the Trump years at the juncture of media, academia, and policy research, he writes. A kind of EPA for content, it seeks to expose the spread of various sorts of toxicity on social-media platforms, the downstream effects of this spread, and the platforms clumsy, dishonest, and half-hearted attempts to halt it.

As Bernstein argues, As an environmental cleanup project, it presumes a harm model of content consumption. Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some standard.

Big Disinfo has gained in popularity in mainstream media outlets in part because it claims to solve the problem of bad information while placing blame for it on anyone other than mainstream media. In fact, those diagnosing our illness and prescribing the cure are themselves purveyors of the infodemic they claim is upon us.

The Aspen Institutes commission, for example, includes several people who have actively engaged in misinformation efforts. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, one of the commissions advisers, Yoel Roth, was the Twitter executive who blocked his sites users from sharing the New York Post story about Hunter Bidens laptop just before the 2020 election.

Adviser Renee DiResta is something of a misinformation wunderkind as well: She was an adviser to American Engagement Technologies, which, the Beacon reports, is a tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama.

The commissions co-chair, Katie Couric, is also familiar with manipulating facts to yield favorable outcomes. She admitted in her recently published memoir that she had removed and edited statements made by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about athletes protesting the playing of the national anthem. Ginsburgs criticism of the practice might have angered her fellow liberals, Couric feared.

Commissioner Rashad Robinson, head of the activist group Color of Change, also helped spread misinformation by promoting the hate-crime hoax of actor Jussie Smollett even after it was clear Smollett, who last week was convicted on criminal charges related to the staging of the attack, was lying. And then there is commission member Prince Harry, an expat British ex-royal with few qualifications but a lifetime of evidence of his own questionable judgment (such as dressing up as a Nazi and, more recently, whining to Oprah about the family that funds his lavish lifestyle).

Earlier this year, Harry declared the First Amendment bonkers.

The Aspen Commissions report says there is no such thing as an arbiter of truth, and yet our media gatekeepers have claimed that mantle for themselves with decidedly mixed results for some time.

Consider the fact that Russiagate, a yearslong effort to prove that Donald Trump was being blackmailed and controlled, proved untrue yet was given constant media attention, while the story of Hunter Bidens laptop and its contents, which proved true, was actively suppressed with the explicit purpose of protecting Joe Bidens chances of becoming president. We live in a surreal information moment when the lie was given ample airtime and featured prominently in print, while the truth was smothered and labeled disinformation.

And yet our self-appointed misinformation warriors have proven unwilling to engage in self-reflection. Harvards Shorenstein Center used the New York Posts story on Hunter Bidens laptop computer as the basis for one of its case studies during its recent misinformation sessions.

The lesson that the centers leaders drew, however, was not the one anyone who values the truth should follow. According to the Times, the Shorenstein Center claimed that the Hunter Biden story offered an instructive case study on the power of social media and news organizations to mitigate media manipulation campaigns. In other words, the suppression of information deemed by experts to be misinformation was precisely the kind of Good Information objective we should be pursuing. The research director of the center, Joan Donovan, told the Times that the Hunter Biden case study was designed to cause conversation its not supposed to leave you resolved as a reader.

But what is there to resolve about the fact that the Fourth Estate eagerly embraced the role of chief information censor on behalf of a Democratic candidate for president?

Misinformation and disinformation are nothing new. Propaganda, political dirty tricks, and deliberate lies have been with us a while and have often been a point of pride for their practitioners. It was not that long ago that Ben Rhodes, then a top aide to President Barack Obama, boasted about creating an echo chamber in the media to spread falsehoods about the details of Obamas Iran nuclear deal.

It is true that misinformation has taken on greater significance thanks to the scale and speed of the social-media platforms that spread it. But the new sanctimony about misinformation should be leavened with some healthy skepticism about the movements major actors.

As Bernstein noted, in some sense the disinformation project is simply an unofficial partnership between Big Tech, corporate media, elite universities, and cash-rich foundations. The crusade against misinformation is an approximate mirror image of Donald Trumps war against fake news.

Control of information is control of one of the most valuable commodities in the developed world: peoples attention. And people want their confirmation biases affirmed. But scholars and commissioners studying misinformation also suffer from confirmation bias. Contra the proposals made by panels and commissions on misinformation, the most radical thing we could do right now isnt to give more power to elites or the federal government to control information.

Their record of late Russiagate, Hunter Biden, the Covington kids, the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis, Border Patrol officers with whips, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial has not been stellar. It would be far better for the health of the information ecosystem that these supposed experts are always invoking if reporters focused on shoring up what were once unassailable tenets of journalism balance, iron-clad sourcing, and critical independence from and skepticism about the powerful. Instead, they are powers handmaidens.

From Commentary

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Inside the hypocrisy of media manipulators, censors who claim to fight misinformation - New York Post

Population of Iranian provinces and counties in 2021.

Iran's population increased dramatically during the later half of the 20th century, reaching about 80 million by 2016.[1][2] As of 2021, Irans population is around 85 million.[3]In recent years, however, Iran's birth rate has dropped significantly. Studies project that Iran's rate of population growth will continue to slow until it stabilizes above 100 million by 2050.[4][5] Half of Iran's population was under 35 years old in 2012.[6]

In 2009, the number of households stood at 15.3 million (4.8 persons per household).[7] Families earn some 11.8 million rials (about $960) per month on average (2012).[8]

According to the OECD/World Bank statistics population growth in Iran from 1990 to 2008 was 17.6 million and 32%.[9] The literacy rate was 80% in 2002,[10][11] and 85% in 2016.[12]Iran fertility has fallen to 1.6 recently which is much less than 2.1 .[13]

According to the 2016 population census the population of Iran was 79.9 million,[1] a fourfold increase since 1956. Between 1976 and 1986, an average annual population growth of almost 4% was reached, but due to decreasing fertility levels the growth decreased to 1.2% between 2011 and 2016.

(2019 estimates)[15]

(2001 statistics)[16][17][18]

Table 9 Population and Average Annual Growth by Provinces: 2006 and 2011

1 The population of the provinces of Alborz and Tehran for 2006 and their average annual growth have been calculated based on the data of 2011.

Unofficial Translation 17

Table 10 Population Percentages by Province: 2006 and 2011 (Percentage)

1 The population of the provinces of Alborz and Tehran for 2006 and their average annual growth have been calculated based on the data of 2011.

The largest linguistic group comprises speakers of Iranian languages, like modern Persian, Kurdish, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Luri, Talysh, and Balochi. Speakers of Turkic languages, most notably Azerbaijanis, which is by far the second-most spoken language in the country, but also the Turkmen, and the Qashqai peoples, comprise a substantial minority. The remainder are primarily speakers of Semitic languages such as Arabic and Assyrian. There are small groups using other Indo-European languages such as Armenian, Russian, Georgian (a member of the Kartvelian language family), spoken in a large pocket only by those Iranian Georgians that live in Fereydan, Fereydunshahr. Most of those Georgians who live in the north Iranian provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, Isfahan, Tehran Province and the rest of Iran no longer speak the language.The Circassians in Iran, a very large minority in the past and speakers of the Circassian language, have been strongly assimilated and absorbed within the population in the past few centuries. However, significant pockets do exist spread over the country, and they are the second-largest Caucasus-derived group in the nation after the Georgians.[19][20]

Jews have had a continuous presence in Iran since the time of Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire. In 1948, there were approximately 140,000150,000 Jews living in Iran. According to the Tehran Jewish Committee, the Jewish population of Iran was (more recently) estimated at about 25,000 to 35,000, of which approximately 15,000 are in Tehran with the rest residing in Hamadan, Shiraz, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Yazd, Kerman, Rafsanjan, Borujerd, Sanandaj, Tabriz and Urmia. However, the official 2011 state census recorded only 8,756 Jews in Iran.[21]

The CIA World Factbook (which is based on 2013 statistics) gives the following numbers for the languages spoken in Iran today: Persian, Luri, Gilaki and Mazandarani 66%; Azerbaijani and other Turkic languages 18%; Kurdish 10%; Arabic 2%; Balochi 2%; others 2% (Armenian, Georgian, Circassian, Assyrian, etc.).[22]

Other sources, such as the Library of Congress, and the Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden)[23] give Iran's ethnic groups as following: Persians 65%, Azerbaijanis 16%, Kurds 7%, Lurs 6%, Arabs 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmens 1%, Turkic tribal groups (e.g. Qashqai) 1%, and non-Persian, non-Turkic groups (e.g. Armenians, Georgians, Assyrians, Circassians, Basseri ) less than 1%.[24] For sources prior to and after 2000, see Languages and ethnicities in Iran.

In addition to its international migration pattern, Iran also exhibits one of the steepest urban growth rates in the world according to the UN humanitarian information unit. According to 2015 population estimates, approximately 73.4 percent of Iran's population lives in urban areas, up from 27 percent in 1950.[25] Changes in urbanization law and regulations eased the urbanization process of rural areas, which created more than 400 cities only in the period of 1996-2005.[26]

The following is a list of the eight most populous cities in the country:

Religion in Iran by CIA

Other/Unspecifed (0.6%)

About 99% of the Iranians are Muslims; 90% belong to the Shi'a branch of Islam, the official state religion, and about 9% belong to the Sunni branch, which predominates in neighboring Muslim countries.[11] Less than 1% non-Muslim minorities include Christians, Zoroastrians, Jews, Bahs, Mandeans, and Yarsan. By far the largest group of Christians in Iran are Armenians under the Armenian Apostolic Church which has between 110,000,[29] 250,000,[30] and 300,000,[31] adherents. There are hundreds of Christian churches in Iran.[citation needed] The Bah Faith, Iran's largest non-Muslim religious minority with a population around 300,000, is not officially recognized (and therefore not included in the census results), and has been persecuted since in inception in Iran. Since the 1979 revolution the persecution of Bahs has increased with executions, the denial of civil rights and liberties, and the denial of access to higher education and employment.[32][33] Unofficial estimates for the Assyrian Christian population range between 20,000,[34][35] and 70,000.[37] The number of Iranian Mandaeans is a matter of dispute. In 2009, there were an estimated 5,000 and 10,000 Mandaeans in Iran, according to the Associated Press.[38] Whereas Alarabiya has put the number of Iranian Mandaeans as high as 60,000 in 2011.[39]

The term "Iranian citizens abroad" or " Iranian/Persian diaspora" refers to the Iranian people and their children born in Iran but living outside of Iran. Migrant Iranian workers abroad remitted less than two billion dollars home in 2006.[40]

As of 2010, there are about four to five million Iranians living abroad, mostly in the United States, Canada, Europe, Persian Gulf States, Turkey, Australia and the broader Middle East.[25][41] According to the 2000 Census and other independent surveys, there are an estimated 1 million Iranian-Americans living in the U.S., in particular, the Los Angeles area is estimated to be host to approximately 72,000 Iranians, earning the Westwood area of LA the nickname Tehrangeles.[42] Other metropolises that have large Iranian populations include Dubai with 300,000 Iranians, Vancouver, London, Toronto, San Francisco Bay Area, Washington D.C., Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Stockholm, Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt. Their combined net worth is estimated to be $1.3 trillion.[43]

Note that this differs from the other Iranian peoples living in other areas of Greater Iran, who are of related ethnolinguistical family, speaking languages belonging to the Iranian languages which is a branch of Indo-European languages.

Iran hosts one of the largest refugee population in the world, with more than one million refugees, mostly from Afghanistan (80%) and Iraq (10%). Since 2006, Iranian officials have been working with the UNHCR and Afghan officials for their repatriation.[44][45] Between 1979 and 1997, UNHCR spent more than US$1 billion on Afghan refugees in Pakistan but only $150 million on those in Iran. In 1999, the Iranian government estimated the cost of maintaining its refugee population at US$10 million per day, compared with the US$18 million UNHCR allocated for all of its operations in Iran in 1999.[45] As of 2016, some 300,000 work permits have been issued for foreign nationals in Iran.[46]

The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.[47]

Age structure

Median age

Population growth rate

Birth rate

Death rate

Urbanization

Sex ratio

Life expectancy at birth

Total fertility rate

Youth literacy

Y-Chromosome DNA Y-DNA represents the male lineage, the Iranian Y-chromosome pool is as follows where haplogroups, R1 (25%), J2 (23%) G (14%), J1 (8%) E1b1b (5%), L (4%), Q (4%), comprise more than 85% of the total chromosomes.[49]

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) represents the female lineage. West Eurasian mtDNA makes up over 90% of the Iranian population on average. (2013).[51]

Among them, U3b3 lineages appear to be restricted to populations of Iran and the Caucasus, while the sub-cluster U3b1a is common in the whole Near East region.[51]

In Iran outliers in the Y-chromosomes and Mitochondrial DNA gene pool are consisted by the north Iranian ethnicities, such as the Gilaki's and Mazandarani's, whose genetic build up including chromosomal DNA are nearly identical to the major South Caucasian ethnicities, namely the Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijani's. Other outliers are made by the Baloch people, representing a mere 1-2% of the total Iranian population, who have more patrilinial and mitochondrial DNA lines leaning towards northwest South Asian ethnic groups.

Levels of genetic variation in Iranian populations are comparable to the other groups from the Caucasus, Anatolia and Europe.[51]

The "Tats" are an Iranian people, presently living within Azerbaijan and Russia (mainly Southern Dagestan). The Tats are part of the indigenous peoples of Iranian origin in the Caucasus.[52][53][54]

Tats use the Tat language, a southwestern Iranian language and a variety of Persian[55][56][57][58][59] Azerbaijani and Russian are also spoken. Tats are mainly Shia Muslims, with a significant Sunni Muslim minority. Likely the ancestors of modern Tats settled in South Caucasus when the Sassanid Empire from the 3rd to 7th centuries built cities and founded military garrisons to strengthen their positions in this region.[60]

The Parsis are the close-knit Zoroastrian community based primarily in India but also found in Pakistan. Parsis are descended from Persian Zoroastrians who emigrated to the Indian subcontinent over 1,000 years ago. Indian census data (2001) records 69,601 Parsis in India, with a concentration in and around the city of Mumbai (previously known as Bombay). There are approximately 8,000 Parsis elsewhere on the subcontinent, with an estimated 2,500 Parsis in the city of Karachi and approximately 50 Parsi families in Sri Lanka. The number of Parsis worldwide is estimated to be fewer than 100,000 (Eliade, 1991:254).

In Pakistan and India, the term "Irani" has come to denote Iranian Zoroastrians who have migrated to Pakistan and India within the last two centuries, as opposed to most Parsis who arrived in India over 1000 years ago. Many of them moved during the Qajar era, when persecution of Iranian Zoroastrians was rampant. They are culturally and linguistically closer to the Zoroastrians of Iran. Unlike the Parsis, they speak a Dari dialect, the language spoken by the Iranian Zoroastrians in Yazd and Kerman. Their last names often resemble modern Iranian names, however Irani is a common surname among them. In India they are mostly located in modern-day Mumbai while in Pakistan they are mostly located in modern-day Karachi. In both Pakistan and India, they are famous for their restaurants and tea-houses.[61] Some, such as Ardeshir Irani, have also become very famous in cinema.

The "Ajam" are an ethnic community of Bahrain, of Iranian origin. They have traditionally been merchants living in specific quarters of Manama and Muharraq. The Iranians who adhere to Shiite sect of Islam are Ajam, and they are different from the Huwala. Ajams are also a large percentage of the populace in UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman.

In addition to this, many names of ancient villages in Bahrain are of Persian origin. It is believed that these names were given during the Safavid rule of Bahrain (15011722). i.e. Karbabad, Salmabad, Karzakan, Duraz, Barbar, which indicates that the history of Ajams is much older.

Huwala are the descendants of Persians and Arab-Persians who belong to the Sunni sect of Islam.[62] Huwala migrated from Ahvaz in Iran to the Persian Gulf in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.[62][63]

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Demographics of Iran - Wikipedia

VIENNA, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The United Nations atomic watchdog has doubts that footage from a surveillance camera at an Iranian centrifuge-parts workshop is missing after an apparent attack there in June, even though Iran has not produced it, the agency's head said on Friday.

The issue was not addressed by an agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency on Wednesday to let the IAEA re-install cameras at the Karaj workshop that Iran removed after the apparent attack, which Tehran blames on Israel.

The agreement should end a months-long standoff over IAEA access there.

Register

One of four IAEA cameras at Karaj was destroyed in the June incident. Iran removed all four cameras and showed them to the IAEA, but the destroyed camera's data storage device was not included. The IAEA and Western powers have been asking Iran to explain, unsuccessfully so far.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi attends a news conference during an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, September 13, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

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"We have doubts about that and this is why we are asking, 'Where is it?" IAEA head Rafael Grossi told a news conference when asked if it was credible that the footage simply vanished.

"I am hopeful that they are going to come up with an answer because it's very strange that it disappears."

The agreement on Karaj avoided a diplomatic escalation that threatened to scupper wider talks on rescuing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The cameras are aimed at verifying Iran is not secretly siphoning off the parts for uranium-enriching centrifuges that are made there, but the footage will remain under seal in Iran, so the IAEA cannot view it for now, as has been the case at various locations since February.

The IAEA has not been able to verify whether Karaj has resumed operation but Grossi said "it would be a logical conclusion" that advanced centrifuges recently installed at Fordow, a site buried inside a mountain, came from there.

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Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Angus MacSwan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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IAEA chief has doubts that Iran surveillance camera's ...