For the second year in a raw, the Iranian Republic has opened another type of theme parks for children in Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan province northeast of Iran. Unlike theme parks around the world that trying to draw smiles on children’s faces and instill love in their hearts, the Iranian “combat” theme park is promoting games with weapons and guns for children.
Local authorities launched the so-called “Revolution Children Theme Park” in Kohsangi-Mashhad, where children are trained to shoot at virtual fixed and moving targets, such as flags of countries that Iran considers as rivals, including the United States of America and Israel.
Source:RajaNews
(Workshop of teaching the civil citizen) Persian Site wondered in a comment on a published news in this regard: “What kind of future do we expect for an eight-year child when being trained to carry weapons and shoot targets? In your opinion, what is the purpose of these pieces of training?”
The Director of Cultural House, who runs this park, Hamid Sadeghi says, “We are training children on collective intelligence activities in the field of war, holy defense and international developments, through games and hobbies.”
Children appear in posted images as they cross paths and roads in divided spaces simply to shoot virtual cannon shots against the “enemy” and shooting towards virtual enemies.
Organizers of the weird theme park tried to clone the Iranian military sites that are similar to those were deployed in the Iranian-Iraqi war, which Iran celebrates its anniversary this week.
The theme park dividing children into groups, and each group has a commander and followers where he leads them through different chambers starting with “Revolution chamber,” then “Iranian-Iraqi war chamber”, and during these rounds, children traversing a minefield, barbed wire, and clash with virtual enemies.
Recruitment of children: Precedent of Iran
Iranian activists had passed pictures of this park on social media, and compared some of these trainings with ISIS terrorist group that recruiting and training children to fight, as well as sow violence and hatred in their minds.
It is noteworthy that Iran was recruited thousands of children and send them to the battlefront in the Iranian-Iraqi war (1980-1988), and military media was encouraging children to volunteer in the popular crowd forces (Basij Mardomi) of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, where many of them were killed, and others captured. However, the former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, released them in response to the international humanitarian organizations’ calls, such as the Red Cross.
International Organizations, in turn, accused Tehran of recruiting children to fight in Syria through “Fatimioun” militias that formed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards of Afghans and Shiites. During the vast immigration wave to Europe in 2015, Arabic Sweden Radio published in Oct. 2015 a report about unaccompanied Afghan children that arrived in Sweden and Europe seeking refuge.
The radio station confirmed that these children, mostly coming from Iran, not Afghanistan, but they chose to flee to Europe, fearing of being recruited by Iran in Syria war, where 11 thousand unaccompanied Afghan children arrived in Sweden in 2015 from Iran.
Translated report (AGCIC): Alarabia.net
