A kolbar, or border trader, from Baneh in western Iran was killed by Iranian border guards in an unprovoked attack on Sunday, the Iranian-Kurdish rights organisation Hengaw reported.
The 29-year-old man, identified as Hazhar Faraji, was struck in the chest when border guards opened fire on him without giving prior warning, the Hengaw Human Rights Organization said. Faraji was shot near the Sardab border, and buried in the village of Zarbaneh.
Kolbars, or the phenomenon of kolbari in Kurdish society, are traders that for generations have carried goods on foot along the same routes, across the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The kolbar traders have become steadily more impoverished as a result of the Iranian regime’s political and economic policies. The story of the kolbars became world renound through Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi’s award-winning film, “A Time for Drunken Horses”.
Every year, dozens of kolbars are killed on the borders by mines, armed drones and shootings. Iranian border guards have killed at least six kolbars on the border of Baneh in the past five months, Hengaw’s statistics showed.
