On November 23 a group of activists began a campaign against the establishment of the Darian dam in Paveh.
The campaign aimed to raise public awareness and pressure officials not to build the dam, which is threatening a vast area including historical sites that would disappeared under the water.
As the last attempt to prevent the dam project, a letter was signed by more than three thousand figures of all backgrounds and sent to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
However, the project started abruptly without the presence of any of officials.
According to the signatories, flowing water into the 109 meters high Darian dam will destroy Bel Spring, which is the second source of natural spring water in the world.
Bel spring was registered as a national site in 2009.
The campaigners claim that the Bel spring is one of the symbols of Hawrman area in Kurdistan region, and has significant connection with culture and the history of the area.
The spring is located next to the shrine of Obaidullah, the brother of Imam Reza.
Furthermore, the most important part of this struggle is the 40 thousand year history of Hawraman, which dates back way to before the Stone Age.
“This very symbolic site and valuable source of mineral water is in imminent danger due to wrong decision of building a dam based on inaccurate data collected by the ministry of energy.” the letter sent to the president said.
The campaigners have clearly expressed the concern to the Iranian president, saying that the ignorance of the officials in the ministry of energy endangered the existence of mineral spring water that has the capacity of 4 thousand liters per second.
Moreover, they stressed that this spring water can assure water for a population equal to two million people, which makes it more important than an oil well.
So far six Kurdish activists have gone on hunger strike and they have not received any response from the officials. Meanwhile, hundreds of Kurds have written a new letter to the president urging him to take action to save the Bel spring water.
Mi’ad Ahmadi started his protest and has been on hunger strike since 2 December.
Fardin Rostami, Azad Abbasi and Soheila Mohammadi are another three activists who have been on hunger strike since 4 December.
Soheila Mohammadi is the first woman who joined the hunger strike.
The Bel spring is one of the known mineral water springs of the world and a symbolic site for the people of Hawraman area, which is in danger of destruction by building Darian dam next to it.
In the past few years, the Kurdish community expressed concerns through various ways over the construction of Darian dam, but Iranian officials did not respond to people’s requests.
