Iran Press Watch: The Baha'i Community |
- UN panel criticizes Iran’s repression of minorities
- Baha’i woman recalls imprisonment in Iran
- Omid Djalili voices his support for the Baha’is in Iran
- Roxana Saberi: In Iran, shackling the Bahai torchbearers
- “The rights of the accused” in simple language!
| UN panel criticizes Iran’s repression of minorities Posted: 31 Aug 2010 04:51 PM PDT
In conclusions issued last Friday, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) questioned why Iranian minorities – such as Arabs, Azeris, Balochis, Kurds and Baha’is – are so poorly represented in Iran's public life. The Baha’i International Community has welcomed the panel's findings that categorize Iran's persecution of Baha’is as a matter of discrimination based on race, ethnicity or religion. "This finding is important because it represents the opinion of a body of international experts on discrimination – including many from countries that are friendly to Iran," said Diane Ala'i, the representative of the Baha’i International Committee to the United Nations in Geneva. "As such, their criticism of Iran, even if couched in somewhat mild diplomatic language, represents further evidence that the world community will not turn a blind eye to Iran's ongoing persecution of Baha’is – which are that country's largest non-Muslim religious minority – nor, for that matter, to the violation of the human rights of any of that nation's citizens," said Ms. Ala'i. Committee's concern In its conclusions about Baha'is and other minority groups, CERD urged Iran to "carry out a study of members of all such communities that would enable the State party to identify their particular needs and draw up effective plans of action, programmes and public policies to combat racial discrimination and disadvantage relating to all areas of the public life of these communities." The recommendation followed a series of exchanges on 4-5 August with an Iranian delegation that came before the Committee to defend their human rights record. Committee members appeared quite skeptical about Iran's efforts to meet the mandates of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the Committee monitors, including a number of members from countries that have generally friendly relations with Iran, such as Brazil, India, and Turkey. Reports from human rights groups Alternative reports submitted by human rights groups were more critical, noting that Baha’is have since 2005 faced an upsurge in arbitrary arrests and detentions, the demolition of properties, and the denial of rights to education, employment, and social participation. "Since the beginning of 2010, numerous Baha'is have been sentenced to imprisonment," said the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Iranian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LDDHI), and Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC) in a joint report. Amnesty International noted that "derogatory articles and other media pieces" frequently appear in state-run media. "Such practices are of particular concern in relation to the Baha’i community." This is not the first time that the Committee has spoken out about Iran's treatment of Baha’is. In similar concluding observations issued in 2003, the Committee noted with concern "the reported discrimination faced by certain minorities, including the Baha'is, who are deprived of certain rights" which "appear to be discriminatory on both ethnic and religious grounds." The Committee in 2003 went on to recommend that Iran "ensure that all persons enjoy their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, without any discrimination based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin," and also that Iran allow "students of different origins to register in universities without being compelled to state their religion." Ms. Ala'i noted that although the Committee's primary concern is racial discrimination, that mandate is broadly interpreted by the United Nations as including all forms of discrimination, including religious discrimination. "Members of the Baha’i Faith come from various ethnic backgrounds, but the fact that this committee has identified the intense religious discrimination against the Iranian Baha’i community as something it must look into shows from yet another angle how deep the oppression of Baha’is and other minorities is today in Iran," said Diane Ala'i, the representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations in Geneva. "The intense questioning during the dialogue session with Iran, moreover, clearly displayed the skepticism with which the international community views Iran's efforts to defend what is otherwise indefensible in terms of human rights violation," she said. Source: http://news.bahai.org/story/791  |
| Baha’i woman recalls imprisonment in Iran Posted: 31 Aug 2010 04:45 PM PDT  Minoo Vosough (Posted by: Moni Basu – CNN Wire editor) Minoo Vosough can still hear the guards’ boots marching down the cold hallways of Iran’s Gohardasht prison. The screams of other inmates burn her ears. She can feel the thud of a fist coming down on her head. And the She was arrested in Tehran more than 25 years ago – beaten, interrogated and thrown into solitary confinement. Once a week, she was taken out for a shower. She could tell if it was bright or overcast only by the small window high up in her cell. She cherished the chirping of birds outside. All she had was a blanket, a spoon and a broken fork. The Iranian regime accused Vosough of espionage, though she was never charged or afforded legal representation. Her crime in the Islamic republic, she says, was – and still is – her faith. She is a Baha’i. She has not spoken publicly about her terrifying experience in an Iranian jail. Until now. This month, the spotlight again fell on Iran’s 300,000-strong Baha’i community as seven national leaders were sentenced to 20 years each in prison for espionage, propaganda against the Islamic republic and the establishment of an illegal administration. The Baha’i International Community says the charges are trumped up in an effort to stifle the religion, the largest minority faith in Iran. The sentences were condemned by human rights groups and by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who sternly reminded Iran that “freedom of religion is the birthright of people of all faiths and beliefs in all places.” Iran denies mistreatment of Baha’is and says followers of the faith are free to live in Iran. But it says it considers activities against the Islamic state illegal and thus views the seven Baha’is accused of spying for Israel as criminals. Vosough, a petite, soft-spoken realtor in Atlanta, Georgia, has been following the story of the Yaran, as the seven Baha’i leaders are known. One, Saeid Rezaie, is a classmate from her days at Pahlavi University, now called Shiraz University. Vosough has tried to keep her own heartbreaking memories locked in the crevices of her mind. But seeing Rezaie’s gentle face, reading about the plight of the Yaran, everything came rushing back. “I want the whole world to know what is happening in Iran,” she said. “What was my crime? What is their crime? We simply believe in our faith. Why don’t we have that right?” Stamped an infidel Vosough was born in 1956 into an Iran ruled by the shah. Her religion was then just over a century old, founded by two prophets: the Bab (the gate) and Baha’ullah (the glory of God). Baha’is consider Baha’ullah the most recent in a line of God’s messengers that includes Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Christ and Mohammed. She learned from her parents and from her days at a Baha’i school about the key principle of her religion: oneness of humankind. Baha’is had never been accepted in Iran but their station in life plunged with the arrival of the Islamic revolution in 1979.  Vosough, right, had to rent a cap and gown after Iranian authorities denied her a college diploma and a place in commencement ceremonies. A young college student then, Vosough was forced to rent a graduation cap and gown to celebrate with her Baha’i friends after she was denied an official diploma and consequently, she was unable to land a job. These days, Baha’is are barred from enrolling in universities. Or even having a gravestone. Vosough’s father-in-law was buried with just a paper marker bearing his name and the number of the cemetery plot, she says, staring at an old color photograph of the grave. Four gladioli lie before the crude marker. The Tehran government seemed to be looking away for a while, but repression for all religious minorities in Iran has worsened since the presidential elections of 2005 and in particular after the disputed polling last year, according to a 2010 report compiled by the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “A consistent stream of virulent and inflammatory statements by political and religious leaders and an increase in harassment and imprisonment of, and physical attacks against, these groups has led to a renewal of the kind of oppression seen in the years immediately following the Iranian revolution,” the report says. Baha’i blood is “mobah,” which means members of the Baha’i faith can be killed with impunity, the report says. Iranian authorities view Baha’is as “heretics” who may face repression on the grounds of apostasy. Since 1979, the Iranian government has executed more than 200 Baha’is and more than 10,000 have been dismissed from government and university jobs, the commission’s report says. Baha’is may not establish places of worship, schools, or any independent religious associations in Iran. In addition, Baha’is are barred from the military and denied government jobs. “This is a community that has really felt the jackboot of the Iranian government,” says Leonard Leo, chairman of the commission. Vosough says the Iranian government is determined to sow prejudice against the Baha’is. Even Muslims who associate with Baha’is are often harassed by authorities, she says. On public forms, people are asked to mark their religion: Muslim. Christian. Zoroastrian. Jewish. There is no box for the Baha’is. “So you are stamped an infidel,” says Vosough. “You have no rights.” Making a 13-day escape She had been married two months in 1984 when she was arrested after a family gathering. The government suspected her of “illegal activity.” Officials stopped her car and demanded documents she didn’t have. There were no Miranda Rights. No lawyer. She was wrestled away to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, her family left to scour the route she took. She was only 27 – and frightened.  Vosough at her engagement party in Tehran. “I didn’t know what was happening,” she says. “In my heart, I knew I was there because I was a Baha’i.” In jail, she reflected on her faith. That gave her strength. She recited prayers and tried to count days. That kept her lucid. She was taken to Gohardasht prison on the outskirts of Tehran and kept in a cell by herself. Later, when she was returned to Evin for her trial, she was placed in a room with 60 other women. A Baha’i woman was nursing her six-month-old baby. Vosough gave the woman her share of prison milk. The mother needed strength. “Why should a baby be in prison?” she asks. “For what crime? Was that baby also a spy for Israel?” After three months, Vosough was released. But she could not escape prison. She could no longer walk the streets without fear. And when she became pregnant, a panic set in. “I wasn’t going to let my child ever be in a prison like that,” she says. Or t be unable to go to school, get a job. Or do anything freely. On a summer day in 1985, Vosough said goodbye to Iran. She took with her only a small bag with two changes of clothing for an escape that took 13 days. She and her husband traveled by the darkness of night, on horseback, on foot, over the mountains into neighboring Turkey. The next year, with the help of the United Nations refugee agency, Vosough began a new life in the United States. She has no Iranian passport, required of all returning Iranians. Nor does she own any documentation of the life she left behind. In her native Iran, she is more of a nobody than before. At 53, Vosough does not know if she will ever again touch Iranian soil. Perhaps, she fears, she has already embraced her 86-year-old mother for the last time. But in America, she says, she can practice her faith freely. “You don’t know freedom until it has been taken away from you,” she says, sitting under a framed drawing of Baha’ullah¹s son Abdu¹l-Baha in her suburban home. “It was taken away from me.” Ensuring survival If Vosough could talk to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, she would tell him one thing: “This is not what Islam promotes.” The seven Baha’i leaders imprisoned now were the pillars of their communities, Vosough says. They are even more important because the Baha’is do not follow clergy. Instead communities plan their own meetings and services. In Iran, the seven were working to ensure the survival of their way of life in a country that does not recognize them. “I think I survived everything pretty good,” she says, a moment of acute sadness interrupting the smile that is often splashed across her face. But she worries that her 300,000 Baha’i brothers and sisters in Iran may not. She has felt emboldened to write to her congressmen, to push them to apply pressure on Iran. If the world forgets, she fears, what will become of her people? Source: CNN: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/31/bahai-woman-recalls-imprisonment-in-iran/  |
| Omid Djalili voices his support for the Baha’is in Iran Posted: 31 Aug 2010 04:25 PM PDT  Omid Djalili a British stand-up comic Iranians are arising to support Bahá'ís from all walks of life. Omid Djalili a British stand-up comic speaks about the persecuted Bahá’í religious minority:
Also, see a youtube viedo of Omid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrldA95spQ Click here to view the embedded video. Sources: YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrldA95spQ  |
| Roxana Saberi: In Iran, shackling the Bahai torchbearers Posted: 31 Aug 2010 03:48 PM PDT
For several weeks last year, I shared a cell in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison with Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, two leaders of Iran’s minority Bahai faith. I came to see them as my sisters, women whose only crimes were to peacefully practice their religion and resist pressure from their captors to compromise their principles. For this, apparently, they and five male colleagues were sentenced this month to 20 years in prison. I had heard about Mahvash and Fariba before I met them. Other prisoners spoke of the two middle-aged mothers whose high spirits lifted the morale of fellow inmates. The Bahai faith, thought to be the largest non-Muslim minority religion in Iran, originated in 19th-century Persia. It is based on the belief that the world will one day attain peace and unity. Iranian authorities consider it a heretical offshoot of Islam. After I was transferred to their cell, I learned that Mahvash had been incarcerated for one year and Fariba for eight months. Each had spent half her detention in solitary confinement, during which time they were allowed almost no contact with their families and only the Koran to read. Recently the two had been permitted to have a pen. Oh, how they cherished it! But they were allowed to use it only to do Sudoku and crossword puzzles in the conservative newspapers the prison guards occasionally gave them. Mahvash, Fariba and their five colleagues faced accusations that included spying for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and, later, “spreading corruption on earth.” All three could have resulted in the death penalty. The Bahais denied these charges. Far from posing a threat to the Islamic regime, Mahvash and Fariba told me, Iran’s estimated 300,000 Bahais are nonviolent and politically impartial. Despite the gravity of the accusations against them, Mahvash and Fariba had not once been allowed to see attorneys. Yet my cellmates’ spirits would not be broken, and they boosted mine. They taught me to, as they put it, turn challenges into opportunities — to make the most of difficult situations and to grow from adversity. We kept a daily routine, reading the books we were eventually allowed and discussing them; exercising in our small cell; and praying — they in their way, I in mine. They asked me to teach them English and were eager to learn vocabulary for shopping, cooking and traveling. They would use the new words one day, they told me, when they journeyed abroad. But the two women also said they never wanted to live overseas. They felt it their duty to serve not only Bahais but all Iranians. Later, when I went on a hunger strike, Mahvash and Fariba washed my clothes by hand after I lost my energy and told me stories to keep my mind off my stomach. Their kindness and love gave me sustenance. It pained me to leave them behind when I was freed in May 2009. I later heard that Mahvash, Fariba and their colleagues refused to make false confessions, as many political prisoners in Iran are pressured to do. It was January when the Bahais’ trial began. This month, the same Iranian judge who had sentenced me to eight years in prison on a false charge of spying for the United States sentenced the Bahais to 20 years. The charges they were convicted of have not yet been reported. Human rights advocates have said the trial was riddled with irregularities. The defendants were eventually allowed to see attorneys but only briefly. The lawyers were given only a few hours to examine the thousands of pages in the prosecution’s files. Early in the trial, state-run TV crews were present at what were supposed to be closed hearings. After the Bahais’ attorneys objected, family members were allowed to attend the hearings, but foreign diplomats were barred, and the only journalists permitted were with state-run media. It appears that no evidence was presented against the defendants. As their lawyers appeal, Mahvash and Fariba sit in Rajai Shahr prison outside Tehran. Even Evin prison, cellmates told me last year, is preferable to Rajai Shahr. The facility is known for torture, unsanitary conditions and inadequate medical care for inmates, who include murderers, drug addicts and thieves. While Iranian authorities deny that the regime discriminates against citizens for religious beliefs, the Bahai faith is not recognized under the Iranian constitution. The known persecution of many Bahais includes being fired from jobs and denied access to higher education, as well as cemetery desecration. (The Bahais created their own unofficial university, which Mahvash used to direct; Fariba earned a degree in psychology there.) In addition to the seven leaders, 44 other Bahais are in prisons in Iran, the Baha’i International Community reports. People of many nations and faiths have called for the release of the Bahai leaders. But many more must speak out — such as by signing letters of support through Web sites such as United4Iran.com. Protests of these harsh sentences can make clear to authorities in Iran and elsewhere that they will be held accountable when they trample on human rights. Mahvash and Fariba occasionally hear news of this support, and it gives them strength to carry on, just as the international outcry against my imprisonment empowered me. I know that despite what they have been through and what lies ahead, these women feel no hatred in their hearts. When I struggled not to despise my interrogators and the judge, Mahvash and Fariba told me they do not hate anyone, not even their captors. We believe in love and compassion for humanity, they said, even for those who wrong us. Roxana Saberi, a journalist detained in Iran last year, is the author of “Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran.” Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/27/AR2010082704485.html  |
| “The rights of the accused” in simple language! Posted: 31 Aug 2010 02:25 PM PDT The legal language is not usually accessible to the public. Mr. Sultonai and Mrs. Parakand, two well-known names in the legal circles in Iran, have produced a short document and bring the specialized legal language to the public in a simple and understandable style in a document they have published: “The rights of the accused” in simple language. حقوق متهم-حقوق به زبان ساده . Mr. Sultani and Mrs. Parakand has become know for their defence of those individuals who has suffered for upholding human rights or beliefs. Mr. Sultani is one of the founders of the Defenders of Human Rights in Iran which has been closed down; and, Mrs. Parakand is one of the legal councils for the seven Baha’i leaders known as Yaran. This short document, issued when many Iranian have been arrested without the due procedure, explains the judiciary procedures in a simple language. Currently, only available in Persian and can be downloaded here: The Rights of Accused in Simple Language. Editor  |
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Iran Press Watch: The Baha'i Community Part 1
Iran Press Watch: The Baha'i Community Part 1
Iran Press Watch: The Baha'i Community Part 1
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