Iran intensifies persecution of Bahá’Ãs
Attention to Iran's nuclear status has overshadowed its human rights record. The UN has condemned Iran's treatment of Bahá'ís more than 56 times. Now the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief has made public her grave concerns for members of the Bahá'í faith in Iran. Opposition politician Jennie George has succeeded in having a motion passed in the Australian parliament calling on the Government to raise these concerns with its Iranian counterpart.
Founded in Iran (then Persia) in the mid-19th century, the Bahá'í faith is now a world religion of diverse membership. The 300,000-plus Bahá'ís who remain in Iran today constitute the country's largest non-Muslim minority. Adherents have been sorely persecuted ever since the religion began some 150 years ago, with the current phase of abuse and discrimination dating from the revolution of 1979.
After some diminution of the grossest rights abuses (arrests, torture, killings and disappearances) in the mid-1980s, the Iranian Government has again stepped up its persecution of this religious minority. A 1991 Government directive (dismissed by Iran as a forgery) stated that "the Government’s treatment of them shall be such that their progress and development shall be blocked" through severe educational, ideological, cultural, propaganda and economic pressures.
Dr Nazila Ghanea, author of Human Rights, the UN and the Bahá'ís in Iran, warns that "denial of economic, social and cultural rights has a cumulative impact when focused on minorities," with the immediate impact on individuals "compounded by the longer-term impact on the group as a whole."
Persecution has crossed the spectrum of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights abuses, however. Bahá'ís are regarded as 'non-persons' in Iran, 'unprotected infidels' with no legal rights or recourse. They are barred from universities and the public service and denied the pension. Employers are pressured to sack any Bahá'í staff. Holy sites and cemetries have been destroyed and property confiscated. In the past 18 months there have been over 125 arrests of Bahá'ís, for such 'offences' as teaching and studying. Needless to say, Bahá'í religious practice is forbidden.
In October 2005 Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, ominously ordered the police and Revolutionary Guard to 'identify' and 'monitor' all Bahá'ís, collecting "any and all" information about them. As Liberal member Michael Keenan said in the Australian parliament, "Bahá'ís in Iran can only be living in fear about what these measures might mean." Such monitoring could be used as a basis for increased persecution. It constitutes, according to the Special Rapporteur, an "impermissible and unacceptable interference with the rights of members of religious minorities."
Readers outside Iran might like to add pressure to the Iranian Government by writing to the UN Secretary-General, the Iranian ambassador to their country, and their own government. Interested academics are also encouraged to research and write on the subject.
