United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. In his fourth annual report on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mr. Ban said he was "deeply troubled" at recent developments in Iran and registered "serious concern" at the restrictions on unrecognized religious minorities, particularly the Baha'i community. UN Photo/Mark Garten.

[BWNS, 13 Oct. 2011] UNITED NATIONS — For the fourth consecutive year, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, has strongly criticized Iran’s record on human rights, saying violations have “continued and intensified” over the last 12 months.

Iran has stepped up its crackdown on human rights defenders, women’s rights activists and journalists, Mr. Ban said in a report released yesterday.

Read the Secretary General’s report [click here for PDF from IPW site]

The Secretary General said he was “deeply troubled” by recent developments, which included a “notable increase” in the country’s use of the death penalty, along with a rise in unfair trials, amputations, and the use of torture, arbitrary arrest and detention. Read Full Story

43 distinguished philosophers and theologians have signed an open letter protesting against Iran's persecution of Baha'i educators and students. Among them are such prominent figures as: (top row, left to right) Cornel West, Princeton, U.S.A.; Graham Ward, Oxford, U.K.; Charles Taylor, McGill, Canada; Leonardo Boff, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; (bottom row, left to right) Ebrahim Moosa, Duke, U.S.A.; Hilary Putnam, Harvard, U.S.A.; Stanley Hauerwas, Duke, U.S.A.; and Tahir Mahmood, former member, Law Commission, India.

[BWNS, 10 Oct. 2011] NEW YORK — More than 40 distinguished philosophers and theologians from 16 countries have joined the condemnation of Iran’s policy to bar young Baha’is and others from higher education.

In an unprecedented global initiative, the 43 prominent academics – of Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim backgrounds – have signed an open letter, published today in The Daily Telegraph (UK), and reported in the Folha de Sao Paulo (Brazil).

The letter condemns in particular recent attacks by the Iranian authorities on an informal educational initiative of the Baha’i community – known as the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) – in which Baha’i professors, debarred by the Iranian government from practicing their professions, voluntarily offer their services to teach young community members who are banned from higher education. Read Full Story

[greenprophet.com, 28 Sep 2011, by Tinamarie Bernard]

Members of the often persecuted Bahai faith are inherently green.

The terrace of the Baha’i Shrine and Gardens in Haifa is the most stunning destination in Israel’s third largest city. From the eastern side of the city, along the popular route 4, you first catch glimpse of it rising up towards the sky on your left. An expansive swath of green lawn manicured in layers and flanked by date trees span the height of the northern end of the Carmel mountainside. Year round and from a distance, the vision quite literally draws your gaze towards the impressive site, “a geometric cascade of hanging gardens and terraces down to Ben Gurion Boulevard -a gift of visual pleasure to the city that gave the Baha’i religion its home and headquarters.” [see http://www.ganbahai.org.il/en/ for pictures of the Terraces] Read Full Story

Senator Segal of Canada tables the situation of the Baha’is of Iran in direct and plain words in the Canadian Senate on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011. Read full Senate transcript here, and the except about Iran is reproduced below.

Editor

—

Debates of the Senate (Hansard)

1st Session, 41st Parliament,
Volume 148, Issue 17

Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The Honourable Noël A. Kinsella, Speaker

(1530)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the inquiry of the Honourable Senator Jaffer calling the attention of the Senate to the deteriorating human rights situation of the Baha’i people in Iran.

Hon. Hugh Segal: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to the inquiry placed on the Order Paper by the Honourable Senator Jaffer with respect to the circumstances faced by Baha’i citizens in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The lessons of history are not prisons that shape our choices. However, if and when those lessons are ignored, we give the worst of history, its most horrific and criminal excesses the best chance to repeat themselves at the expense of all humanity. It is in this precise context that we must look at the Islamic Republic of Iran and its treatment of its Baha’i citizens with a frank and cold eye. We must do so with the highest regard for Iran’s history, civilization and culture and with nothing but the greatest respect and regard for its people, who have the same right to freedom, economic opportunity and happiness as we have. We must also look carefully and with clarity at events within Iran, the way that government acts, its designs on genuine democrats at home and its explicit oppression of minorities within its own borders. Read Full Story

BAHÁ’Í Freedom walk — The Baha’i Faith is recognised globally as a peaceful religion with teachings that promote the betterment and advancement of humanity, spiritually, socially and economically.

Read Full Story

Click on the image to view the video at vimeo.com on Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) Read Full Story

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, left, pictured with his wife, Fatemah, and their two young sons. Photo credit: Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

[BWNS 4-Oct-2011] GENEVA — The Baha’i International Community has joined the call for the release of Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian pastor from Rasht, Iran.

Pastor Nadarkhani, who is the father of two young children, leads a network of house churches. He was found guilty of apostasy – “turning his back on Islam” – and “converting Muslims to Christianity,” and sentenced to death in September 2010. Read Full Story

[bahai.us 29 Sep 2011] Hollywood star Rainn Wilson and actress/activist Shiva Rose hosted an audience of 1,300 at the Kavli Theatre in Thousand Oaks, CA, in mid-September for an evening dedicated to human rights in Iran. Read Full Story

[1 Oct 2011] HRANA News Agency – On Thursday, September 29, 2011, twenty one Baha’i citizens were arrested in Esfahan and taken to an unknown location.  Amongst the detainees, there was a 9 year old child.

According to a report by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), on Thursday, Iranian security agents arrested the following Baha’i citizens in Esfahan:

1. Anisa Daneshgar
2. Arman Rahimi
3. Ataullah Daneshgar
4. Darab Yazdani
5. Dariush Dastpiesh
6. Dina Safarpour (9 years old)
7. Fardoas Niki
8. Farid Eshtiagh
9. Farzad Rohani
10. Fazel Behnam
11. Heshmatullah Niki
12. Laleh Namjoian
13. Lava Daneshgar
14. Parisa Rahmani
15. Roheia Hakimon
16. Saha Behnam
17. Samira Ghaneh
18. Shahla Sanaei
19. Sohela Davardan
20. Sohela Vahedian
21. Taj Almalok Janamian

Read Full Story

[RAHANA, 1-Oct-2011] Education rights activist Bashir Ehsani has been sentenced to 5 years in prison.

Read Full Story

[BICUNoffice's Channel, 26 Sep. 2011] The Bahà”i International Community made a statement on the situation of the Baha’is in Iran at the 18th session of the Human Rights Council held in Geneva.

Read Full Story

[Justice4BahaiYouth, 23 Sep 2011] The Baha’i’s in Iran, the country’s largest religious minority, have been persecuted since the 1979 revolution. Thousands were arrested and hundreds executed. Today, over 100 Baha’i’s are unjustly imprisoned including seven former community leaders and a number of educationalists. Iranian Baha’i’s are barred from university and even prevented from holding their own higher educational classes.

Read Full Story

[FreedomHouseDC, YoutTube, 26 Sep. 2011] Freedom House and the Baha’i External Affairs Office in Washington hosted a media briefing : “Education discrimination in Iran leads to creative use of technology by Bahai online university.”

Read Full Story

[Desmons Tutu] [José Ramos-Horta] The forward progress of humankind in the last centuries has been fueled, more than any other factor, by increasing access to information, more rapid exchange of ideas, and in most parts of the world, universal education.

Freedom of education and freedom of information are integral to freedom of thought. Few advances have been made for humankind which were not preceded by new ways of looking at our world and new schools of thought. Read Full Story

[BWNS 28 Sep. 2011] GENEVA — Like many young people the world over, Shohreh Rowhani grew up with high hopes of a good university education.

But now she has run up against a system which – while promising opportunity on the surface – is cruelly designed to block her and other young Iranians from ever getting a degree.

Ms. Rowhani is a Baha’i, and her experience is made all the more unjust by the fact that she is among Iran’s most gifted students; she ranked 151 in the country after passing the national university exam in her chosen field of languages. In other words, her result put her among the top 1% of candidates who took the exam. Read Full Story

[It is surprising that AhramOnline news agency is still using condescending terms such as "Haifa-based sect" to refer to the Baha'i Faith when all news agencies, all NGO's, Governments and Individuals use the proper reference, "Baha'i Faith." Editor]

[Cairo, AHRAMONLINE, 27 Sep 2011] Members of Haifa-based sect will face trial for allegedly conspiring against Iranian national security.

Six Bahai men and one woman accused of proselytising began to appear, individually and in groups, before the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, which deals with crimes against the regime, according to a statement issued on Tuesday by the National Assembly of Bahais [it is not clear to the IPW what the National Assembly of Baha'is refers to]. Read Full Story

Two Nobel Peace Prize laureates – Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, and Jose Ramos-Horta, President of East Timor – who have joined the global outcry at the persecution faced by Baha'i educators in Iran. (Photo credits: left, UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre; right, UN Photo/Ky Chung)

[BWNS 26 Sep 2011] NEW YORK — As a number of Baha’i educators appear in court in Iran, two Nobel Peace Prize winners have sharply criticized the Iranian government, comparing its actions to “the Dark Ages of Europe” or the “Spanish Inquisition.”

The remarks by Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, and Jose Ramos-Horta, President of East Timor, appear in an open letter to the academic community published today in the Huffington Post, under the title “Iran’s war against knowledge.” Read Full Story

Abdolfattah Soltani has been arrested on a number of occasions in the past

[Amnesty International, 12 Sep.2011] The Iranian authorities must immediately release one of Iran’s most prominent human rights lawyers, Abdolfattah Soltani, who was arrested on Saturday, Amnesty International said today.

Soltani, a co-founder of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders along with Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi and others, was arrested at a Prosecutor’s Office in Tehran. His wife told the media that four security officials then escorted him to his home, where they confiscated computers and documents before taking him away. Read Full Story

[bahai.us, 16, Sep 2011] The lawyer preparing to defend Baha’is facing trial in Iran’s Revolutionary Court has been detained again.

Mr. Abdolfattah Soltani was a senior member of the legal team representing the prisoners who face vague charges of threatening national security for teaching biology, engineering, architecture and other academic disciplines to young Baha’is denied university education because of their religion.

Soltani is a co-founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, along with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi and others. The Tehran-based Center was shut down in a police raid in December 2008. Read Full Story

Anthony Vance
Director of External Affairs, Baha’is of the United States

“If your tea is too sweet, you can stir it the other way.” This kind of quip was typical of Mahmoud Badavam and of Persian humor in general. I saw him frequently as a college student in the mid-1970s in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he gained a reputation for a quick, wry sense of humor. At that time, Iranians were few and far between in the U.S. So, it was an eye-opener to be exposed to the exquisite courtesy, humor, and hospitality that can be so prevalent in Iranian culture and that certainly was not lacking among the handful of Iranian students studying in universities in the Boston area at the time. None of us suspected then that revolution in Iran was just around the corner. With the large number of political and religious refugees it would bring in its wake, exposure to Iranian culture would soon become common place. But, at the time, Mahmoud and a small handful of others were novel and made a deep impression on me. I met Mahmoud in Baha’i meetings — a religious faith we both shared. He returned home just before the revolution and chose, despite the difficulties it created for Baha’is, to stay. Read Full Story

[RAHANA 18 Sep. 2011] Ava Tavakoli, a student of Hormozgan University, has been expelled due to her Baha’i faith after 4 semesters. Read Full Story

[RAHANA 14 Sep. 2011] The prison sentence has been upheld for the Freedom Movement of Iran member Mehdi Gholizadeh. Read Full Story

[RAHANA 14 Sep. 2011] Four instructors of the Baha’i Distant Education University have been arrested after being summoned. Read Full Story

[Human Rights Europe, 12 Sep. 2011] Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland has challenged Europe to practice what it preaches in its relations with neighbouring countries in the Mediterranean region.

In his 9 September speech to the Bled Strategic Forum, Jagland expressed his fear that  Europe’s  neighbours might not heed calls for more tolerant and inclusive politics if it could not cope with its own multicultural societies.

Speech by Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe

‘Search for a New “World Order” in the Mediterranean’

Bled Strategic Forum

9 September 2011

Distinguished participants, Ladies and Gentlemen, I always prepare for my participation at events such as this one. When I was asked to speak at the panel devoted to the search for a New World Order in the Mediterranean, I started by googling the title. This was only partially helpful. Read Full Story