In 2009, the Middle-East witnessed its first social media revolution in Iran, followed by the Arab Spring in 2011. This youthful populist movement is inspired by justice and human rights. Building this new society is along and complex struggle. A central requirement of transforming an identity based on tyranny and hatred into a culture of equality and tolerance is putting an end to religious persecution against minorities such as the Baha’is of Iran.

Payam Akhavan PhD (Harvard) is Professor of International Law at McGill University. Among his many publictions, “Beyond Impunity” has been selected as one of “the most significant published journal essays in contemporary legal studies” and his book “Reducing Genocide to Law” acclaimed as “a profound re-thinking of efforts to transform global aspirations into reality.”

Professor Akhavan was the first Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminial Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda at The Hague, served the UN in Cambodia, Guatemala and East Timor, and appeared in leading cases before international courts. He founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre, featured in the New York Times, Maclean’s magazine, and the award-winning documentary film “The Green Wave.” In 2005, he was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.

This talk is brought to you by the collaborations of:
Campus Association for Baha’i Studies of UBC
& Local Spiritual Assembly of the Vancouver Baha’i Community.

For more information contact exec@ubcabs.com.

Facebook search: The Struggle for Human Rights in Iran

Visit: www.can-you-solve-this.org/ca

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.

Iran’s Supreme Court recently asked for a re-examination of the case to establish whether or not he had been a practising Muslim adult before he converted to Christianity. The court ruled he was not but, nevertheless, is still guilty of apostasy because he has Muslim ancestry.

The case has sparked strong condemnation from governments, organizations and religious leaders around the world.

Then on 1 October, following this global outcry, Iranian state media suddenly reported that Pastor Nadarkhani had in fact been sentenced for other reasons – including violent crimes, extortion, Zionism and being a traitor. These charges had never once been mentioned throughout the entire period when Pastor Nadarkhani was charged, tried, sentenced, up to and including the most recent court hearing.

Statement of the Baha’i International Community

We join with the global chorus of condemnation protesting the sentencing of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, and calling for his release.

For a court of law to rule against someone from Muslim ancestry who has freely chosen to be a Christian is yet another instance of the brutality being meted out by the Iranian authorities on their own people.

The recent public proclamation reporting that the charges against Pastor Nadarkhani have been changed – as a result of the global outcry at his conviction – only further exposes the arbitrary nature of decisions made by the judiciary system of Iran and the transparent injustice of the situation.

The sentence he faces is not only reprehensible; it is a violation of every legal, moral, spiritual and humanitarian standard.

Which temporal government in the world can reasonably decide it has the power to curtail freedom of belief? Belief is not something that can be taken away or bartered; it is a matter of conviction, of the heart, the mind and the soul, beyond the realm of any government’s control.

The Baha’i community understands well the challenging circumstances facing minorities living in Iran today. And now it is evident that those minorities which are nominally recognized by the state are as equally subordinate to the majority as those who have no rights.

There is little need to rehearse here the endless list of executions, torture, imprisonments, privations and other afflictions that are being meted out on the sorely-tried people of Iran.

Everything that country’s representatives profess on the world stage is contradicted by their treatment of their own people at home. Yet, its officials travel freely to other nations where they are offered a platform from which to broadcast their untruths, denying the callous treatment of their own citizens while displaying pretensions of good will for the people of the world.

There is much to be done to alert the people of the world to the hypocrisy of a government which is widely and continually oppressing its people.

There is much to be done for humanity to be alerted to what is going on inside Iran and to be awakened to the appalling memory of what can occur when we fail to act against state-sponsored campaigns of hatred.

—

Source: http://news.bahai.org/story/855

]]> http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8452/feed 2 http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8290 http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8290#comments Sun, 04 Sep 2011 04:17:38 +0000 editor http://www.iranpresswatch.org/?p=8290 While the Baha’is in Iran are facing severe persecution as direct result of prejudice and intolerance in Iran, the Baha’i International Community participates in inauguration of special space in Haifa dedicated to tolerance and peace, knowing well that the road to a peaceful world is abolishment of prejudice due to ignorance and true eduction of each and every child, junior youth, youth, young adults and women and men of the World.

Editor

—

[BWNS, 30 May 2011] HAIFA, Israel — In the Middle East, Haifa is known as one of the region’s most ethnically and religiously diverse cities, including Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze and Baha’is among its residents.

And so it was fitting that on her first visit to the Baha’i gardens here, the Director General of UNESCO spoke of the challenges facing multi-cultural societies.

“Managing diversity raises some of the most difficult questions of this 21st century – inside our societies and outside, with our neighbours and globally,” said Irina Bokova, formerly the Foreign Affairs Minister for Bulgaria.

Ms. Bokova was speaking at a special ceremony held in the Baha’i gardens to inaugurate the UNESCO for Tolerance and Peace Square, situated at the point where Haifa’s historic German Templer colony meets the terraced gardens of the Shrine of the Bab.

The newly-named square in Haifa will “stand for the tolerance and the peace that we seek to build and to deepen – in this region, and across the world,” she remarked.

“I am more than convinced that the only ways to build a more peaceful and equitable world are through education and dialogue – to deepen understanding, to strengthen mutual respect and to prepare the ground for reconciliation…” said Ms. Bokova who, in October 2009, became the first woman to head the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

“If wars start in the minds of men; it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed,” she said, citing the UNESCO manifesto.

The ceremony also coincided with the 10th anniversary of the official opening in May 2001 of the garden terraces of the Shrine of the Bab. In 2008, a UNESCO committee meeting held in Quebec, Canada – at which Ms. Bokova was present – decided to inscribe the Shrine and terraces, along with the Shrine of Baha’u'llah near Acre, on the World Heritage list, as sites of “outstanding universal value.”

Future development plans for the UNESCO for Tolerance and Peace Square include upgraded stonework and decorative floral plantings in the centre of its traffic circle, establishing a symbolic bridge between the German Templer colony and the Baha’i gardens.

Secretary General of the Baha’i International Community, Albert Lincoln, welcomed Ms. Bokova to the ceremony, along with other invited guests including the Mayor of Haifa, Advocate Yona Yahav; the Most Reverend Dr. Elias Chacour, Archbishop Metropolitan of the Melkite Catholic Church for Acre, Haifa, Nazareth and All Galilee; and other representatives of Haifa’s Arab and Jewish communities.

“Haifa really is a city of peace and a living example of how the Middle East could and should be,” said Dr. Lincoln, describing as “normality” the wide variety of religious, ethnic and cultural groups who live and work side by side in the city.

“Normality need not explain itself, but perhaps we do need to remind ourselves and others from time to time of its essential foundations,” said Dr. Lincoln.

“The human race, with all its diversity, is one family…” he said. “But even in the city of peace, normality cannot be taken for granted. It needs nurturing and defence.”

Thanking Ms. Bokova and her staff for their work, Dr. Lincoln concluded, “UNESCO plays a leading role in the critical work of nurturing and defending this kind of normality all around the world by promoting peace, education and the recognition of the universal values in the infinite diversity of the world’s cultures.”

—

Source: http://news.bahai.org/story/828

]]> http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8290/feed 3 http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8260 http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8260#comments Sat, 27 Aug 2011 18:20:20 +0000 editor http://www.iranpresswatch.org/?p=8260 Authorized Translation

BAHÁ’Í INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
United Nations Office
866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 120, New York, NY 10017 USA
Telephone: 212-803-2500, Fax: 212-803-2566, Email: uno-nyc@bic.org

26 August, 2011

The Honorable Kamran Daneshjoo
Minister of Science, Research, and Technology
Islamic Republic of Iran

Sir:

On 6 June 2011, the Iranian Student News Agency announced that the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology had declared the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) to be illegal. This declaration was made some days after raids by government agents on the homes of around thirty Bahá’ís associated with BIHE and the imprisonment of a number of these individuals.

As you are aware, immediately following the Islamic revolution, in contravention of the laws in force at the time, Bahá’í students were expelled from your nation’s universities and Bahá’í professors and lecturers dismissed from their positions. The government was insistent upon the enforcement of this injustice. Efforts to explore possible solutions with officials proved futile. By the late 1980s, it became clear that Bahá’ís could not enroll in university without denying their faith and that the government would not rectify this situation. Under these conditions, it was clearly impossible to establish a formal university for Bahá’ís; to seek a permit to do so in the face of overt government hostility would have been a fruitless, if not reckless, provocation. Consequently, the community made informal arrangements to use the volunteer services of dismissed professors to teach Bahá’í youth.

As with any other program that benefits from organization and coordination, this undertaking was gradually systematized. It was later referred to as the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education. While the Bahá’í community did not publicize this initiative at that time, nonetheless over the years others in Iran and abroad learned about this endeavor and volunteered to assist with it. Because the community was determined to meet the needs of every young person, arrangements became somewhat elaborate. However, the initiative remained an internal activity of the community. Its pursuits were limited to youth within the Bahá’í community, and it was not involved in educating the members of the general public. Most often, classes were held in Bahá’í homes. Participation was voluntary and the benefit to the students was limited. They did not expect to receive an official degree, nor was anyone promised any other benefit, such as enhanced prospects of employment. The aim was to nurture the intellectual faculties of youth so as to prepare them for service to their society. This activity of the Bahá’í community is comparable to home education or private tutoring arranged by parents when children are unable to attend public schools. Were not such efforts well known in the past among Iranians who have always cherished and valued learning?

Since the inception of this initiative, the Islamic Republic has made repeated attempts to hinder its progress and harass its participants. Homes of Bahá’ís have been summarily searched. In these raids, computers, books, and other educational tools that had been obtained through sacrifice and hardship were confiscated. Many of those involved in the endeavor were arrested and asked to sign a commitment to eschew association with it. The 1998 raid against 500 homes of Bahá’ís throughout Iran is an example of such attacks and serves to underscore the private and domestic nature of this undertaking.

Such actions, as you know, have been conducted as a matter of official government policy and as part of a systematic campaign to eliminate the Bahá’í community as a viable entity in your country. A confidential memorandum on “The Bahá’í Question”, issued in 1991 by the Iranian Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council and approved by the Supreme Leader, stated clearly the position of the Islamic Republic toward the Bahá’í community. The memorandum specifies that Iran’s Bahá’ís should be treated in such a way “that their progress and development are blocked”. A copy of the document is enclosed. You are, no doubt, very familiar with the stipulation, under the heading of “educational and cultural status”, that Bahá’ís “must be expelled from universities, either in the admission process or during the course of their studies, once it becomes known that they are Bahá’ís.”

Experience over the years that ensued has amply demonstrated that the policy to exclude Bahá’ís from your country’s institutions of higher learning remains in full effect. In 2006, as a result of extensive protests over the continued exclusion of Bahá’ís from your nation’s universities, representatives of your government told the international community on several occasions that the reference to religion that was included on the university forms did not identify applicants by their religion but only specified the religious subject on which they were to be examined. The Bahá’í community, in good faith, accepted the explanation offered. Since then, Bahá’ís have attempted to sit for the annual national entrance examination, although the difficulties they have encountered have caused their number to diminish from year to year. Nonetheless, most of those who have taken the examination have successfully passed it, some with the highest marks possible.

Months after their participation in the 2006 examinations, it transpired that—in the same year when you were publicly stating that your forms did not require Bahá’ís to deny their faith to be eligible to attend university—the Central Security Office of your own Ministry issued a letter to eighty-one universities throughout Iran, instructing them that “if Bahá’í individuals, at the time of enrollment at university or in the course of their studies, are identified as Bahá’ís, they must be expelled from university. Therefore, it is necessary to take measures to prevent the further studies of the aforementioned [individuals] and forward a follow-up report to this Office.” A copy of this document is also enclosed.

Thus, Bahá’í youth are blocked from access to higher education in one way or another. They sit for the university entrance examination, only to discover that they have been disqualified on the wholly specious claim that their applications were “incomplete”. Universities refuse to enroll many of those who pass the examination. A small number who are able to enroll because their religion is overlooked at the time of registration are later expelled. In some particularly cruel instances, these expulsions have been effected just weeks or days prior to the completion of their courses of study. A fair measure of whether the Bahá’ís have access to higher education is not how many of them you permit to enter universities but how many of them were allowed to complete their studies. To any careful observer, it is evident that the only reason a few Bahá’í youth have been admitted into your universities is that such actions permit your government’s officials to deny that you prohibit Bahá’ís from gaining access to higher education—a claim that is blatantly duplicitous.

And now a fresh measure of tribulation has befallen the Bahá’ís, as they are subjected to harsh treatment in interrogations about their involvement with their informal efforts for the education of youth. Individuals who assist with the educational program are threatened with imprisonment. Parents who host classes are notified that their homes will be expropriated if the classes continue. And students are warned against attending their classes and are instructed that they will never obtain a higher education so long as they do not abandon their faith and declare themselves to be Muslims. Yet, when the representatives of your government are confronted with these facts in the international arena, they continue to maintain that no one is deprived of education in Iran on account of his or her religion. How regrettable that the representatives of the Islamic Republic repeatedly peddle such obvious falsehoods, further undermining your government’s credibility. When will the officials in Iran bring to an end the entrenched practice of saying one thing to Bahá’ís while offering a range of conflicting reassurances on the global stage?

It is evident to the generality of the people of the world, especially promoters of social justice, academics, students, and indeed the majority of the people in Iran, that to actively deprive any youth of access to education is reprehensible and against all legal, religious, moral, and humanitarian standards. Many government officials to whom Bahá’ís appeal for redress, including staff in your own Ministry, sympathize with the Bahá’ís, telling them that their hands are tied because they have been ordered by their superiors to abide by the provisions of the 1991 memorandum of the Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council. All the while your government exacerbates the plight of young members of the Bahá’í community.

How is it that a government would debar a population of young citizens from access to higher education and then, when their families, with the help of one another, make private arrangements that bring them together in their homes to study such subjects as physics and biology, pronounce such activity to be “illegal” by citing laws that are in fact intended to guide the operation of educational institutions that serve the general public? Why is the government so ruthless in the face of the earnestness of Bahá’í youth to obtain higher education? Are not the professors in your universities calling upon their own students to cultivate the same commitment to learning?

Even though the Bahá’í community’s program of higher education has never been in a position to formally award degrees to its students who have studied in this educational endeavor, the academic accomplishments of scores of graduates of these classes and their eagerness to learn have led universities in many lands to accept their work as qualifying them for post-graduate studies. What has evoked the deep admiration of the professors and classmates of those who have gone abroad for such studies is the determination evinced by these students to return to Iran after the completion of their studies despite the numerous obstacles they face and their readiness to accept every manner of hardship in their longing to contribute to the advancement of their country. Why is such dedication to the betterment of the country unappreciated by the government of Iran?

One strains to cite another example of a government that has devoted itself so systematically to blocking the educational advancement of a minority community. For it is not merely that Bahá’ís face social and institutional obstacles to their progress, as do many minorities. Nor is it simply that government policies prevent Bahá’ís from obtaining higher education, as deplorable as such an official action is. You go further, with no acceptable reason or basis, declaring it illegal for some of your citizens to use their minds to acquire knowledge for themselves!

The government of Iran now threatens Bahá’ís with widespread arrest if they do not discontinue their involvement with the higher education of Bahá’í youth. The charges are, however, very vague. What is “illegal”? To study? To learn? To accompany others in their quest to acquire knowledge? Why debar Bahá’í youth from studying or gathering together to learn, or disallow a dismissed university professor from sharing his or her learning with young people who are deprived of access to education? Ultimately, which is illegal: a government policy that excludes its citizens from higher education on the basis of their religious affiliation or the efforts of a community to educate its own youth? It is all too apparent that declaring the current efforts of the Bahá’í community to educate its youth to be illegal is, alas, but one more ploy—a transparent attempt to misuse the Bahá’í principle of obedience to government in order to get the Bahá’ís themselves to become complicit in retarding the progress of their own community.

In the eyes of Bahá’ís, government as a system for maintaining the welfare and orderly progress of human society merits both respect and wholehearted support; indeed obedience to the government is a feature of Bahá’í beliefs. This obedience, however, is not absolute. They will not, for instance, accept the least compromise on matters of fundamental spiritual principle—the education of children and youth is one such principle.

Among the Bahá’í teachings is that God “has chosen the reality of man and has honored it with intellect and wisdom, the two most luminous lights in either world.” “Knowledge,” according to our Writings, “is as wings to man’s life, and a ladder for his ascent”; its acquisition is “incumbent upon everyone”. It is “a veritable treasure for man, and a source of glory, of bounty, of joy, of exaltation, of cheer and gladness unto him.” Further, it is stated, “The happiness and pride of a nation consist in this, that it should shine out like the sun in the high heaven of knowledge.” And parents are enjoined “to strive with all effort to train the daughter and the son” and “to rear them in the bosom of sciences and arts.”

Thus, Bahá’ís consider the acquisition of knowledge to be the duty of every individual ordained by the Almighty in order to develop the latent gems of human capability and contribute to the betterment of society. All should be accorded freedom to acquire it; no government should deny this fundamental and sacred right to its citizens. Nevertheless, in response to recent government actions, the Bahá’ís of Iran are engaged in a review of their activities over the past twenty years to provide higher education to their youth and, if necessary, will make changes so as to more explicitly emphasize the informal nature of their efforts. They do this to once again demonstrate their good will.

You are well aware that Bahá’ís cannot abandon their responsibility to ensure that their young people receive in Iran the best, the most useful education that can be provided to them, nor will they deny their faith to gain access to higher education. We call on you, as the Minister responsible for the higher education of your nation’s youth, to work to bring the unjust and oppressive practices of the government of the Islamic Republic to an end not only for the Bahá’í youth but also for all other citizens.

Respectfully, Bahá’í International Community

Enclosures

cc: Permanent Missions of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations, New York and Geneva

—

Source:

See Press Release by BWNS here;

PDF: English, Persian

Writing now in the 17 December 2010 edition of the Wall Street Journal Europe, Dr Kishan Manocha, Director of the Office of External Affairs of the Bahá’í community of the UK, has said that the injustices suffered by the Bahá’ís in Iran reflects the oppression that has engulfed the entire country. This follows an open letter published by the Bahá’í International Community to the Head of the Iranian Judiciary.

Seven former leaders of the Bahá’í community in Iran are in their first year of a decade of unjust incarceration. They were arrested in mid-2008, held without charge for months and denied proper access to lawyers or regular visitation from their families. When finally charged with outrageously unsubstantiated crimes—especially the capital crime of “spreading corruption on earth”—the seven Bahá’ís categorically denied each offense. They were convicted this past August and their lawyer, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, said that the charges were without “cause or evidence.”

Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naimi, Saeid Rezaie, Mahvash Sabet, Behrouz Tavakkoli and Vahid Tizfahm—these seven individuals represent a 30-year history of a state-sponsored persecution of the largest religious minority in Iran. The Islamic Republic wants us to forget about the prisoners, their long-suffering co-religionists, and the countless other victims of human-rights abuse in that country.

These seven Bahá’ís are a portrait of Iran. Their ages range from 37 to 77. Some have aging parents and all have children, the youngest of whom was only nine when his father was arrested. They come from across the country. Their professions are also varied: psychologist, industrialist, manufacturer, engineer, educator, social worker, optician. Each has given voluntary service to their fellow Iranians: promoting literacy, advancing the equality of men and women—and providing education to the thousands of Bahá’í youth who are denied admission to Iranian universities because of their religion.

This is no band of spies, as was alleged. An Iranian appeals court was forced to admit as much, overturning the original charges of espionage, undermining state security, and tarnishing the reputation of the Islamic Republic. The only charges that were upheld were that these Bahais had administered to the social and spiritual needs of their religious community. And yet, the government has known of their activities for the past 20 years—to suddenly brand their work illegal is baseless and unjust. The Iranian judiciary distorted the peaceful religious beliefs of the defendants, and sought to criminalize their benign service to the  Bahá’í community. This is a brazen contravention of Iranians’ freedoms of conscience and belief, which are safeguarded by Iran’s own constitution, by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that Iran has ratified.

Not only was there no proof for the charges brought against these Bahá’ís, but the treatment they received during their detention and trial violated every legal norm and standard of fairness.

Officials from the Ministry of Intelligence used interrogation methods that disregarded the standards of civilized behavior—and were still unable to extract false confessions. The judge during their trial declared the proceedings “open and public”—and then refused to grant attendance requests from family members and international observers. Journalists were excluded—but government cameramen and intelligence agents were an active presence. When innocent citizens are subjected to a show trial, it is the judiciary and not the defendants who are tried before the public gaze. This trial was devoid of impartiality, made a mockery of Iran’s judicial process, and exposed the absurdity of its claim to be a champion of human rights.

The seven Bahá’ís are today incarcerated in Gohardasht prison, near Karaj. This facility is notorious for its appalling filth, pestilence, disease, and the privation of adequate facilities for basic personal hygiene. They are being held in prison cells that make it difficult to lie down, or even to perform their daily prayers. The prison is overcrowded, with reports of inmates being forced to sleep in corridors. These inhuman conditions contradict the Islamic Republic’s professed principles of Islamic compassion and justice. The treatment of the Bahá’í prisoners—and their fellow inmates, whether innocent or guilty—violates the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

In these conditions, the Bahá’í community has received accounts of a growing admiration among the prison population for their fellow inmates, the seven Bahá’ís, who have become beacons of hope and sources of comfort. For the Gohardasht prisoners, they are symbols of the free spirit of sincere Iranians.

The Bahá’ís in Iran are not “others”—they are an inseparable part of the Iranian nation. The injustices they have suffered reflect the oppression that has engulfed the nation. If the leaders of the Islamic Republic could respect the rights of Iranian Bahá’ís, it would signal their willingness to respect the rights of all Iranian citizens. The Bahá’í community today calls for the release of the seven Bahai prisoners, and the dozens of other Bahá’ís incarcerated throughout the country. But this call is not limited to the Bahá’ís: The Iranian government must respect the rights of all Iranian people.

This is no more than what the Islamic Republic asks on behalf of Muslim minorities in other lands. Bahá’ís merely seek the same treatment from Iran.

—

Source: http://www.bahai.org.uk/News/bahainews-wallst.html

Stepping into the gardens of the Shrine of the Bab is like entering a hallucination. They rise in steps all the way up the mountainside above Haifa’s downtown, and at the midway point, at midmorning, the clear light off the Mediterranean combines with the precise efforts of 150 gardeners to achieve a combination of lucid depth and dazzling color. The glittering dome of the shrine hangs suspended above an immaculate park like the sun rising over an infinity pool. It radiates a sense of permanence. “It’s kind of like a theme park, where they’re keeping everything ‘just so,’ ” says Jonas Mejer, 20, a student visiting from Copenhagen. “But it’s a holy place.”

And it has just reopened after a reverential restoration that cost about $6 million — a goodly portion of it going to the dome’s 11,970 gold-flecked tiles — and took three years to complete. Resplendent again, the shrine stands as a testament to the survival of the Baha’i faith, which started in Iran in the early 1800s and ended up with its spiritual locus, by an accident of empire, in modern Israel.

(See the top 10 religion stories of 2010.)

The shrine marks the resting place of the “Bab,” or “Gate,” the title given to Siyyid Ali-Muhammad in his role as prophet. Born in southwestern Iran, he announced that a greater messenger was coming after him and laid down some of the precepts of the new faith, such as equality for women and the renunciation of violence. He was executed as a heretic, his remains recovered by followers and moved covertly from place to place for decades. Their final resting place was decided by the messenger he heralded, Mizra Hussein Ali, known as Baha’u'llah, or “Glory of God.” Sent into exile, he was taken to an Ottoman prison in Acre, across the bay from Haifa. He picked out the hillside where the Bab’s remains are buried, though his own grave in Acre (which Israelis call Akko) is the one the world’s over 5 million Baha’is face during prayers.

“When you explain the Baha’i faith, people say, ‘Well, that’s just common sense,’ ” says Rob Weinberg, communications director at the Baha’i World Centre, as the Haifa complex is known. It’s a monotheism that embraces all major religions, positing that God enlightened humankind over the ages by sending prophets — Abraham, Zoroaster, Krishna, the Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad. The Bab and Baha’u'llah were the latest in the chain. Baha’is revere marriage, family, public service and both science and religion, since both seek truth.

(See pictures of spiritual healing around the world.)

As noncontroversial as that may seem, it hasn’t prevented Baha’is from being persecuted, mostly in Iran, where they are regarded as apostates. The problem is with the idea that the Creator sent a messenger after Muhammad, whom Muslims regard as the final word — “the seal of the prophets.” The 300,000 believers who remain in the Islamic Republic routinely face discrimination and even arrest. Baha’i youth who want to attend university must hide their faith because adherents are barred from higher education.

(See pictures of Christians under siege in the Muslim world.)

Believers seeking solace from oppression can find it in the becalming brilliance of the Shrine of the Bab. Not that Haifa exactly teems with the faithful: last year the 760,000 tourists outnumbered Baha’is at the shrine by 100 to 1. (The largest concentration of Baha’is is in India.) Still, Haifa is a good fit for the Baha’is. Its Jewish and Arab populations seem at ease with each other, and glad to have a third faith in their midst. “The shrine,” said Mayor Yona Yahav at the reopening, “is the core and symbol of this tolerant and multicultural city.” And indeed, from halfway up this exquisitely landscaped hill, there seems no safer haven.

—
Source: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2081789,00.html#ixzz1SrqvMYem

According to the Human Rights House of Iran, Maliheh Roozbeh(Roozkhosh) was arrested in the Province of Fars by Intelligence agents. There are no reports on her condition. She has a 7 year old daughter.

Zhinous Gholampour has also been arrested in Northern Iran and trasnfererd to an undisclosed location.

Furthermore, Parvaneh Bahamin has been arrested in a village in Yasouj and transferred to a detention center in the city. He brother Behrouz Bahamin was also arrested on the same day and trasferred to a detention center in Shiraz.

—

source:

Persian Article: http://www.rahana.org/archives​/42469

English: http://www.rahana.org/en/?p=11464

]]> http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8143/feed 1 http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8073 http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8073#comments Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:04:16 +0000 editor http://www.iranpresswatch.org/?p=8073 TORONTO — Iranian scholars, many from globally prominent universities, gathered here for a groundbreaking academic conference on the persecution of Iran’s Baha’is.

Titled “Intellectual Othering and the Baha’i Question in Iran,” the conference examined how Iranian authorities have sought to exclude Baha’is from social, political, cultural, and intellectual life by portraying them as outsiders in their own land – a process known as “othering.”

The event, held from 1-3 July, was the first major academic conference at a top-ranked university to focus on the persecution of Iran’s Baha’is in any context.

“This conference is not a Baha’i studies conference,” said its main organizer Mohamad Tavakoli. “It is an effort to understand the use of repression in the history of modern Iran and how the ‘othering’ of Baha’is has become a mechanism of mass mobilization for the legitimization of the state and for the creation of political-religious ideology.”

Dr. Tavakoli – a well-known scholar on Iran and the Middle East from the University of Toronto – said the idea for the conference came from his own research into the degree to which various Iranian groups had used anti-Baha’i rhetoric and made a scapegoat of Baha’is to gain political power, both in the past and the present.

Within this framework, the talks and papers – presented by scholars from such diverse backgrounds as atheism, Baha’i, Christianity, humanism, Islam and Judaism – ranged across a wide territory: from early efforts to vilify Baha’is by painting them as colonialist agents of the British and Russians, to the use of modern propaganda techniques that, for example, falsely characterize Iranian Baha’is as part of a cult that uses “brainwashing” techniques to steal away Muslim children.

One presentation described how memoirs and oral histories by clerics have been used to demonize Baha’is since the 1979 Revolution. These memoirs, said Shahram Kholdi – a PhD candidate from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom – represent a large pool of literature, largely unexamined in the West, which has been used to create a revisionist narrative of the founding of the Islamic Republic, aimed at the faithful.

Attacking Baha’is – often using indirect language – is a frequent theme of these memoirs, said Mr. Kholdi. “Baha’is are often portrayed as foreign agents,” he said, explaining that Baha’is are described as part of an external force behind the oppressive measures of the Pahlavi regime. “So they use Baha’is to legitimize their own revolutionary history.”

Politicians also frequently used pogroms against Baha’is for political reasons, explained Homa Katouzian, a professor of Oriental Studies at Oxford University, who examined a 1924 incident where an anti-Baha’i demonstration led to the assassination of the American vice consul in Iran. Baha’is were “a particularly soft target,” he said.

Historical parallels

Several speakers made comparisons between the oppression of Iranian Baha’is under the Islamic Republic and other historical efforts to portray a particular religious or ethnic group as outsiders – something that has often led to wider pogroms or worse.

The father of Rhoda Howard-Hassmann – a professor of international human rights at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada – was a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany. Professor Howard-Hassmann said the descriptions she heard at the conference about abuses directed against Baha’is were all too familiar.

“The talk of the desecration of graves, the conspiracy theories, …the accusation that they are a cult that is stealing children – these are all characteristics of extreme retribution, if not pre-genocide,” she said.

“This is a political phenomenon, caused by a regime and its manipulation of political beliefs. It is not something that simply exists among the people.”

In his talk, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, a professor of Persian studies at the University of Maryland, examined the destruction of Iran’s Baha’i holy places and properties. He recounted a long list of Baha’i sites that have been destroyed – from village Baha’i centres in the late 19th century to the House of the Bab, one of the most sacred Baha’i sites in the world, which was razed by mobs incited by Muslim clerics, shortly after the Islamic Revolution.

Professor Karimi-Hakkak compared such demolitions to attacks on other major religious sites, for example the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, saying that their purpose was often to assert the power of the majority over the minority, and to place the minority in the category of the “other.”

When a Shiite believer destroys buildings or graves, he said “they demonstrate that religious minorities must obey them and they have no power to protect their holy sites or their revered graves.”

Other scholars made references to pogroms against the Ottoman Armenians and against Orthodox Christians in Soviet Russia.

Contemporary relevance

The relevance of the “Baha’i question” to larger issues of religious intolerance and political repression worldwide was also explored, as participants considered what lessons can be learned from the Baha’i experience.

Several contributors said they believed that the Baha’i case now exemplifies the increasing oppression that is being felt by all Iranians, especially since the crackdown that followed the 2009 presidential election. This has led many ordinary Iranians to sympathize and identify with Baha’is, they said.

“I think the atrocities committed against the Baha’is are being intuitively registered and included among the most significant cases of human rights violations in Iran,” said Reza Afshari, a professor of history at Pace University in New York. “At last, this has led to a growing recognition that human rights do matter and that their violations are by-products of the country’s authoritarian rule and intolerance culture, mediated by the Shiite mullahs’ direct intrusions into the realms of national politics.”

Ramin Jahanbegloo – a professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, who himself spent four months in prison in the Islamic Republic of Iran – spoke about the importance of including the Baha’i question in any future effort at national reconciliation. He compared such a process to what happened in South Africa, saying the first step in rebuilding and healing a future Iran would be to forgive – rather than forget.

In this regard, he said, it was important to “bring to light the dark episodes” of Iran’s collective life, such as the persecution of Baha’is. “Forgiveness does not mean forgetting,” he said.

The conference ended with a talk by noted Iranian human rights lawyer Abdol-Karim Lahidji, who examined several international legal instruments that can be used to protect against the type of discrimination that was the meeting’s theme.

Dr. Lahidji spoke boldly about the need for greater respect for human rights in Iran – and the need to grant Baha’is full rights of citizenship.

“Freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of religion – and not to believe in any religion – has to be recognized,” he said, stressing the importance of passionately defending human rights and the victims of discrimination, whether they are members of your own particular group or not.

“If other people’s rights are violated, you have to defend them too. This is the struggle of every single one of us,” he said.

Special Reports

The Baha’i World News Service has published a Special Report which includes articles and background information about the seven Iranian Baha’i leaders – their lives, their imprisonment, trial and sentencing – and the allegations made against them. It also offers further resources about the persecution of Iran’s Baha’i community.

Another Special Report includes articles and background information about Iran’s campaign to deny higher education to Baha’is. It contains a summary of the situation, feature articles, case studies and testimonials from students, resources and links.

The International Reaction page of the Baha’i World News service is regularly updated with responses from governments, nongovernmental organizations, and prominent individuals, to actions taken against the Baha’is of Iran.

The Media Reports page presents a digest of media coverage from around the world.

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Source: http://news.bahai.org/story/837

]]> http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8073/feed 0 http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8067 http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/8067#comments Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:49:03 +0000 editor http://www.iranpresswatch.org/?p=8067 The Toronto Initiative for Iranian Studied in corporation with Foundation for Iranian Studies presents an International Symposium onIntellectual Othering and the Baha’i Question in Iran at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on July 1-3, 2011.

Muhammad Afnan, Payam Akhavan, Diane Ala’i, Reza Afshari, Jennifer Jenkins — are only a few of the some 35 outstanding speakers in the Symposium covering many topics and providing a very complete and balanced view of the subject at hand.

please see the symposium’s web site here:http://iranianstudies.ca/bahai/

Editor

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Please Note: For some technical reasons, the original post does not allow comments, and therefore, this is a re-post.

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The latest calls – for an end to both the imprisonment of Iran’s seven Baha’i leaders and the continuing detention of 12 staff and faculty members of the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) – have coincided with the sending of a message to the Baha’is of Iran by the Universal House of Justice.

The letter, written in Persian and dated 17 June, dismisses as “baseless” and “absurd” statements by the Iranian authorities that the Baha’i community’s effort to educate its young members is “illegal.”

It also upbraids those in Iran who, it says, have shunned true Islamic values, the laws of their land, and the nation’s proud history of learning and knowledge, and have allowed themselves – based on ignorant religious prejudice – to deny young citizens of their higher education.

“Unjust detention”

In Chile, the Senate has unanimously asked President Sebastián Piñera to “strongly condemn” Iran for its “rigorous and systematic persecution of Baha’is.”

In a resolution approved unanimously on 15 June, the Chilean Senate specifically mentioned the arrests last month of BIHE faculty and staff, objecting to the “unjust detention of those individuals.”

The Senate noted that, “since 1979 the government of Iran has systematically denied higher education to young adherents of its largest non-Muslim religious minority, the large Baha’i community of 300,000 believers.

“The government also has sought to suppress the efforts of the Baha’is to establish their own initiatives, including the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE).”

A passionate plea

In the Canadian Senate, Senator Mobina Jaffer has asked for “new steps” by Canada to “call Iran to account for its unacceptable treatment of the Baha’is.”

Senator Jaffer – who is Canada’s first Muslim Senator – spoke for more than 15 minutes on 21 June about the human rights situation in Iran, decrying the country’s “brutal campaign of oppression against its citizens.”

“Last September, the UN catalogued the abuses perpetrated by Iran, including torture and cruelty, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, public executions and executions of juvenile defenders, the use of stoning as a measure of execution, violation of women’s rights, violations of the rights of minorities, and restrictions on freedom of assembly and association and freedom of opinion and expression,” she said.

Much of her speech, however, was devoted to a discussion of the Iranian government’s persecution of Baha’is, saying that the situation “is a case study of the real intentions of the Iranian government with respect to its human rights obligations.”

“The persecution faced by Baha’is in Iran today has few parallels in human history,” said Senator Jaffer. “This is a community of more than 300,000 people that for more than 30 years has been subject to an often explicit state policy focused on its destruction. The intensity of pressure felt by this religious minority is almost impossible for us, as Canadians, to imagine, yet it is our duty as senators, indeed as fellow human beings, to raise our voices in solidarity with their cause.

“Baha’is face prosecution in Iran because a hardline clerical elite views their religion as illegitimate, and they are therefore considered to be apostates or opponents of Islam. This attitude toward Baha’is is spread by lies and misinformation channelled through state-controlled media. Baha’is are often falsely accused of being foreign agents working secretly against the nation. The result of such disinformation campaigns is widespread ignorance that perpetuates a culture of prejudice,” she said.

Senator Jaffer’s formal “inquiry” means that the Senate will take up the discussion about Iran when it reconvenes in the autumn.

Iran’s actions “shameful”

In India, prominent people are continuing to raise their voices against the imprisonment of BIHE staff and faculty members.

The Better Education Through Innovation (BETI) Foundation in Lucknow – which is dedicated to the education of girls – has expressed its “firm and committed solidarity in condemning action taken against the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education.”

“It is indeed surprising that the Islamic Republic of Iran should resort to action which not only deny Baha’is of their inherent Human Rights but also goes against the edicts of the Holy Quran which repeatedly stresses the need for gaining the highest and best education possible…” wrote Sehba Hussain, founder director of the BETI Foundation and a member of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

“Reactions taken by the Government in Iran are shameful in the eyes of the True Believers as well as the Almighty,” wrote Ms. Hussain.

In a letter to the Iranian ambassador to India, accompanying a petition signed by 86 leading figures, Maja Daruwala – director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiatives – expressed the signatories’ “strongest condemnation of the brutal acts of persecution against Iranian Baha’is,” particularly “those associated with the noble work of providing access to education to Baha’i youth who have been systematically denied their right to education…”

“We also ask the government of Iran to honour its own obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and allow all its citizens access to higher education irrespective of their ideology or beliefs,” wrote Ms. Daruwala.

Special Reports

The Baha’i World News Service has published a Special Report which includes articles and background information about the seven Iranian Baha’i leaders – their lives, their imprisonment, trial and sentencing – and the allegations made against them. It also offers further resources about the persecution of Iran’s Baha’i community.

Another Special Report includes articles and background information about Iran’s campaign to deny higher education to Baha’is. It contains a summary of the situation, feature articles, case studies and testimonials from students, resources and links.

The International Reaction page of the Baha’i World News service is regularly updated with responses from governments, nongovernmental organizations, and prominent individuals, to actions taken against the Baha’is of Iran.

The Media Reports page presents a digest of media coverage from around the world.

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Source: http://news.bahai.org/multimedia/slideshow.php?storyid=835

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