WUNRN

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http://www.news.bahai.org:80/human-rights/iran/iran-update.html

 

July 4, 2008

 

IRAN - LEADING MEMBERS OF BAHA'I FAITH DETAINED - 2 WOMEN

 

All seven members of national coordinating committee still in prison; no contact allowed with outside.

 

The seven members of the committee that sees to the minimum needs of the 300,000-member Baha’i community of Iran are still being held by the government. No formal charges have been filed against them, and none of them have been allowed contact with an attorney.

The Baha’i International Community learned several weeks ago that the seven were each allowed one brief phone call to their families. Since then, however, there has been no contact with them, nor has there been any news regarding their health or well-being.

All seven are believed to be incarcerated in Evin Prison in Tehran. Six of them were arrested in their homes on 14 May 2008 during pre-dawn raids. They are Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm. The seventh member, Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, also lives in Tehran but was detained in the city of Mashhad on 5 March 2008 and later moved to Evin Prison.

The Baha’i International Community categorically rejects suggestions by government officials that the arrests are “related to security.” Baha’i spokeswoman Bani Dugal has stated: “Such allegations are utterly baseless. They are not new, and the Iranian government knows well that they are untrue. The documented plan of the Iranian government has always been to destroy the Bahá’í community as a viable entity in Iran, and these latest arrests represent an intensification of this campaign. Bahá’ís in Iran are being persecuted solely because of their religious beliefs. The best proof of this is the fact that, time and again, Bahá’ís have been offered their freedom if they recant their Bahá’í beliefs and convert to Islam – an option few have taken. We ask whether issues of state security rather than ideology are involved in recent incidents like the destruction of a Bahá’í cemetery and the use of a bulldozer to crush the bones of a Bahá’í who was interred there; the harassment of hundreds of Bahá’í schoolchildren throughout Iran by teachers and school officials in an effort to make them reject their own religion; the denial to Bahá’í university students of access to education solely on account of their beliefs; or the publication in recent months of dozens of defamatory anti-Bahá’í articles in Kayhan and other government-sponsored news media.”

See Baha'i World News Service articles of 27 May, 21 May, and 15 May for information about the arrests and detention.

Nobel laureates and others voice concern for Iranian Baha’is:

In late June, six Nobel Peace Prize laureates – organized as the Nobel Women’s Initiative, with an office in Ottawa, Canada – issued a statement calling for the unconditional release of the seven Iranian Baha’is who are members of the coordinating committee. Founders of the Nobel Women’s Initiative are Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Betty Williams, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, and Wangari Muta Maathai.

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Women Living Under Muslim Laws - WLUML

http://wluml.org:80/english/actionsfulltxt.shtml?cmd%5B156%5D=i-156-562078

Iran: Leading Members of the Bahá’í Faith Detained

10/07/2008: Six leaders of a group managing the Baha'i community's religious and administrative affairs in Iran were arrested at their homes by officers from the Ministry of Intelligence on 14 May 2008, and are now detained in Evin Prison in Tehran. A seventh person, acting secretary for the group, Mahvash Sabet, has been in detention since 5 March. The Baha'i community has long been persecuted by the Iranian government, especilly since the Iranian Revolution.

The following news has been received from the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. We have since read that the detainees have been granted access to their family members, but not to legal counsel:

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran is calling on Iranian judicial authorities to account, in terms of Iranian and international law, for the detention on 14 May 2008 of six leading members of the Baha’i faith, who have been taken to Evin prison. All are members of the Baha’i national coordination group, the “Friends;” the seventh member has been imprisoned in Mashhad since 5 March 2008. No charges have been announced in the cases.

While the detainees have all been regularly summoned, detained, and interrogated as individuals, this is the first time they have been seized as a group. The entire leadership body of the Baha’is in Iran is thus in detention.

“We are deeply concerned that the detention without charge of the entire Baha’i leadership is consistent with a pattern of violent and illegal persecution of Baha’is in Iran,” the Campaign stated. “The persecution of religious minorities will bring neither internal stability nor international security to Iran.”

Intelligence agents detained Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Vahid Tizfahm at their respective homes in the early morning of 14 May and conducted searches.

The seventh member of the leadership body, Mahvash Sabet, has been in incommunicado detention since 5 March. According to information received by the Campaign, her family has only been allowed to see her for a moment when Intelligence Ministry agents brought her to a public place where a family member was able to recognize her. Other than this brief encounter, her family has had no contact with her, nor any telephone calls.

“There is cause to fear for the health and safety of Mahvash Sabet, whose incommunicado detention amounts to a form of torture, and of her colleagues as well,” the Campaign said.

Such arrests are alarming, especially when taking into account the past treatment of Baha’is and recent trends. In 1980s, the Iranian government targeted the Bahai leadership through extensive arrests and executed seventeen members of the leadership. In the past three years the numbers of executions of all kinds have skyrocketed in Iran, doubling each year.

The Campaign is calling upon members of the international community, the United Nations, and the European Union to protest these unjustified detentions, and to call for the immediate release of the detained Baha’i members if they are not properly charged in accordance with international standards.