WUNRN
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.
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.
______________________________________________________________________
Women Living
Under Muslim Laws - WLUML
http://wluml.org:80/english/actionsfulltxt.shtml?cmd%5B156%5D=i-156-562078
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.