UN Religious Freedom Official expresses fears for Baha’is in Iran
Written by ry on March 21st, 2006I hate to bring this up so soon into your joyous new year, but it seems that things are getting much worse in Iran.
The linked BWNS story tells how the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Asma Jahangir, released a statement about actions of the Iranian government against the Baha’is.
It seems that on October 29th of last year the Chairman of the Command Headquarters of the Armed Forces in Iran wrote a letter to a bunch of government agencies asking them to, “in a highly confidential manner, collect any and all information about members of the Baha’i faith,” prompting Ms. Jahangir to respond that she “considers that such monitoring constitutes an impermissible and unacceptable interference with the rights of members of religious minorities.”
From the story:
Such actions come in the wake of mounting media attacks on the Baha’is, the nature of which in the past have preceded government-led assaults on the Baha’is in Iran. “Kayhan,” the official Tehran daily newspaper has carried more than 30 articles about the Baha’is and their religion in recent weeks, all defamatory in ways that are meant to create provocation. Radio and television programs have joined in as well with broadcasts condemning the Baha’is and their beliefs. In addition, the rise in influence in Iranian governmental circles of the Anti-Baha’i Society, Hojjatieh, an organization committed to the destruction of the Baha’i Faith, can only heighten the fears for that beleaguered community.
[Bani Dugal, the Baha'i International Community's principal representative to the UN said,] “We well know what hateful propaganda can lead to; recent history offers too many examples of its horrific consequences. We make an urgent appeal to all nations and peoples on behalf of our Iranian coreligionists that they not allow a peace-loving, law-abiding people to face the extremes to which blind hate can lead,” said Ms. Dugal. “The ghastly deeds that grew out of similar circumstances in the past should not now be allowed to happen. Not again.”
For more information about the situation of Baha’is in Iran, please go here. Then, take a moment to puruse the graphic below, which highlights persecutions of the Baha’is in Iran from 1979 to the present (and feel free to download this high-res version of it.) And finally, please remember the Baha’is of Iran in your prayers. They could use them now more than ever.
(For previous entries on persecution of Bahai’s in Iran, look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
For those of us who came into the Baha'i Faith through the ever popular 
