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Jun
16
Few incidents in Iran of recent decades have been more shocking than the group execution of ten Bahá’í women in Shiraz on 18 June 1983. Their crime? Teaching children following the government’s ban on Bahá’í pupils from attending schools.
Among the hanged was 25-year old Shirin Dalvand, pictured right.
“Shirin had moved with our whole family to the United Kingdom but returned to Shiraz to finish her degree in sociology,” recalls Shirin’s sister Shahla Davarpanah, who now lives in Newcastle in the north-east of England, “When the Iran-Iraq war started, no one could come out. Shirin stayed with our grandparents.”
The cruel hangings of Shirin Dalvand and her nine co-religionists not only revealed the religious basis of Iran’s persecution against Bahá’ís. It also demonstrated the courage with which the group faced their executioner.
Ranging in age from 17 to 57, the ten were led to the gallows in succession. The authorities apparently hoped that as each saw the others die, they would renounce their own faith. But according to eyewitness reports, the women went to their fate singing and chanting.
All of the women had been interrogated and tortured in the months leading up to their execution. The youngest of those killed was Muna Mahmudnizhad, pictured left, a 17-year old schoolgirl who because of her youth and innocence became, in a sense, a symbol for the group. In prison, she was lashed on the soles of her feet with a cable and forced to walk. Yet she would not be swayed from her Faith, even to the point of kissing the hands of her executioner and then the rope before putting it around her own throat. Muna’s story inspired a best-selling song and music video in Canada, and is now being made into a major feature film. Oscar-nominated actress from House of Sand and Fog, Shirin Agdashloo, has committed to playing the role of Muna’s mother in the film.
25 years on from the Shiraz hangings, Shahla Davarpanah is anxiously concerned about the safety of the seven Bahá’í leaders in Iran, recently arrested in dawn raids ominously similar to the events of the early 1980s when some 200 Bahá’ís were killed for their faith. “These events bring back all the memories,” said Mrs Davarpanah. “It’s hard to believe it’s still happening.”
But she senses that the people of Iran have changed since the events of 1983. “They know more than before. They have been told lies for so long and now can see that the Bahá’ís are not what the authorities say they are.”
Along with the worldwide Bahá’í community and countless other friends and supporters, Mrs Davarpanah is praying that the persecution of Bahá’ís in Iran will soon end. “I hope that the Bahá’ís in Iran will soon have the freedom to be able to live their lives in peace,” she said, “and that others will see the reality of what they truly stand for.”
Technorati Tags: Iran, Human Rights, persecution, Baha’i, Bahai
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