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May
13
A bleak future for Bahá’ís
Filed Under Comment, Human Rights, Iran | Leave a Comment
Bahá’í News UK is pleased to share an extract from an article written by Dr Moojan Momen, an Iranian author and academic, and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. The article is published in full on the New Statesman website.
International pressure may have set Roxana Saberi free, but the plight of seven Iranian Baha’is, imprisoned in Tehran a year ago, has gone largely unnoticed.
Earlier this week, US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was freed from prison in Iran after having her sentence for “spying” reduced. The charge, which she strongly denied, sparked international attention and calls for her release, which has now been widely welcomed.
But Ms Saberi leaves behind her many other inmates in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison whose “crimes” against the Iranian state are also open to question.
Thursday (14 May) marks the first anniversary of the arrest and detention of seven prominent members of the Baha’i faith, Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority.
The five men and two women made up an informal national committee, serving the needs of the country’s 300,000 strong Baha’i community in the absence of formal Baha’i institutions, which are outlawed. Their committee – which had operated with the full knowledge of the authorities – along with all local ad hoc Baha’i administrations – was disbanded in March this year in a gesture of good will from the peaceful and law-abiding Baha’is to their government.
In the one year since their incarceration, the seven detainees have faced no charges nor have they been allowed access to their legal counsel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr Shirin Ebadi. They have faced spurious accusations of “espionage for Israel”, and “insulting religious sanctities”.
Iran’s prosecutor-general, Ayatollah Dorri-Najafabadi, has asserted that there is evidence that the seven have been involved in “intelligence-gathering” and “infiltration”, thus more or less declaring their guilt before any trial date has been announced. The evidence he refers to has yet to be disclosed to the public or produced in a court of law.
In recent days, however, a report from the Baha’i’s UN office indicates that another charge is being levelled against the seven prisoners; that of “spreading corruption on earth.”
To read the full article, visit the New Statesman website
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