Geneva, Aug. 19, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Baha’i International Community has obtained information of a surprising and outrageous new propaganda ploy to incriminate the Baha’is in Iran by way of a staged video manufacturing filmed in a kindergarten.
On 31 July, the identical day as intelligence brokers have been invading Baha’i properties and arresting pre-school academics, brokers additionally entered a kindergarten in a serious metropolis in Iran and distributed Baha’i books and pamphlets to its academics, none of whom have been Baha’is. The brokers then instructed and compelled the kindergarten employees to say, on digital camera, that Baha’is had introduced these supplies and distributed them to the academics.
“This shameful act of fraud and pretense, carried out in a kindergarten, once again reveals the true motives of the Iranian government in persecuting Baha’is only for their faith,” stated Simin Fahandej, the BIC’s Representative to the United Nations in Geneva. “As the Iranian government has found no shred of evidence for their ludicrous accusations against the Baha’is, they have now resorted to fabricating evidence themselves, using Baha’i materials to accuse Baha’is of attempting to influence and convert Muslim children to the Baha’i Faith.”
Although the Iranian authorities makes an attempt to body the Baha’is as changing Muslim youngsters, quite a few official authorities paperwork testify to Iran’s plans to, in truth, convert Baha’i youngsters to Islam.
In 1991, a confidential authorities memorandum, introduced to mild at the moment by a United Nations Special Rapporteur, ready by Iran’s Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council and signed by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself, instructing that Baha’i youngsters be enrolled in faculties which have “a strong and imposing religious ideology” and that Baha’is be handled in such a means that “their progress and development are blocked”.
“The Iranian government not only attempts to distort history in school textbooks in order to remove the Baha’i Faith from Iranian history, and to force Baha’i children to change their faith,” continued Ms. Fahandej. “But it is now producing fake materials to advance its already baseless allegations against the Baha’is.”
This incident has occurred inside a bigger context of mounting assaults towards the Baha’is in Iran in current weeks. Since 31 July, the BIC has obtained reviews of over 196 separate incidents of persecution towards the Baha’is in Iran, together with arrests, imprisonments, confiscation of properties and properties, closure of business and exclusions from college.
Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence launched a uncommon assertion on 31 July, during which it alleged that members of the Baha’i group have been “propagating the teachings of the fabricated Baha’i colonialism and infiltrating educational environments,” together with kindergartens. Quite a few Baha’i kindergarten and pre-school academics have been arrested on that day underneath the pretext provided by the Ministry’s assertion. Filming the staged readings now additionally demonstrates that the authorities need to probably use video footage to substantiate their false claims and search to incite most people towards them.
Efforts to unfold hate propaganda towards the Baha’is are authorities coverage. The 1991 memorandum by Iran’s Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council additionally stated that Iran’s “propaganda institutions … must establish an independent section to counter … the Baha’is.”
And in March 2021 two human rights teams, League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran and the International Federation for Human Rights, printed an official Iranian directive which instructed native authorities within the metropolis of Sari, within the northern province of Mazandaran, to “conduct strict controls” on the Baha’is within the metropolis by “monitoring their operations,” and to introduce measures to “identify Baha’i students” in order to “bring them into Islam.”
“The Iranian authorities have spread hate propaganda against the Baha’is for 43 years,” stated Ms. Fahandej. “But Iranians of good will, who number in their millions, see through these lies. The incident at the kindergarten is the latest in a shameful litany of brazen deception, propaganda and hate speech, but these efforts do not go unnoticed by the international community and only work against Iran’s interests, showing its true motives of persecuting innocent people only for their beliefs.”
