Geneva, Sept. 01, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Fourteen Baha’is together with 13 youth had been arrested yesterday in the northern Iranian metropolis of Qaemshahr, Mazandaran province, and detained on the Sari intelligence workplace. Most of the arrests occurred at a non-public house the place the youth had been learning and discussing collectively the position of training in social progress. No info has been launched relating to the costs these younger Baha’is could face.
The arrests are the most recent in a month-long crackdown in opposition to Baha’is throughout the nation by the Iranian authorities. Authorities have focused Baha’is in 245 incidents of persecution over the previous 32 days, the Baha’i International Community (BIC) can verify, with arrests and imprisonment, the destruction of houses and confiscation of properties, raids on non-public and business premises, beatings, the denial of medicine to detainees and the denial of upper training to multiple hundred younger individuals.
The crackdown provoked widespread condemnation by the United Nations, a number of governments, civil society organizations together with Amnesty International, and throughout worldwide and Persian media retailers.
“How ironic that these youth were arrested while studying and discussing the role of education, when they themselves had all been denied access to higher education by the Iranian authorities”, stated Simin Fahandej, Representative of the BIC to the United Nations in Geneva. “The Iranian government’s cruelty breaks every measure. Not only does it deprive these youth of entering universities and developing their intellectual capacities, it also denies them the simple right to gather as young people to discuss issues of importance to their generation.”
Iran has systematically persecuted the Baha’i community since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. More than 200 Baha’is were killed after the Revolution and a 1991 policy document signed by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for the progress and development of the Baha’i community to be “blocked”—including by barring young Baha’is from attending Iranian universities. And a 2006 letter from the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, sent to 81 Iranian universities, said that if any students “are identified as Baha’is, they must be expelled from university”.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both signed by Iran, entitled Baha’is to manifest and practice their beliefs and to pursue education and the essentials of life.
A day earlier, on 30 August, legal appeals by 25 Baha’is to the 37th branch of the Fars province Court of Appeals were denied and their severe sentences upheld. The 25 people were first sentenced in June in Shiraz, and now face a combined total of almost 80 years in prison.
“Iranians of goodwill inside and outside Iran, the international community and countless individuals around the world have unequivocally asked Iran to end its persecution of the Baha’is,” said Ms. Fahandej. “Iran must realize that its continued persecution of the Baha’is only damages its own credibility domestically and internationally, while demonstrating to the world the innocence of the Baha’is in Iran.”
