First contact made with jailed Baha’is in Iran |26 July 2008

The calls were the first contact with the jailed Baha’is since six of them were arrested on May 14 in pre-dawn raids at their homes in Tehran. The seventh had been arrested in March in the city of Mashhad.

The Baha’i international community has learnt that on June 3, Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi were allowed to make short phone calls to their families.

Mrs Sabet had been detained in Mashhad on March 5 but was transferred on May 26 to Evin Prison in Tehran, where it is believed the others are also being held. Later it was confirmed that the others, five men, have also made brief phone calls to their families.

No charges have been filed against any of the seven, who comprise the entire membership of a coordinating committee that saw to the minimal needs of the 300,000-member Baha’i community of Iran.

In a statement, Baha’i spokeswoman Bani Dugal said: “The Baha’i international community categorically rejects suggestions by government officials that the arrests are ‘related to security’.

“Such allegations are utterly baseless. They are not new, and the Iranian government knows well that they are untrue. The documented plan of the Iranian government has always been to destroy the Baha’i community as a viable entity in Iran, and these latest arrests represent an intensification of this campaign.

“Baha’is in Iran are being persecuted solely because of their religious beliefs. The best proof of this is the fact that, time and again, Baha’is have been offered their freedom if they recant their Baha’i belief and convert to Islam – an option few have taken. 

“We ask whether issues of state security rather than ideology are involved in recent incidents like the destruction of a Baha’i cemetery and the use of a bulldozer to crush the bones of a Baha’i who was interred there; the harassment of hundreds of Baha’i schoolchildren throughout Iran by teachers and school officials in an effort to make them reject their own religion; the denial to Baha’i university students of access to education solely on account of their beliefs; or the publication in recent months of dozens of defamatory anti-Baha’i articles in Kayhan and other government-sponsored news media.”

In 1980, all nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Iran were taken away and presumed killed, as they were never heard from again. A year later, after the assembly had been reconstituted, eight of the nine members were arrested and killed.

Besides the seven committee members imprisoned in Tehran, about 15 other Baha’is are now held in Iran, some incommunicado and most with no formal charges against them.