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Canadian support for imprisoned Baha’i leaders

Canadian support for imprisoned Baha’i leaders

The seven Baha’i leaders sentenced in August to 20-year prison terms learned yesterday that their sentences have been reduced to ten years.

Their lawyers, including Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, the Baha’i community, and governments and human rights organizations around the world continue to demand the immediate release of these prisoners. No evidence of any wrongdoing was presented at their trial nor were minimal standards of justice respected in the arrest, imprisonment and eventual conduct of their trial.

Baha’i communities across Canada have held public meetings, devotional gatherings, and more than 40 Local Assemblies have contacted nearly 100 Members of Parliament in order to raise public awareness of the unjust sentencing of the former leaders of the Baha’i community of Iran. On Vancouver Island, Member of Parliament Dr. Keith Martin addressed a large public gathering, while the Baha’is in Ottawa are planning a candle-light vigil at the Human Rights Memorial next week. Alberta Human Rights Commission representative Cam Stewart and Professor Pierre Yves Mocquais addressed a large audience, in Calgary.

The Regina Leader Post and the Comox Valley Echo newspapers published articles focusing on relatives of the prisoners living in Canada, while other newspapers, the Prince Albert Daily Herald, Saskatoon Star Phoenix, and University of Saskatchewan’s “The Sheaf” published stories. The capital city newspaper in New Brunswick, the Fredericton Daily Gleaner, ran a story on their front page. Radio interviews on the subject were broadcast in Ottawa and British Columbia, and Persian-language papers have reported in detail on the story. Many Canadians are visiting the websites promoting letter-writing campaigns.

The sentencing in August of Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Mahvash Sabet, Behrouz Tavakkoli and Vahid Tizfahm generated a wave of condemnation from governments and human rights organizations around the world. Most recently prominent figures in India added their voices to expressions of outrage at this, the latest incident in a long and continuing series of attacks and human rights violations visited on Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority. See the two most recent Baha’i World News Service articles on this topic.