Several prominent Canadians, have added their “voice” to the global campaign Seven Days in Remembrance of Seven Years for the Seven Baha’i Leaders. Coordinated by the Baha’i International Community, the campaign calls for the immediate release of the seven Iranian Baha’i leaders now in their seventh year of incarceration in Iran. Over the past week many Canadian artists, journalists, parliamentarians and authors including Margaret Atwood and John Raulston Saul, have supported the campaign on Twitter, through the hashtag #7bahais7years.
The campaign is scheduled to run from the 14 of May to the 21 of May and will highlight the arrests of the seven Baha’i leaders in 2008 and the fact that 90 other Baha’is are also prisoners of conscience in Iran. During this week events around the world will recall the wrongful arrest and imprisonment of Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Mahvash Sabet, Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Vahid Tizfahm. One Baha’i leader will be commemorated each day of the campaign beginning with Mahvash Sabet, the first to be arrested, and then continuing in alphabetical order
In recent days, Canada has seen a few articles on op-ed pages that refer to the ongoing persecution of Baha’is in Iran. M.P. Irwin Cotler wrote a major piece in The National Post on 4 May 2015 focusing on the baseless sentences imposed on the seven Baha’i leaders. A number of leading blogs and websites providing news of Iran have also run stories on the treatment of Baha’is in Iran.
Following the arrest of the leaders in 2008, after appallingly unjust court proceedings, sentences were handed down to the seven on such cooked-up charges as “espionage” and “spreading propaganda against the regime.” They were sentenced to 20 years in prison, the longest term of any current prisoners of conscience in Iran. Canadians are also asked to remember the plight of Baha’i educators who likewise remain wrongfully held in prison in Iran.
Canadians may follow the campaign on Twitter or Facebook through the hashtag #7Bahais7years.
The following Facebook page www.facebook.com/events/1638889016341780/ will also be updated frequently as the campaign progresses.