The following is reprinted from the Full Comment section of the National Post, Friday, 13 May 2011.
May 14th marks the third anniversary of the imprisonment of seven leaders of Iran’s Baha’i community. After an illegal 30-month detention in Tehran’s Evin Prison, the seven were tried and sentenced in August 2010. They had been members of a group permitted by the government up until their May 2008 arrest to attend to the minimal needs of the Baha’i community.
According to the prisoners’ lawyer, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, the court proceedings were a farce, producing no evidence of any crime. After an appeal, the 20-year sentences were reduced to ten years. Two months ago the court reinstated the 20-year sentences despite the fact that an appeal court had revoked three of the most egregious charges. To date, none of the court decisions, the original verdict or the ruling on appeal, have been given in writing to the prisoners or their attorneys.
Reports this past week indicate that the two women prisoners, Fariba Kamalabadi, a psychologist and mother of three, and Mahvash Sabet, a school principal, have been transferred to Qarchak prison, 60 km from Tehran.
“We understand that they are incarcerated with up to 400 other prisoners in a large warehouse-type room with minimal facilities,” said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations.
Roxana Saberi, the American journalist who spent several months in prison in Iran in 2009, has often spoken about the compassion that Kamalabadi and Sabet showed her when they were cellmates in Evin Prison.
“They lifted our spirits, gave us hope, and took care of me when I was on a hunger strike,” wrote Saberi in a March 2011 Wall Street Journal article. “The seven men and women were accused of crimes such as insulting religious sanctities, spying for Israel — charges that were never proven.”
Intense international pressure, with successive Canadian governments at the forefront of those efforts, appeared to moderate the attacks on the Baha’is, but following the election of President Ahmadinejad in 2004, human rights violations against the Baha’is intensified. Since then some 382 Baha’is have been arrested with 75 currently in prison, and more than 100 awaiting re-arrest and sentencing. Business licenses and government jobs are denied to Baha’is. The few Baha’is admitted to university are expelled when their religion becomes known, and Baha’i homes are frequently ransacked by government officials. Their homes have been burned in some cases by those whose passions are aroused by anonymous pamphlets circulated to create animosity towards the Baha’is.
In March of this year the wife of the eldest prisoner, Jamaloddin Khanjani, near eighty years of age, died in Tehran. Contrary to custom, Khanjani was refused permission to attend his wife’s funeral. Thousands, many not Baha’is, ignored security concerns and attended the funeral in Tehran.
Khanjani’s Canadian niece, Montreal film-maker Nika Khanjani, said that family members are grieving “on a very private and personal level but are continuing with their lives of service to the country of Iran.”
Governments around the world have condemned Iran, most recently the E.U. and the U.K.
The Canadian government tabled a UN General Assembly resolution on Iran’s human rights violations that passed with a majority vote in December, and on 6 February a parliamentary debate saw members from Conservative, Liberal and NDP parties express their support for the Baha’is of Iran. A unanimous all-party vote by the House of Commons in March 2009 condemned the treatment of Baha’is, and Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs has spoken out repeatedly about the matter.
Still, the Iranian regime remains deaf to the condemnation by the international community. The human rights abuses visited on Iranian citizens, from democracy and human rights defenders to student, women, labour leaders and journalists continues with world attention on other more dramatic news stories.
It has been said that the litmus test for genuine freedom in Iran will be the emancipation of the Baha’is. Events taking place around the world this weekend to mark the anniversary of the arrest of the seven, with special prayers being said at Baha’i gatherings in communities throughout Canada, aim to keep hopes of such a development alive.
Gerald Filson is director of public affairs, Baha’i Community of Canada.