For the Bahá'ís imprisoned in Iran, freedom
and human rights seem remote
Nazil Ghanea ("New Statesman," June 6, 2014)
It has been a month of contrasts, frankly of extremes.
May 2014 marked six years since seven adults were taken from their homes
and thrown into the notorious Evin prison in Iran. One is the mother of a
dear friend whose gifts are treasured in my home.
Who are these prisoners? The charges against the seven included espionage
and propaganda against the Islamic order. They are mothers and fathers, one
is a school principal, another an agricultural engineer, a businessman, a
psychologist. What matters though is that they are Bahá'ís, members of the
country’s largest non-Muslim religious minority and persecuted by the
government for decades. The fabricated charges against them, the illegal
closed
trial that led to a twenty-year jail sentence – the longest given to any
prisoners of conscience in the country – were all set up to punish them for
their role in coordinating the affairs of the Bahá'ís in Iran, affairs which
are numerous in a religious community that operates through such networks
of elected and appointed lay people.
The most moving protest on this anniversary was the large group of
prominent Iranians within Iran that risked life and limb to stand up against
the
unjust imprisonment of the seven by visiting their family members. This group
included human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh – joint winner of the 2012
Sakharov Prize honoring those who have dedicated their lives to the defence
of human rights and freedom of thought – and Ayatollah Masumi Tehrani, a
senior Muslim cleric who recently gifted a piece of art to the Bahá'ís as an
expression of hope for a future Iran committed to respect for the human
rights of all.
There remains, however, a very sharp contrast between this cohesion amongst
Iranian defenders of human rights and the actions of the Iranian
authorities. When a European Parliament delegation visited Tehran last
December for
the first time in six years, Iran angrily criticised them for “secretly”
meeting with so-called seditionists including Sotoudeh. When the EU’s
foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton visited Iran in March, she too was
harshly
criticised for meeting with a group of leading Iranian women activists,
including Sotoudeh. A European Parliament resolution on 3 April 2014
condemning Iran’s “continued, systematic violation of fundamental rights” led
to
Iran’s Parliament cancelling a planned visit with EU parliamentarians.
As calls for respect of human rights were being heard from Iran, Iran’s
revolutionary guards proceeded with their latest attempt at oppression by
excavating a historically important Bahá'í cemetery in Shiraz, the southern
Iranian city of my birth. Some 950 graves of Bahá'ís that include those of 10
women – the youngest just 17 – executed for refusing to forcibly deny
their religious belief, now risk being destroyed forever. Many thousands from
around the world will forever be denied the possibility of remembering the
10 Bahá'í women at their resting place. Thousands of family members will be
denied the basic dignity of saying prayers for their dead and my daughters
will never be able to see the graves of their great-grandparents.
Which of these shall I share with my 8 and 11 year old? The profound joy of
principled camaraderie amongst Iranian upholders of justice, or the attack
on their dead ancestors? I’ve shared both, trusting that they will gain an
insight into the choice we all ultimately face of sacrificing for the
greater good or sinking to the depths of hatred. All this, with patient
optimism that the former is conquering the latter and the future of Iran is
bright.
Dr Nazila Ghanea is Assistant Professor of International Human Rights Law
at the University of Oxford and serves as a member of the OSCE advisory
panel on freedom of religion or belief. She writes this piece in her personal
capacity
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