Yesterday, deputy Tehran prosecutor Hassan Haddad was quoted by semi-official news agency Isna, saying that Iran’s seven imprisoned Baha’i leaders (see photo) will be going on trial next week on charges of ”acting against the Islamic Republic” and “espionage for Israel,” allegations that may lead to execution.
The Baha’i community categorically denies these charges. No evidence against them has been brought to light and their lawyer, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi has been prevented from meeting with the imprisoned Baha’i leaders for nearly a year to review their files.
The Baha’i faith, founded in 1863 in Iran, is considered heresy by the Islamic Republic. Followers of the faith have faced persecution since its founding. But the wave of repression has intensified in the last 30 years. There are some 300,000 Baha’is living in Iran. Baha’is refrain from involvement in partisan political activities.
The National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is in the US issued a statement saying that “the accusation of ‘spying’ against these 5 men and 2 women is contrived, and has been used as a pretext to persecute Bahá’ís for more than three quarters of a century.” “Since the early 1930s, the Bahá’í Faith’s antagonists in Iran have insisted that the religion was instead a political sect created by imperialist governments attempting to weaken Islam. Bahá’ís have successively been accused of being tools of Russian imperialism, British colonialism, American expansionism and most recently, of Zionism.”
The international headquarters of the Baha’i Faith is based today within the borders of modern-day Israel purely as a result of the banishment of the Faith’s founder, Bahá’u’lláh, by the Persian and Ottoman empires in the mid-19th century. In 1868, 80 years before the state of Israel was founded, Bahá’u’lláh was exiled to perpetual imprisonment in the city of Akka.
10 days ago, a group of 42 Iranian writers, academics, artists, journalists, and activists signed an open letter to the Baha’i community, apologizing for the persecution of the Baha’i faithful in Iran in the last century and half.
We have family gathring prayer and following the guide line of NSA was urgenty communicate to the Bahai communities USA Saleh Hedayati
Let’s all please keep these innocent souls, as well as the entire Bahá’í Community in Iran in our prayers, and do all that is humanly possible to prevent this and all future tragedies.
I read with sadness the situation in which some Iranians because of their belief are going through such ordeals just because they believe that God had spoken to mankind again in a new voice. It is most disheartening to note with dismay and unbelieve how a people living in this age and time, a people that claim to be believers in God, claiming to be the possessors of His message today, could be so steep and naive in thinking. They accused the west/americans of oppression and zionism, yet within their borders we see them killing and imprisoned their own people in the name of religion. Do they really believe the koran? or are they just ignoring its warnings? We should not only pray for the Bahais of Iran who found themselves victimized by these self-righteous people, We should also pray for the persecutioners too, perchance God may enlighten them of the truth and change their hatred to love, their pride and arrongants to humility before His Majesty.