Six Bahá’í leaders in Iran were arrested and taken to the notorious
Evin prison yesterday in a sweep that is ominously similar to episodes
in the 1980s when scores of Iranian Bahá’í leaders were summarily
rounded up and killed.
The six men and women, all members of the national-level group that
helped see to the minimum needs of Bahá’ís in Iran, were in their homes
Wednesday morning when government intelligence agents entered and spent
up to five hours searching each home, before taking them away.
The seventh member of the national coordinating group was arrested
in early March in Mashhad after being summoned by the Ministry of
Intelligence office there on an ostensibly trivial matter.
“We protest in the strongest terms the arrests of our fellow Bahá'ís
in Iran,” said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Bahá’í
International Community to the United Nations. “Their only crime is
their practice of the Bahá’í Faith.”
“Especially disturbing is how this latest sweep recalls the
wholesale arrest or abduction of the members of two national Iranian
Bahá’í governing councils in the early 1980s -- which led to the
disappearance or execution of 17 individuals,” she said.
“The early morning raids on the homes of these prominent Bahá’ís
were well coordinated, and it is clear they represent a high-level
effort to strike again at the Bahá’ís and to intimidate the Iranian
Bahá’í community at large,” said Ms. Dugal.
Arrested yesterday were: Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin
Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and
Mr. Vahid Tizfahm. All live in Tehran. Mrs. Kamalabadi, Mr. Khanjani,
and Mr. Tavakkoli have been previously arrested and then released after
periods ranging from five days to four months.
Arrested in Mashhad on 5 March 2008 was Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, who also
resides in Tehran. Mrs. Sabet was summoned to Mashhad by the Ministry
of Intelligence, ostensibly on the grounds that she was required to
answer questions related to the burial of an individual in the Bahá’í
cemetery in that city.
On 21 August 1980, all nine members of the National Spiritual
Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Iran were abducted and disappeared without a
trace. It is certain that they were killed.
The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Iran was
reconstituted soon after that but was again ravaged by the execution of
eight of its members on 27 December 1981.
A number of members of local Bahá’í governing councils, known as
local Spiritual Assemblies, were also arrested and executed in the
early 1980s, before an international outcry forced the government to
slow its execution of Bahá’ís. Since 1979, more than 200 Bahá’ís have
been killed or executed in Iran, although none have been executed since
1998.
In 1983, the government outlawed all formal Bahá’í administrative
institutions and the Iranian Bahá’í community responded by disbanding
its National Spiritual Assembly, which is an elected governing council,
along with some 400 local level elected governing councils. Bahá'ís
throughout Iran also suspended nearly all of their regular
organizational activity.
The informal national-level coordinating group, known as the
Friends, was established with the knowledge of the government to help
cope with the diverse needs of Iran’s 300,000-member Baháí community,
which is the country’s largest religious minority.
Down goes another Syrian blogger
