Suppression and persecution of the Bahá'í is increasing

The suppression and persecution of the Bahá'í, with 300,000 members the largest religious minority in Iran , is evidently increasing to a systematically engineered "ethnocide", i.e. to the intentional destruction of their religion and culture. The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) warns of this in its new 47-page human rights report "Bahá?í im Iran: Strangulierung einer religiösen Gemeinschaft" (Bahá'í in Iran: strangulation of a religious community), which was officially given to the human rights commissioner of the German government, Günter Nooke, on Thursday at a press conference in Berlin.

Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office there has been a noticeable increase in the number of harassments, attacks, hate sermons against members of this religious community as well as reports in the media of a slanderous quality, and also confiscations, the destruction of cemeteries and other holy places of the Bahá'í, says the report. Particularly disturbing is the newly proposed "Law concerning Apostasy", which provides in future the death penalty for the renunciation of Islam in Iran . This law is also to apply outside the frontiers of Iran . So Bahá'í would not be safe in other countries either.

For the leaders of the Bahá'í in Iran the GfbV fears the worst, said the head of the GfbV office in Berlin , Christian Zimmermann. The five men and one woman were arrested on 14^th May 2008 by the secret police and are still in custody. Their fate is reminiscent of that of the national Spiritual Council of the Bahá'í, whose members were abducted at the beginning of the 80s and who were never seen again.

The GfbV report deals in detail with the so-called Golpaygani Decree No. 1327/M/S of the Iranian Supreme Revolutionary Culture Council (ISRRC) of 1991. This confidential document formulates the government doctrine in dealing with the Bahá'í. Ayatollah Khamenei marked with his signature his approval of the document, which sets down the policy of outlawing the Bahá'í. The practice of their faith is strictly forbidden and institutions of higher learning are closed to them. Employers who take on Bahá'í are threatened with the closure of their firms. Crimes against Bahá'í are not prosecuted.

Many directives of the military, the Ministry of the Interior and of the Ministry for Science refer directly to the Golpaygani Decree. A document from the Ministry of the Interior gives directions that the Bahá'í are to be spied upon and that data from all spheres of life are to be collected, such as address, financial status, political and commercial activities, communication with other organisations, sites of cemeteries etc.

Iran was the land of origin for the Bahá'í religion. It was developed in the 19^th century by its founder Baha'ullah from Shiite Islam and has today some 7.7 million members.