An Iranian memorandum issued on the course of Iran’s supreme chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei referred to as for the worldwide eradication of the Bahay neighborhood, in response to a May 26 report by the Bahay International Community (BIC), a consultative physique based mostly in Geneva. The BIC represents the United Nations world Baha’a neighborhood and advises on worldwide considerations.
Bahais has been systematically persecuted in Iran because the 1979 revolution, because the Islamic Republic considers the Bahais religion to be the ruler of Islamic heresy. The faith has over 5 million followers in over 190 nations.
The secret memorandum entitled “The Bahá’í Questions” seen by Kayhan Life was produced in 1991 by Iran’s Supreme Revolutionary Culture Council (ISRCC) after consultations with Khamenei, who grew to become the supreme chief in 1989.
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The doc orders the federal government to restrict the academic, cultural, authorized and social standing of Bahais via measures that embrace expulsion from universities, denounce their religion and denying home affect. The memorandum signed by Khamenei was first revealed by the United Nations in 1993.
“There are many memos, however it is a blueprint. You can see it unfolding within the destiny of the Bahais neighborhood in Iran,” Padide Sabethy, a spokesman for the BIC on the persecution of the Bahais, advised Kaihan’s life in an interview. “Iran has by no means admitted it or confessed or revoked this doc.”
“It is vital that policymakers and folks presently concerned in negotiations with Iran discuss this 1991 doc and ask the Iranian authorities to cancel the memorandum as a gesture of goodwill,” Sabethy added. “We consider that human rights ought to play a extra central function in consultations, as a result of if we need to have a significant dialogue with Iran, we have to handle sustainable relationships based mostly on frequent values and respect its personal obligations, corresponding to the choice to signal worldwide contracts on residents and political rights (ICCPR).”
The memorandum limits the academic, cultural, authorized and social standing of Bahays via measures that embrace expulsion from universities, denounce their beliefs and denying the affect of the state.
The memorandum acknowledged that “progress and growth” within the Bahai neighborhood was to be “blocked.” In a long-term effort to eradicate the Bahai neighborhood as a viable entity of the land that launched it,” the BIC report mentioned. “The Iranian authorities has by no means rescinded this coverage.”
Bahais in Iran has been constantly suppressed by the federal government via the demolition of their cemeteries and houses, raids of their properties, confiscation of their spiritual texts, routine arrests, unfair courtroom rulings, and arbitrary voluntary detention of Bahai girls and kids. Over 200 Bahais had been executed within the first 12 months of the revolution.
“The doc violates Bahais’s citizenship and likewise violates ICCPR, which is the signatories of Iran,” Sabethy mentioned. “These violations embrace perception and non secular freedom, and violations of individuals’s civil rights. This doc harasses Bahais, geared toward limiting Bahais’ lives in all points of life.
The therapy of Bahai in Iran has incited worldwide condemnation. The European Union imposed sanctions on Iran’s judiciary on April 16 on the systematic persecution of the federal government’s Bahai. Sanctions cowl judges and prisons, together with judges for Shiraz Revolutionary Court, Tehran and Shiraz Courts of Appeals, Shiraz Central Prison and Fars Prison Protection Office.
“The EU has joined the UN and different world establishments to obviously condemn Iran’s persecution of Bahais within the type of restrictive measures towards these committing fraud towards the Bahais,” mentioned Rachel Bayani, the consultant of the BIC to the European Union.
The United Nations repeatedly criticized the Islamic Republic for treating the Baha’a neighborhood.
“Women in Bahai had been focused via arrests, summoning interrogations, enforcement, assault on properties, confiscation of private belongings, restrictions on freedom of motion, and extended deprivation of successive deprivation of freedom,” the UN report in December 2024 acknowledged. “In a bigger context of the challenges of Iranian girls’s focusing on and gender equality, the dramatic rise in persecution of ladies in Bahai is a stunning escalation.”
More than two-thirds of Bahai who’ve been arrested, summoned, summoned, tried or imprisoned in Iran in latest months have been arrested, summoned, tried or imprisoned in Iran, in response to a report by the BIC.
An early UN report in 2022 urged the Islamic Republic to finish the “systemic persecution” of non secular minorities, together with the Bahais.
According to UN specialists, the Bahay neighborhood is certainly one of Iran’s most severely persecuted spiritual minorities. Experts mentioned they acquired experiences in 2022 that greater than 1,000 members of the religion had been awaiting jail after their arrest.