Baha’i Faith Canada (12/15/81)

          
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          • •Bahá'i Faith
          • FoibahA'Ie ________
          FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
          Canada
          • Contact: Douglas Martin (416) 889—8168
          • Nancy Ackerman (416) 889—J168
          “ 883—3481
          December 15,1981 (Thornhill, Ontario)
          Iran's 300,000 Balia'is were dealt yet another devastating blow yes-
          terday when eight members of their National Spiritual Assembly were arrested
          and imprisoned in an unidentified location.
          This group, including one woman, were among the nine elected to re-
          place the previous Assembly, the governing body of the Baha'i community, who
          were arrested in August, 1980, and whose fate is still unknown.
          Yesterday's arrests follow last week's news of the confiscation of
          Teheran's only remaining Baha'i cemetery, which left tens of thousands of
          Baha'is with no-burial ground. It has been learned that the the graves are
          being bulldozed and rings and other jewellery stolen from the bodies. In the
          same eek, another Baha'i holy site was demolished, and its land and gardens
          offered by the authorities for sale to the public.
          • At the same time, Baha'is around the world were shocked and grieved
          to learn from Iranian newspaper reports that the children of Baha'i families
          in two villages, who had fled into the mountains following mob attacks on
          their homes, had been forcibly separated from their parents and placed in
          what were termed “training centres” by order of the local Muslim clergy.
          With such reports of summary arrests, widespread mob harrassment
          and the wholesale confiscation of property, the alarm voiced by a recent re-
          port in the London Times of a “grim new phase” in the persecution .of the Baha 'i
          community in Iran has been fully borne out. At the present time, the authori-
          ties are issuing “identity cards” as a means of denying those whose religion
          is deemed by the ruling Muslim clergy to be “heretical” and “illegal” froi i
          attending schools, receiving public services, holding bank accounts, travelling
          and working or engaging in business and trade.
          Baha'is around the world are appealing to other governments
          to intervene. It is only concerted international intervention that has so
          far prevented the extermination of the Baha'i counnunity in Iran called for
          by the fanatical Shiite clergy there.
          7200 Leslie Street.Thornhill. Ont. L3T Ml
          Phone: (416) 8898 168 Telex: 06 964713
          - BP000145