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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
