Bahá'is: Peaceful people in
By George W. Cornell
The Associated Press
After being questieded and threatened for
hours, assured they could save their lives and gain
national respect if they would renounce their”mis-
Lunu ISLAND, N.Y. guided” faith, the 10 unyielding women were
NEWSDAY hanged:. -
D. 507,350—S. 570,724 They included two teenage girls, five others In.
NEW YORK CITY METROPOLITAN AREA their 20s and three older women — wives, mothers,
daughters, sisters — members of the of the world's
most tolerant, peace-loving religions, the Baha'i
AUG 13 1883 faith.
Their executions in the city of Shiraz in southern
_____-. Iran on June 18, as recounted by American .Baha'i
• leaders, was only one episode in a grisly, three-year
tehgIOA/ [ ]I ] :0s d .a l_
_______________________________________ community, says Firus .Kazemzadeh, a Yale Urn
versity expert on the Middle East and chief execu-
tive of the Baha'i national assembly in the United
States..
• . It's a systematic, grinding process, he says, of
NEWSDAY, SATURDAY, AUGUST 13. 1983 alTestS, confiscations of property and assets, dismis-
sals from jobs, expulsion of children from school and
recurrent executions designed to intimidate and
spread fear. -
The technique so far has not involved “mass
murder,” he said in a telephone interview, but when
family members and friends keep being killed rath-
er than forsake their faith, “how long can human
nerve endure?”
Only two days before the women died, six Baha'i
men, ranging in age from 23 to 60, were hanged in
the same city, and on June 24, another young man
was hanged. In these cases, as in the steady toll of
others, Baha'i officials said, the victims were offered
release if they would recant their faith.
‘“Fhey're told they can be freed, have their homes
back and their jobs,” said Robert Bluin of the Baha'i
temple and headquarters in Wilmette, Ill. ‘“flint's
the offer — your life versus your faith. Many are
offered more than they had before.”
But few have given in, believing that earthly
survival is not as important as the quality of eterni-'
ty, he said.
The accumulating deaths, persecution and pres-
sure are being compared with the Nazi persecution
of the Jews. But in that case, Jews were given no
chance to recant to save themselves.
Kazemsadeh likens the situation of Iran's Ba-
ha'is to that of the early Christians under the Ro-
man Empire when many of them died rather than
renounce their faith in order to live.
. “It's a matter of transcendence, of values greater
than life itself,” he said.
In the last three years under the Khomeini re-
gime in Iran, there have been 142 hangings,, fir-
ing-squad executions or assassinations of Baha'is
recorded, most of whoni were local or national
leaders. .
Other persecutions have been widespread and
continuous, o cials say, involving imprisonments,
destruction of Baba'i property, including homes,
businesses and shrines, stopping of pensions to the
elderly, ousters from jobs and schools, mob raids.
a deadly land
In the first week of July, about 130 Baha'is
from the northern village of Ival, including women
and children, were confined for three days and de-
nied food and water unless they converted to Is-
lanL
Without yielding, they were eventually re-
leased, but were attacked by mobs,driven from
their homes and forced to hide in a forest outside
the village.
In the execution of Baha'is, the Iranian courts
variously, label them American spies, agants of Zion-
inn, collaborators with imperialism, enemies of
Iran, moral degenerates and in the case of women,
prostitutes. -
That charge Kazemsadeh says, is “because Ba-
ha'is teach the equality of the sexes” — which Islam
rejects and which the Khomeini regime sees as de-
praved.
While the Iranian courts cite such charges
against the Baha'is themselves, the judge in Shiraz
condemns the Baha'i religion. In an interview in the
Feb. 22 issue of the newspaper Khabar.I.Junub, he
said:
“The Iranian nation has. . . determined to es- ,
tablish the government of God on Earth. Therefore,
it cannot tolerate the perverted Baha'is who are in-
strustients of Satan and followers of the devil.
There is no place for Baha'ia and Baha'iism.”
Several governments have protested the perse-
•cutions, including the United States, Canada, West
Germany, Great Britain, Australia, Switzerland,
Luxembourg and the United Nations ‘Commission
on Human Rights. So have numerous other organi-'
zations, such as Amnesty International and the
U.S. National Council of Churches.
The world “is increasingly alarmed and dis-
mayed at the persecution and severe repression of
the Baha'is in Iran,” President Reagan said recent-
ly, adding that they “are not guilty of any political
offense or crime.”
Onslaughts against them are seen by Baba'i
leaders as intending gradual extermination, or;
genocide, wiping out Iran's 350,000 Baha'ia, the
largest religious minority in a land where the faith
originated in 1844.
Around the world, there are about 3.5 million
• Baha'is in 165 ‘countries, 100,000 in the United
States.
Members of this gentle faith believe in the one-
ness of God, the divine origin of all the world's major
religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Is-
lam, the unity and equality of humanity and work-
ing for world peace and order.
But in Iran, the faith is considered heresy by the
ruling Shiite Moslems and is not recognized as are'
Christianity, Judaism and Zorastrianism. in.
izemzac ,Jo,a U.S. Baha'i leader
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