Bah’i persecuted in Iran: Behind bars

July 5, 1983

6 minutes read

          
          WMLIfl IYl, Vl 1O .
          NEWS-TRIBUNE
          —D. 1 3,079—
          BOSTONLOWELL METROPOUflN AREA
          )u : ‘ I S
          ,Baha i persecuted in Iran
          Behind bars
          By Joseph Mapother
          Staff Writer
          WALTHAM — The quiet Iranian
          voice coming across the Myrtle
          Street living room related a story of
          religious persecution in a careful,
          almost detached manner. Fear, or
          maybe simple uncertainty flashed
          occasionally in the attractive
          brown eyes of the storyteller.
          Mofarah Forsythe's 22-year-old
          • brother, Soroush Fadiani, has
          • disappeared into the bowels of a jail
          in Tehran, snatched off the street
          • by Iranian authorities. “He was a
          very well known Bahs'i,” relates
          Mrs. Forsythe. She learned of the
          arrest a few weeks ago.
          Her father lost control of his
          business shortly after the Ayatollah
          Ruhollah -Khomeini and his minions
          of mullahs caine to power in 1979.
          The details of how the father
          came to spend his day sitting
          around the house are not discussed
          in terse telephone conversations
          that are the main link between Mrs.
          Forsythe and her family.
          • International telephone hues are
          not the most secure means to
          discuss what is happening to Mrs.
          .Forsythe's family and the other
          300,000 members of the Baha'l faith
          In Iran. '
          A 28-year-old cousin of Mrs. For- The official count of Baha'is kill-
          sythe is also occupying a Tehran ed since Khomeini took office in
          prison cell, said the recently mar- 1979 is 156, but conservative unof-
          ned computer student. She ex- ficial estimates range around 200
          pressed fears that her one remain- persons, according to Henry B.
          ing. brother •at home, a teenager, Lawrence, a Waltham spokesper-
          would be the next to disappear. son for the Baha'i.
          Those figures do not include the
          Baha'i in Iran who have simply
          vanished.
          The authorities? “They say ‘tell
          us your not Baha'i' and we'll let you
          go.”
          Her parents? “They are not
          safe,” came the reply.
          Members of the faith, including
          Mrs. Forsythe's mother, have been
          prevented from. leaving Iran. The
          mother bad her passport and birth
          certificate confiscated recently
          when she applied to visit her
          daughter in Waltham, said Mrs.
          Forsythe. On the application was a
          slot s sking what religion the appli-
          cant was, she said.
          Since he disappeared In mid-
          April, no official notification from
          Iranian authorities that Soroush
          Fadiani was arrested has been
          received by the family, said Mrs.
          Forsythe.
          Confirmation that bets in jail and
          Baha'is around the world carry alive comes from a receipt that Fa-
          on a 140-year-old religion founded diani signs for pocket money
          in Persia that claims unity among delivered to him from the family,
          the people of the world as its basic related Mrs. Forsythe. The receipt
          tenet. Non-involvement in politics 15 returned to the family without ex-
          and subservience to the legal, local planstion after each visit.
          government are also ways of the
          Baha'i faith The memory of Soroush Fadiani
          is kept alive through his signature.
          It was family detective work that
          traced Fadiani to his present ad-
          dress after he failed to return home
          and the car he was driving was
          found ens Tehran street.
          - Several time zones away, the
          educated young woman sitting on
          the sofa in the Myrtle-Street living
          room pauses to reflect on why her
          family and her religion are con-
          sidered so dangerous by the Iranian
          authorities. At her side sits her
          American husband, Jimmy.
          “Our faith, from the beginning,
          said things that would annoy the
          (Iranian) authorities,” she began.
          Baha'ia do not believe In clergy,
          Early Christians faced much the
          same choice on the way to the Col-
          iseum in Rome. -
          Sixteen Baha'is were hanged this
          month despite a late-May appeal
          from President Ronald Reagan and
          other world leaders to spare them.
          Among the 16 dead were 10 women.
          Three of the women were actually
          adolescent girls.
          There were no official charges
          levied against them. They were
          Baha'L

American husband, Jimmy.
“Our faith, from the beginning,
said things that would annoy the
(Iranian) authorities,” she began.
Baha'is do not believe n clergy,
which would appear to be
anathema in a country whose
political shots are called by the
Islamic clergy.
Women were accepted as equals
in the early writings of Baha'i
founder, Baha'u'lla That state-
ment and others earned the founder
a lifetime in jail, according to a
history of the faith. Baha'l women
are not bound to wear the tradi-
tional veil that has again become
popular among Islamic women in
Iran.
Baha'js believe all world
religions are divine in origin. Jesus,
Buddha, Mohammed and
Baha'u'flah are all prophets. There
is no one, true prophet.
In addition, because the founder
spent so much time in jail there,
Haifa, Israel, holds one of the ma-
jor shrines to the Baha'i faith.
Israel and Iran share a relationship
akin to that between water and oil
— they don't mix.
B ha'iléáderde'mands halt to
harassment, torture,' killing
WASHINGTON (UPI) — The
leader of the Baha'i religion in the
United States recently told the
House Human Rights Caucus that
Washington should take the lead in
gaining worldwide condemnation of
the persecution of Baha'is in Iran.
The suffering of the Baha'i com-
munity in Iran could be reduced if
the public would “express its in-
dignation and demand the cessa-
tion of terror against the innocent,”
• said Dr. Fritz Kazeruzadeb,
secretary of the National Spiritual
Assembly of Baha'is in the United
States.
Otherwise, “the Baha'is will be
- continue to b.e harassed,
maltreated and killed in a country
where jail and the hangman's noose
have become common instruments
of persuasion,” said Kazernzadeh.
Shiite Moslems, the current
rulers of Iran, believe that the
Baha'i faith is a heres ' — that
Islam, out of which Baha'i partially
developed, is the “final” religion
and that Mohammed was the last
prophet to appear on earth.
The Moslem hatred of the Baha'i,
Kazemzadeh said, “is further fed
- .
Earlierthismonth, l6Baha is—sixmen
i.

: :.
US P

resident R
.

4JI
onald Reagan
IJPI file photo
and
10 women, including three teenage girls —
were executed by hanging despite a
personal appeal for their lives from
Pres. Ronald Reagan
.
Moffarah and James Forsythe look at photo of S l Shrine In
Haifa, Israel, In their home. Photo by Art lilman
Historically, the Baha'i have Violent attacks on Baha'l yea S. ThehomeinTakm'of Baha'!
been objects of religious persecu- followers and landmarks Including founder Baha'u'llah was destroyed
tion since the religion was founded, rape, looting, burning and murder and the land put up for sale. The
Waltham Baha'i Henry Lawrence followed. International outcry shrine of another Baha'i prophet,
likened the persecution waves as helped reinstate the Baha'l in Ira- Bab, was bulldozed over in 1979.
appearing in five and ten year man society. : It is the increasing scale of the
cycles. - ‘ With —the coming of ‘ -the_ .latest.persecutions that led Henry
Ayatollah's Islamic Republic, Lawrence to add a postscript to his
Baisa'i were again barred from theory of cyclical persecutions of
schools and universities in theBaha'i. .
September, 1981. For Mrs. For- “The fear is of genocide this
sythe's brother Soroush, It meant time.”' •.. - -
the end of two years of medical After several minutes of careful
studies, she said. thumbing, Mrs. 1'orsythe added her -
He was working in a factory own postscript, quoting the words
before his disappearance, she add- of Baha'u'llah: “Every one of us
ed. . looks forward to the day when the
Shrines of the faith have been earth will truly be one country and
destroyed during the past two mankind its citizens.”
As a minority, and because they
were different, Baha'is found
themselves blamed, for epidemics,
famines and other natural disasters
throughout Persian history.
The late Shah Mohammed Reza
Pahlavi refused to reopen Baha'i
schools that had been closed during
the reign of his father. In 1955, his
government announced the Baha'i
religion had been banned.
rules be eased for Iran ian Baha'i
refugees.
In the three years since the Ira-
nian revolution that brought the
Ayatollah Khomeini to power, more
than 150 Baha'is have been ex-
ecuted, thousands of Iranian
Baha'is ha ,e lost their jobs, and
thousands more Baha'i children
have been deprived, of formal
education, Kazemzsdeh said.
by Baha'i belief in the unity of
mankind, the equality or races, the
equality of sexes, universal peace,
universal education and the har-
mony of religion and science.”
Kazernzadeh told the Human
Rights Caucus that since last
September's congressional ap-
proval of a resolution condemning
Iran's persecution, 27 more Baha'is
have been executed.
Earlier this month, 16 Baha'is —
six men and 10 women, including
three teenage girls — were ex-
ecuted by hanging despite a per-
sonal appeal for their lives from
‘President Reagan.
The Baha'i leader asked that the
U.S. government push for the U.N.
Commission on Human Rights to
intercede with Iran on behalf of the
‘Baha'is, and that immigration