Bah’i persecuted in Iran: Behind bars

          
          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