Aadel Collection
U.N. Probe Urged In Bahai Death Claims
• Wed., July 13. 1983 ** i ranriso U.N .. P bC'! d b P :t*' C dms Washington Elie Wiesel, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, said yesterday that the U.N. Human Rights Corn- mission should investigate the reported execution and imprisonment of members of the Bahaf faith inlran. “We all vowed after the Nazi• outrages — never again. Now is the time to act on that vow,” Wiesel said In a statement issued after a report from the Bahai World Cen- ter in Haifa, Israel, that 17 Bahai men, women and children had been executed within the past month. A spokesman for the religious group said 142 Bahais have been executed in Iran since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fundamental- ist Islamic regime took power in - - 1979, and 14 others are missing and presumed dead. The Bahai faith, an offshoot of Islam, was founded in 1849 and claims 400,000 members in Iran. Its adherents believe in the unity of mankind, equality of the sexes, and the right.of all religions to exist. “I am particularly troubled that echoes of the Nazi cruelties are again being heard in our world,” Wiesel said. is especially dis- tressing that this occurs in a land ruled by representatives of one of the world's great religions — Is- lam.” • Associated Press BP000533