• 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
