—
UNITED NATIONS
ECONOMIC
AND
SOCIAL COUNCIL
• Djstr.
ENEBAL
• E/CN.4/SR. 1604
20 February 1981
GLISH
Original: FREN 1.
C01 MISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Thirty—seventh session
SiTh ARY RECORD OF TEE 1604TH 1 ETfl G
Held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva,
on Tuesday, 17 February 1981, at 4.30 p.m.
Chairman :
Mr. CALEHO RODRIGOES
CONTENTS
Question of the.h,1Tn n rights of all persons subj ectod. to any form of detention
or imprisonment, in particular:
(b) Question of missing and disappeared persons.
This record i subject to correction.
Participants wishing' to t a .ke corrections should submit them in iting to the
Official Records E itin Section, room .61 , •PalaLs dos Nations, Geneva, within
one weei of receavuig the rocora. in tncirwork.Llg iWg F ge.
Corrections to the recor is of the me tings of the Commission at this session
will be consolithitei in a single corrigehclum to be issued • ho -t1y alter the end of
the session -
• •• BP000385
(Brazil)
4
page 3
25. lIr. }3 IC-HT (Baha 'i Thtsrnational Community) said that he wished to report on
the disappearance ol' 14 .p 'c.rninent members of the Baha'i Community in Iran. Three
of them had been kidnarped between Ilay 1979 and January 1920 and the other 11,
including all 9 embcrs of the N tionai Administrative Council of the Baha'is of
Iran, had ,been arrested by revclut.ionary guards in August 1930. The families of the
persons who had disanpearod had made every effort to locate their relatives, but
their appeals had ‘ond unJ ceded. He therefore took the opportunity afforded by the
discussion to reeuest the Iranian Government once a , ain to thrc;r some light on the
fate ci' those disarpeared persons. The /1orkin ' Group had already been provided with
details of the 1:idnappings, but henonetbeless ri.shed to give the Commission a brief
summary of the situation.
26. Since the revolution, prominent Palia 'is in many parts of Iran had been arrested
and, in some cases, executed as part of a continuing and systematic campaign to
demoralize, paraly:e and ultimately eradicate the Iranian Baha t i Community. Although
Iran's 300,000 Baha'is were indigenous Iranians and constituted the largest
religious minority in the country, the new Constitution, which recognized the
smaller Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian minorIties, did not reco nize them, so
that they were outside the.protection of the law. Those who wished to perpetrate
attacks on Baha'is and their property could therefore do so with virtual impunity.
Since the inception of the Baha'! faith in Iran in 1844, the Baha'is had been
freciiently persecuted in that country. During the Pahiavi regime (1921—1979),
discrirninctory le is1ation had been enacted which had. deprived the Baha'is of many
basic rights and freedoms. Since the revolution the persecutions had been resumed
with e en more intensity. The enemies oI' the Ba.ha'i faith were conducting a campaign
of vilification against the Baha'i , who were accused of supporting the former Shah,
of being agents of Savak, opponents of Islam, spies for Isra 1, moral degenerates,
and enemies of the Iranian Government and people, all of which accusations were
totally unfounded. The Iranian Daha'is,, in common with Baha'is the world over, were
obliged to Show loyalty and obedience to the Government of the country in which they
lived, and to refrain fror involvement in politics or any subversive activity.
They were committed to the highest standards of morality and rectitude in their
public and private lives. In addition, they believed that the essential spiritual
unity of all mankind was expre sed through all the great religions — including
Islam — which they regarded as divine in origin and whose founders they honoured and
revered. Those facts had reneatedly been presented to the Iranian authorities,
together with evidence that the Iranian Baha'is had steadfastly upheld those
fundamental princirles. of their faith, but all such rep± 'esentatibns and. appeals for
Justlce and faia' treatment had gone unheeded.
