The Iranian 'sport' of Baha'i-bashing

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While Iran has been in the news in recent months, there has been little coverage of its deteriorating human-rights situation, especially the resurgence in mistreatment of the country's Baha'i community.

That situation came to a head on May 19 with the arrest in the city of Shiraz of 54 Baha'is, mostly young people and, according to reports, all engaged in community service. They were said to have been teaching underprivileged children as part of a local NGO project.

This brings the total number of Baha'is detained since the beginning of 2005 to 125. These people have been held for a period of a few days to several months in what has been described as revolving-door detentions.

There are an estimated 300,000 Baha'is in Iran. Under the Iranian constitution, a number of religions are given a degree of status - but not the Baha'is.

The recent harassment of Baha'is also took the form of 30 mostly negative, and often defamatory, articles that appeared in one of the official Tehran dailies last fall. Asma Jahangir, the United Nations' special rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, published a statement in March reporting the existence of a confidential letter of Oct. 20, 2005, distributed within the government calling on officials - reportedly on the instructions of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - “to identify persons who adhere to the Baha'i faith and monitor their activities.” The plight of Iran's Baha'i community by Maurice Copithorne

Mark Alexander