Iran regime’s cruelty to Baha’is and other minorities

The Last Word: Unspeakable Cruelty

Author:Jeremy Jones28/07/2009

Jeremy Jones

When speaking with a leader of the Baha’i community in Australia recently, our conversation inevitably turned to events in Iran.

In May 2008, seven leaders of this community were seized from their families, imprisoned and faced allegations of grave seriousness.

For 15 months, there have been regular indications that trials will occur and that people whose only real offence seems to be their religious beliefs will have the chance to mount legal defences.

But the Iranian regime is not only authoritarian and brutal, but almost unspeakably cruel.

Iranian prisons are renowned for their brutality, but the families and friends of these prisoners are undergoing the psychological torture of raised expectations, hints of judicial reason and prospects of an end to the unsavoury affair – only to have these dashed, over and over again.

Some apologists for Iran argue that this is simply the clerical fascists who run the country trying to “protect” the state religion.

However, as Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi noted, the Baha’is “have been willing to cooperate with Iran’s Shi’ite Islamic regime, but they refuse to surrender to pressure to abandon their beliefs, knowing the decisions they make could have far-reaching implications for the estimated 350,000 Baha’is and other religious minorities in Iran”.

Saberi spent four months in the prison where the Baha’i leaders are being held, also on spurious charges, and knows of the deprivation and terrors to which they are being subjected.

This article gives some idea of the kind of treatment that the seven Baha’is – formerly members of the national coordinating group for the Baha’is in Iran – are receiving in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

It’s worth reading the whole article here.

Posted via web from Barney’s posterous

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