The Baha'i International Community has prepared a Special Report documenting the intensifying persecution against the Baha’is of Semnan. [View video featuring interviews with Siovash and Monir Khanjani, natives of Semnan Province].  Located about 200 kilometers east of Tehran in north central Iran, the city of Semnan has a population of about 125,000 people. Among them are several hundred Baha’is from every walk of life and socio-economic class. Yet despite their small number, the Baha’is of Semnan have been the focus in recent years of an intensifying persecution, facing an array of economic, physical and psychological attacks. These include arbitrary arrests and imprisonments, the shutting down of their businesses, cemetery vandalism, denunciations of their faith in school classrooms, distribution of anti-Baha’i propaganda, and arson attacks on their properties. While these types of attacks on Baha’is are not confined to Semnan, the situation there is noteworthy for its particular intensity and the mobilization and coordination of official and semi-official elements – including the police, the courts, local officials, and the clergy. Their aim: to enforce ever more strongly the government’s long-established policy of seeing that the progress and development of Baha’is are blocked. For more information, please see detailed coverage of the situation in Semnan provided by the Baha'i World News Service.