Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Iran

Statements

Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Iran

UN Human Rights Council 25th session

Geneva—17 March 2014

Dr. Saheed, in your report you stress that “while welcoming the … positive steps” made by the new government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, “they currently do not address fully the fundamental human rights concerns” including “laws and practices that infringe upon the rights to life, to the freedoms of expression, association, assembly, belief and religion, to education and to non-discrimination.”

The Baha’i International Community concurs with this regrettable assessment: to date, there has been no improvement in the situation of Iranians who belong to the Baha’i Faith.  As you indicated yourself, 136 Baha’is are in prison solely on religious grounds, not one Baha’i youth has been able to complete his or her studies in an Iranian university – and most of them are denied access in the first place, shops continue to be sealed, work in the public sector is prohibited, cemeteries are desecrated, and incitement to hatred in state-sponsored media is rampant.

Even the meagre attempt to improve the human rights situation in Iran by drafting a citizenship rights charter, as you stated, “fails to address laws and policies that discriminate against religious minorities, including the Baha’i”.

Dr. Shaheed, you refer to “several individuals whose detention was identified as arbitrary by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention”.  Among those, as you know, are the seven former Baha’i leaders who were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, in a trial that lacked all requirements to quality as “fair” under international law.  These seven men and women have now spent nearly six years behind bars, 3 to 6 months of which were in solitary confinement.  Have you been able to discuss their situation – which is emblematic of the situation of all the Baha’is in Iran – with Iranian authorities and what hope do you see for improvement in their situation under Mr. Rouhani?

Moreover, as you know, in August last year, Mr. Ataollah Rezvani, a prominent Baha’i from Bandar Abbas, was found in his car, fatally shot in the head.  Last month, three members of the Moody family were viciously and repeatedly stabbed by a masked intruder in the city of Birjand.  Neither of these two crimes have been properly investigated, forcing us to assume that they are actually condoned – if not initiated – by government authorities.  These are just two recent examples of a number of such instances of blatant impunity for crimes committed against members of the Baha’i Faith.  What procedural and substantives changes do you think must be made to combat this injustice?