wfn.org | Baha'i News: Baha'is reject allegations of subversive activity in Iran

["Brad Pokorny" <bradpokorny@comcast.net>]

Baha'is reject allegations of subversive activity in Iran

>Baha'i World News Service

http://news.bahai.org <http://news.bahai.org/> 

>For more information, contact: news@bahai.org

Baha'is reject allegations of subversive activity in Iran

NEW YORK, 3 August 2008 (BWNS) - The Baha'i International Community
categorically rejects statements by an Iranian prosecutor that seven Baha'is
detained in Tehran have "confessed" to operating an "illegal" organization
with ties to Israel and other countries. 

"We deny in the strongest possible terms the suggestion that Baha'is in Iran
have engaged in any subversive activity," said Bani Dugal, principal
representative of the Baha'i International Community to the United Nations.
"The Baha'i community is not involved in political affairs. Their only
'crime' is the practice of their religion."

"The seriousness of the allegations makes us fear for the lives of these
seven individuals," she said.

She was responding to Iranian newspaper reports of statements by Hasan
Haddad, deputy prosecutor general for security at the Islamic Revolutionary
Court in Tehran.

Ms. Dugal said that seven Baha'is arrested earlier this year were members of
a committee that helped attend to the needs of the 300,000 Baha'is in Iran.

"That is no secret - the government knew perfectly well about the existence
of this committee long before its members were arrested, just as the
government knows perfectly well that these people are not involved in any
underhanded activity," she said.

Ms. Dugal said the detentions are part of a well-documented, decades-long
campaign to stamp out the Baha'i community in Iran, and that the latest
accusations follow the same pattern as previous unfounded charges.

"Suggestions of collusion with the state of Israel are categorically false
and misleading. The Iranian authorities are playing on the fact that the
Baha'i world administrative center is located in northern Israel," she said.

"The Iranian government completely ignores the well-known historical fact
that the Baha'i Faith was centered in Iran until 1853 when the authorities
there banished the Baha'i prophet-founder, who was forced into exile and
eventually imprisoned in Acre on the Mediterranean coast under the Ottoman
Turkish regime. That area happens to be in what is now Israel."

Ms. Dugal said many Baha'is in Iran - including members of the coordinating
committee before their imprisonment - are frequently detained for
questioning about their activities. The Baha'is, she said, have nothing to
hide and try to answer truthfully whenever they are interrogated.

For more information, go to http://news.bahai.org

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