wfn.org | Baha'i News: Baha'i International Community deplores destruction of Khavaran cemetery

[Sally Weeks <sweeks@bwc.org>]

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BAHA'I INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DEPLORES DESTRUCTION OF KHAVARAN CEMETERY

GENEVA, 30 January (BWNS) - The destruction earlier this month of a cemeter y in Iran used for the mass burial of hundreds killed in the aftermath of t he Islamic revolution in 1979 is an outrageous violation of human dignity,  the Baha'i International Community said today. At least 15 Baha'is were amo ng those buried at the site.

"The destruction of the Khavaran cemetery by government agents goes against  all concepts of respect for the dead in any culture, including values prea ched in Islam," said Diane Ala'i, the representative of the Baha'i Internat ional Community to the United Nations in Geneva.

"We join with other human rights groups inside and outside of Iran in conde mning this shameful deed, which is yet another sign of the intolerance of t he current Iranian regime," said Ms. Ala'i.

Located southeast of Tehran, the Khavaran cemetery was used as the burial s ite for hundreds who were killed in the early years of the Iranian revoluti on.

Earlier this month, a group of unidentified individuals using bulldozers de molished an area of the cemetery known as the "graveyard of the infidels,"  the area where many of the people executed in the early years of the revolu tion were buried.

Reports indicate the group clearly represented a branch of the government.  It was also reported that the officials told the cemetery custodian that th e parcel was being demolished to develop a green space or park.

Human rights groups inside and outside of Iran have since registered protes ts.

On 20 January 2009, Amnesty International called on Iranian authorities to  "immediately stop the destruction of hundreds of individual and mass, unmar ked graves in Khavaran, south Tehran, to ensure that the site is preserved  and to initiate a forensic investigation at the site as part of a long-over due thorough, independent and impartial investigation into mass executions  which began in 1988. ..."

Iranian human rights advocates, including Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi,  have also condemned the cemetery's destruction.

"We have recently learned that Khavaran cemetery, where the victims of the  illegal massacre of political prisoners in the 1980s and especially 1988 ar e buried, has been destroyed by some officials," the Human Rights Defenders ' Centre said in a statement issued on 25 January, according to Agence Fran ce-Presse. "The Human Rights Defenders Centre condemns this ugly and appall ing act and notes that everyone including the authorities is required to ma intain the dignity of the dead."

At least 15 Baha'is were buried in the same section of the cemetery, all vi ctims in the early 1980s of the government's campaign to systematically per secute Iranian Baha'is for their religious beliefs.

Specifically, it is known that eight members of the national Baha'i governi ng body killed on 27 December 1981 are buried there, along with six members  of the Baha'i Spiritual Assembly of Tehran, killed on 4 January 1982. It i s likely that other Baha'is were buried there, too.

According to a Baha'i whose husband is buried at the site, most of the grav es in that section of the cemetery were unmarked, designated only by numeri cal row markers.

"They called it the place for 'infidels,'" said the widow, who currently re sides outside of Iran. "They just gave us row numbers, and that is how I kn ew where my husband was. But there were no markers and we were not allowed  to identify which grave was which."

To read this story on the BWNS Web site, go to:  http://news.bahai.org/stor y/691