A court in Iran has sentenced two prominent members of the Bahai minority to another ten years in prison as part of a new campaign of repression against this community, according to the Bahai International Community (BIC) office at the United Nations.
«Amid increasingly violent and repressive actions by the Iranian authorities against its own citizens, two Bahai women, Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, considered symbols of resistance in Iran after spending ten years in prison, have been sentenced to a new ten-year prison term,» it said.
Sabet, 69, and Kamalabadi, 60, were first arrested in 2008 and sentenced along with five others to ten years in prison, after which they were released in 2018. This time, they have been sentenced after an hour-long trial that «was mainly used for the judge to insult and humiliate the defendants.»
«It is deeply troubling to learn that these two Bahai women, who already unjustly lost a decade of their lives in prison for their beliefs, are being imprisoned again for ten years on the same ridiculous charges,» said BIC UN representative Simin Fahandej.
«Mahvash and Fariba are widows, mothers and grandmothers of families who have already been forced to endure their absence for ten brutal years. Instead of expressing its apology to these families for the unjust imprisonment they have already suffered, the Iranian government is unbelievably and inexplicably repeating this cruelty for a second time,» he lamented.
In this sense, Fahandej has emphasized that the «ridiculous» sentence has been formulated «without any evidence base», so he has spoken of «absolute mockery on the part of the Iranian judicial system, where judges act as prosecutor, judge and jury». «There are no words to describe this absurd and cruel injustice,» he stressed.
The BIC said in a statement published on its website that the two were arrested on July 31, the date on which «a new campaign against the Bahai in Iran» began, before detailing that a total of 320 members of what is the largest non-Muslim minority in the country «have been affected by acts of persecution» since then.
«Dozens have been arrested in various locations in Shiraz, Mazandaran province and other parts of the country. Bahai-owned homes in the village of Roshanku were demolished,» he said, before pointing to «hate speech and propaganda» by the Iranian government against the community. In this regard, he stressed that «at least 90 Bahai are currently in prison or are subjected to degrading monitoring through devices attached to their ankles».
The Bahai faith is monotheistic and was founded in Iran in 1863 from the teachings of Bahaullah, whom they consider their prophet. This religion, considered a heresy by the Iranian Muslim authorities, respects the Torah, the Bible and the Koran as part of a series of successive revelations by God.
Bahaullah was one of the disciples of Ali Mohamad, who two decades earlier proclaimed to be the ‘door’ to the hidden imam, the Mahdi, after which he founded Babism. Finally, after years of persecution, he was captured and shot in 1850 in the city of Tabriz.
After proclaiming himself as a prophet and founding Baha’ism, Bahaullah had to escape into exile and finally settled in Haifa and Acre, then in the Ottoman Empire and present-day Israel. The persecution of the Bahais – who have their main religious center in Haifa – has intensified in Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
