UN resolution calls for end to Iran’s persecution of Baha’is
NEW YORK –17 December 2018 – The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has passed a resolution calling on the Iranian authorities to end ongoing human rights violations, including those against the Baha’is in Iran—the largest non-Muslim religious minority in the country.
The resolution adopted on Monday, 17 December, by a vote of 84 to 30, with 67 abstentions, expresses “serious concern regarding ongoing severe limitations and restrictions on the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.”
It further calls upon the Iranian government to “release all religious practitioners imprisoned for their membership in or activities on behalf of a recognized or unrecognized minority religious group, including the remaining imprisoned member of the Baha’i leadership.”
The five page resolution further expresses serious concerns regarding “restrictions on the establishment of places of worship, attacks against places of worship and burial and other human rights violations, including…harassment, intimidation, persecution, arbitrary arrests and detention, denial of access to education and incitement to hatred that leads to violence against persons belonging to recognized and unrecognized religious minorities.”
Other human rights violations also highlighted include arbitrary detentions, harassment of journalists, freedom of assembly and the rights of women.
The resolution “strongly urges” Iran to eliminate, in law and in practice, all forms of discrimination and other human rights violations against women and girls with respect to the right of freedom of movement and to lift restrictions on women’s equal access to all aspects of education and equal participation in the labor market and all aspects of economic, cultural, social and political life.
The resolution was introduced by Canada and had 43 co-sponsors.
Tens of thousands of Baha’is experience educational, economic and cultural persecution on a daily basis for merely practicing their faith. At present, more than 90 Baha’is remain imprisoned in Iran.
Baha’i homes are routinely raided and members of the community are arbitrarily arrested and detained. Baha’i-run businesses are shut down and sealed, depriving their owners of earning a decent living and thousands of young Iranian Baha’is are denied access to higher education or are routinely expelled from universities for practicing their faith.
Persecution extends even to cemeteries and burials. Most recently, the body of a Baha’i that had been laid to rest by her family in a Baha’i cemetery was subsequently found exhumed—the fourth case of exhumation experienced by the Baha’is at this same location in recent years.
