GENEVA—19 August 2022—
The Baha’i Worldwide Neighborhood has obtained information of a stunning and outrageous new propaganda ploy to incriminate the Baha’is in Iran by way of a staged video manufacturing filmed in a kindergarten.
On 31 July, the identical day as intelligence brokers had been invading Baha’i properties and arresting pre-school academics, brokers additionally entered a kindergarten in a significant metropolis in Iran and distributed Baha’i books and pamphlets to its academics, none of whom had been Baha’is. The brokers then instructed and compelled the kindergarten employees to say, on digicam, that Baha’is had introduced these supplies and distributed them to the academics.
“This shameful act of fraud and pretense, carried out in a kindergarten, as soon as once more reveals the true motives of the Iranian authorities in persecuting Baha’is just for their religion,” stated Simin Fahandej, the BIC’s Consultant to the United Nations in Geneva. “Because the Iranian authorities has discovered no shred of proof for his or her ludicrous accusations towards the Baha’is, they’ve now resorted to fabricating proof themselves, utilizing Baha’i supplies to accuse Baha’is of making an attempt to affect and convert Muslim kids to the Baha’i Religion.”
Though the Iranian authorities makes an attempt to border the Baha’is as changing Muslim kids, quite a few official authorities paperwork testify to Iran’s plans to, actually, convert Baha’i kids to Islam.
In 1991, a confidential authorities memorandum, delivered to gentle at the moment by a United Nations Particular Rapporteur, ready by Iran’s Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council and signed by the Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself, instructing that Baha’i kids be enrolled in colleges which have “a robust and imposing spiritual ideology” and that Baha’is be handled in such a approach that “their progress and improvement are blocked”.
“The Iranian authorities not solely makes an attempt to distort historical past in class textbooks with a purpose to take away the Baha’i Religion from Iranian historical past, and to power Baha’i kids to vary their religion,” continued Ms. Fahandej. “However it’s now producing pretend supplies to advance its already baseless allegations towards the Baha’is.”
This incident has occurred inside a bigger context of mounting assaults towards the Baha’is in Iran in latest weeks. Since 31 July, the BIC has obtained stories of over 196 separate incidents of persecution towards the Baha’is in Iran, together with arrests, imprisonments, confiscation of properties and properties, closure of enterprise and exclusions from college.
Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence launched a uncommon assertion on 31 July, by which it alleged that members of the Baha’i group had been “propagating the teachings of the fabricated Baha’i colonialism and infiltrating academic environments,” together with kindergartens. A lot of Baha’i kindergarten and pre-school academics had been arrested on that day beneath the pretext supplied by the Ministry’s assertion. Filming the staged readings now additionally demonstrates that the authorities need to doubtlessly use video footage to substantiate their false claims and search to incite most people towards them.
Efforts to unfold hate propaganda towards the Baha’is are authorities coverage. The 1991 memorandum by Iran’s Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council additionally stated that Iran’s “propaganda establishments … should set up an impartial part to counter … the Baha’is.”
And in March 2021 two human rights teams, League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran and the Worldwide Federation for Human Rights, revealed an official Iranian directive which instructed native authorities within the metropolis of Sari, within the northern province of Mazandaran, to “conduct strict controls” on the Baha’is within the metropolis by “monitoring their operations,” and to introduce measures to “establish Baha’i college students” in order to “convey them into Islam.”
“The Iranian authorities have unfold hate propaganda towards the Baha’is for 43 years,” stated Ms. Fahandej. “However Iranians of fine will, who quantity of their thousands and thousands, see by way of these lies. The incident on the kindergarten is the most recent in a shameful litany of brazen deception, propaganda and hate speech, however these efforts don’t go unnoticed by the worldwide group and solely work towards Iran’s pursuits, exhibiting its true motives of persecuting harmless individuals just for their beliefs.”
