Moreton Bay Regional Baha’is disturbed by arrests
Local Baha’is have been alarmed by sweeping arrests of leaders of the Baha’i Faith in Iran.
The arrests are yet another indication of the Iranian government’s determination to extinguish the country’s largest religious minority, said Kaye Forester-Harris, a spokesperson for the Moreton Bay Regional Baha’i Community.
They have brought back terrible memories for a number of local Baha’i families who fled from Iran after suffering similar persecution, she said.
Kaye said officers of the Intelligence Ministry summarily arrested six members of the community’s national coordinating group after conducting extensive searches of their homes in early morning raids on 14 May 2008.
The seventh member of the group has been in prison in Mashhad since she was arrested in March.
The whereabouts of the prisoners are presently unknown.
“The Baha’is arrested on 14 May are being persecuted solely because of their religious beliefs,” said Kaye.
“The best proof of this is the fact that, time and again, Baha’is have been offered their freedom if they recant their faith and convert to Islam,” she said.
“We are extremely concerned at this ominous turn of events,” she said.
“Such sweeping arrests of key Baha’i figures in Iran have not occurred since the terrible events of the early 1980s and we fear what might lie ahead.”
She said that all nine members of the national Baha’i administrative council in Iran were abducted and disappeared without a trace on 21 August 1980.
On 27 December 1981 eight of the nine members of a reconstituted council were executed by the authorities.
“We are asking people around the world to demand the release of this new generation of leaders,” she said.
For further information see the www.bahai.org.au (Australian Baha’i Web site) and www.news.bahai.org (Baha’i World News Service)
