His father had been one years ago
Hoveida always insisted he was a

Prime Minister Hoveida was never a Baha'i. but was expelled from the Baha'i community. Muslim and frequently stressed his negative view of the Baha'i Faith. The same was true of the SAVAK official Parviz Sabeti, whose parents had been Baha'is but drifted out of the Baha'i community. Parviz Sabeti has never been

a member.

It should be pointed out, however, that the misdeeds of an individual cannot be held against an entire religion. Were one to accept the contrary principle, a criminal born in a protestant family would make all protestants parties to the crime. Is it necessary to point out that Ivan the Terrible was a practicing member of the Orthodox Church, Tamerlane a Muslim, and Hitler a Catholic?

When the Iranian revolution broke out in 1978, the most radically conservative fundamentalist elements within the Shiite clergy were determined to purge Iran of everything they disliked: modernism, emancipation of women, the rights of minorities, academic freedom, non-conformist thought, opera and the theatre, most forms of music; but their strongest yearning was for the destruction of the Baha'is. Having achieved power, the old enemies of the

Baha'i Faith could not but use that power to crush a religion and a community for whose eradication they have striven for 138 years.

Mr. BONKER. We will continue now with Mr. Mitchell, who is secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States.

Mr. DYMALLY. Just a note of personal interest. I had the occasion to visit your shrine in Haifa after the Six Day War, which would be 1967.

Mr. BONKER. I understand that Mr. Mitchell was to be the last speaker.

Mr. KAZEMZADEH. Yes; if it please the Chair, Mrs. Nourani would go next.

STATEMENT OF RAMNA MAHMOUDI NOURANI, EYEWITNESS TO PERSECUTION

Mrs. NOURANI. My name is Ramna Mahmoudi Nourani. I am an Iranian Baha'i who came to the United States 11 years ago to study. I was doing my Ph. D. in mathematics at UCLA before my studies were disrupted due to family circumstances in Iran.

I would like to make the plight of the Baha'is of Iran known on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Baha'i men, women, and children whose legal rights are being denied and who are living under the threat of extinction, those who have lost their jobs, their properties, their means of livelihood, their all, and who may also lose the custody of their children and those who have been imprisoned, tortured, or executed.

The story of the persecution of the Baha'is of Iran is an intensely personal one for me. I have lost both of my parents with the blessings of the Islamic Government and the clergy of Iran. The story is even more tragic because what is taking place there is in the name of religion.

There were days I remember, back in the school days, when I was humiliated in the classroom for being a Baha'i. This was during the reign of the Shah, and my parents could face perhaps a few months or a few years of imprisonment because their Baha'i marriages were not recognized by the Government. Days I remember when Baha'i meetings were disrupted by young men from the Islamic_society called the Organization for the Propagation of Islam. But those were the extent of the persecution that we could expect. These days, one pays even more dearly for being a Baha'i. You can give your life for it.

I would like to tell you the story of my parents. My father, Houshang Mahmoudi, 53 years old, was a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran. He, along with all his colleagues, were abducted on August 21, 1980 and simply disappeared. We have not heard anything from my father or from any of his colleagues. All the appeals made by the Baha'i community of Iran to the Government on behalf of them went unheeded. I have no doubt that they have all been killed, and perhaps they faced the most cruel death.

My mother, Ginous Mahmoudi, was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran and served as its chairman. She, along with her colleagues on the assembly, were arrested on December 13, 1981. They were taken to a prison and for a week before they were executed they were kept in the hallways of an in

terrogation room. Any time the Moslem guards passed by them, they would spit on them, hit them, and curse them. Then they were executed on December 27, 1981, without any charges, no trials took place, their desecrated bodies were found accidentally in the infidel section of a Moslem cemetery. No family members were notified, and before the bodies could be claimed they had to pay for the bullets that were used to kill them. The president of Iran's Supreme Court at that time denied all knowledge of their execution but later admitted that they were executed because they were "foreign" spies.

On January 4, 1982, about a week after my mother's execution, my cousin, Mrs. Shiva Mahmoudi, 35 years old and the mother of two young children, a member of the local assembly of Tehran, was executed along with six other members of the local assembly. They were given a chance to recant their faith. They were given two pieces of paper to sign. If they signed one they would be converted to Islam, and the other would send them to their execution. All of them stood steadfast in their faith and faced their death on January 4, 1982.

In August of 1981, a cousin of my husband, Mr. Habib Tahqhiqi, a member of the local Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Tabriz, was executed along with eight other members of the assembly there. The first line of his will of which I have a copy reads as follows:

In an hour, I, along with eight other Baha'i friends, will be executed. My only guilt is that I am a Baha'i. I believe in all the prophets of God including Muhammad.

On May 8, 1982, two of our neighbors, some of the best friends of my parents, were executed after 10 months of imprisonment, and both were tortured first. All of these people were outstanding servants of their country, among the most educated. They served their country with honesty and sincerity, because it was not only the land where they were born but also the land where their faith was born.

My father was the most respected, loved television personality for over 15 years in Iran. He pioneered children's programs on television. He was well respected and was a father figure to generations of Iranian children.

My mother was the head of the Department of Meteorology of Iran. She was a supervisor and director of research and training for atmospheric studies for a long time, and also the president of the Iranian School of Meteorology. She had built the department of meteorology with her honest and ceaseless efforts during 25 years, and this is how they repaid her.

After the revolution she was fired from her job and taken off the payroll. She was even asked to pay back all the salaries that she had collected for the past 25 years of her service because they said that it was illegal for her to be employed as a Baha'i to begin with. My father's office was also looted by revolutionary guards and everything in it either confiscated or taken away. At this point, our house had become a refuge and a shelter for a number of Baha'i families fleeing from persecution from other provinces of Iran. Those Baha'is came and stayed in our house before they could be

!

placed elsewhere. Some were not even allowed by the authorities to put on their shoes or take their coats. Subsequently only one old Baha'i family, a man of 80 years and his old wife and their daughter, stayed in our house. They were farmers from the province of Khuzistan. Their house, farm, and livestock were burned to the ground and they were beaten up very, very badly. In October 1981 the same fate, almost the same fate befell our own house. Our Moslem neighbors watched, looked on as the Revolutionary Guards with the blessings of the Moslem clergy looted our house, took our belongings and took this old couple to the prison. Some of our neighbors even took part in that looting. These were the same people who were the recipients of my parents' love and generosity for over 10 years.

After my father's disappearance I talked to my mother on the phone weekly. We could not talk openly, but we could say a few things about the Baha'i faith. Every week she would tell me that there are new outbursts of atrocities against the Baha'is. The last time I talked to her was on December 12. She told me of her sadness about the confiscation of the Baha'i cemetery in Tehran. She said that "we do not even have the right to be buried in our own cemetery." She also wrote many letters in which she told of her horror and dismay at the official manner in which this persecution was being conducted. The Islamic Government, she said, is taking away the legal and God-given rights away from the Baha'is. In one of the letters written shortly after the revolution she writes:

Every day you can see mountains of books on the streets of Tehran-all kinds of books representing all kinds of ideologies. In the midst of this freedom, the Baha'is have no rights. They come and take away Baha'i books from our homes. They come and confiscate the Baha'i publishing center and spend months in destroying our books with shredders. One looks desperately for a Baha'i book but cannot find any.

At this point the Baha'is of Iran are facing the threat of extinction themselves. My mother traveled extensively throughout Iran visiting Baha'i prisoners and their families and those who had lost their all for being Baha'is. She would tell us about the prisoners. One particularly moving one was about seven Baha'is, members of the local Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Hamadan, who were tortured to death. She knew them very well. She had visited them in the prison several times before their execution. I will quote from her letter. She said:

News came at 9 o'clock in the morning that there are seven bodies in the morgue. Everyone went to the morgue to see if the news was true. It was. There were seven bloody bodies thrown on the floor. It was obvious how much disrespect and contempt had been shown even to their lifeless bodies. But more heinous was that their bodies were torn apart and tortured. One had his chest-cage smashed and a piece of it cut with a sharp object. Another had his fingers smashed and a piece of his stomach cut and thrown away. Another had his arm smashed and yet another had his leg completely torn open. We asked the authorities for an ambulance to deliver the bodies to the Baha'i cemetery-it was refused. But when the Baha'is told the officials that they would take the bodies with their own hands to be buried, they finally agreed to provide an ambulance because they were afraid of arousing the curiosity of the populace who might then find out about the crimes their rulers had committed. But the ambulance that was given to us was an old one with all its windows broken and no doors. Thus, one more time, they wanted to humiliate the Baha'is. But the result was on the funeral procession, en route to the cemetery, thousands of inhabitants of Hamadan became witnesses to the atrocities that their Government officials had committed.

The incredible thing that she always talked about was the contrast between the conduct of the Baha'is and the perpetrators of such savage and shameless acts. She talked about the families of these martyred Baha'is who would take flowers and candy to the prison to distribute among the guards and the prisoners.

In a telephone conversation that I had with her about a year ago she told me that not even the Baha'i children are immune from the persecution. Later she wrote in one of her letters that it is unbelievable that human beings could even think of pressuring innocent children of such tender age in the way the people of the schools of Iran are doing right now. Thousand of Baha'i children are facing such inhuman afflictions.

She said that it is not uncommon for two or three instructors of classes as well as a number of students to join forces and suddenly attack a Baha'i child of 10 or 11 years. With all their power they try to shatter the very foundations of his beliefs. They will argue with him for hours and use unfair methods to guide him. She wrote,

The other day I went to visit a Baha'i child 11 years old whom I had heard had developed headaches. I asked him to relate his experience. He told me that his teacher had begun a barrage of insults against the faith. He gave impressive answers. The teacher became speechless. This delighted the other children, who applauded and cried hurrah for him. The teacher became angry and left the classroom and consulted with two other teachers, who came to the rescue. They took him to a room, gave him a booklet which was written against the Baha'i faith and compelled him to write from the booklet certain passages which attack the faith in offensive language. That punishment became so great that he developed severe headaches which doctors said were caused by nervous pressure.

She said that this was an ugly confrontation. On one side you have three mature and educated teachers with the support of the people and the government, and on the other side an 11-year-old Baha'i youth.

In other letters she talked about the fact that hundreds of Baha'i children were expelled from the schools of Yazd because they are Baha'is, and, since they are very studious students and attain the highest marks, the people of Yazd are asking why should the best be expelled.

These were only a few instances of the persecution of the Baha'is in Iran which have affected my life personally. Our 138-year history is filled with unspeakable cruelties and atrocities against the Baha'i community, but now there is a difference. This time there is a systematic effort to wipe out the Baha'i community and whereas previously the Moslem clergy and the Government authorities ordered the slaughter of the Baha'is and the pillage of their property with pride, they did not hide the fact that we were being persecuted because of our beliefs. Those who carried out those orders did so to buy themselves a favor in the sight of God and for the most part left the families and the properties of their victims alone. But today they kill us and persecute us for the same reason but officially accuse us with outrageously false charges that even the nonBaha'is do not believe.

[Ramna Mahmoudi Nourani's prepared statement follows:]