NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE BAHÁ'ÍS OF THE UNITED STATES 586 HUERIDAN ROAD, WILMETTE, ILLINOIS GOODI · (818) 250-4400 · CABLE: BABA'I WILMETTE 16 June 1981 The Honorable Edward J. Derwinski House of Representatives Dear Mr. Derwinski: We send herewith for your kind and immediate attention a copy of the urgent appeal we addressed yesterday to Dr. Kurt Waldheim, SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations, in the wake of the worsening persecution of the Bahá'í community in Iran. Given the gravity of the plight of our co-religionists, we respectfully request your support of our appeal to the Secretary-General for purely humanitarian reasons and in affirmation of America's traditional role as the champion of human rights. Please be assured of our thanks and best wishes. Very truly yours, NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF Glenford . Mitchell ZCZC 01 EVANSTON IL 15 JUNE 1981 1 UNITED NATIONS PLAZA NEW YORK NY 10017 BT DEAR MR. SECRETARY-GENERAL: DELIVER. DONT PHONE WE HAVE LEARNED WITH HORROR OF YET ANOTHER GROUP EXECUTION OF THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COUNCIL IN TEHRAN APPROVED THE EXECUTION OF FAR MORE OMINOUS, HOWEVER, HAS BEEN THE VERDICT ANNOUNCED FOR THE THE IMMEDIATE THREAT OF SUMMARY EXECUTIONS HANGS OVER THE SCORES PLEASE BE ASSURED OF OUR GRATITUDE AND RESPECT. NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE BAHA'IS OF THE UNITED STATES GLENFORD E. MITCHELL, SECRETARY WILMETTE, ILLINOIS 60091 [From the Congressional Record, July 24, 1981] RAMSEY CLARK, WHERE ARE YOU WHEN WE NEED YOU? (Mr. DERWINSKI asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. DERWINSKI. Mr. Speaker, hardly a day goes by in Iran without the radical government there announcing it has executed someone else for antirevolutionary activity. More than 200 Iranians have been shot in the wake of Bani-Sadr's ouster from the presidency. The cruelty of this regime is abundantly clear, yet I have detected no expressions of outrage from those "human rights" activists who were so long critical of the Shah. Indeed, the silence is deafening from the likes of Ramsey Clark and company who were so quick to condemn the Shah and embrace Khomeini as an alternative. Such silence is particularly perplexing, given the fact that most of the victims have been from the left end of the political spectrum Mr. Clark identifies with. Admittedly, the Shah and his associates had their shortcomings. But this regime makes them look thoroughly benevolent in contrast. In fact, the Islamic militias and secret police have resorted to tactics that are far worse than those attributed to the Shah's SAVAK. I also want to call the attention of the House to the continued persecution of members of the Baha'i religious group in Iran by the Khomeini government. The Baha'is in Iran have long suffered tremendous pressure and persecution but they are now being murdered by the Khomeini regime for adherence to their faith. Mr. Speaker, it is high time that this Congress spotlighted what is happening in Iran. Therefore, today I am asking the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee's Human Rights Subcommittee to hold hearings post-haste on the human rights situation in Iran. In view of his consistent record on human rights, I am confident that the chairman of that subcommittee, Mr. Bonker, will respond in a forthcoming manner. FOR BAHA'IS IN IRAN, A THREAT OF EXTINCTION BY HON. EDWARD J. DERWINSKI OF ILLINOIS, IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1981 Mr. DERWINSKI. Mr. Speaker, in late June, my distinguished colleague, Dan Mica, and I wrote to U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, to appeal on behalf of the Baha'is in Iran. "Baha'is in Iran have long suffered tremendous pressure and persecution," as we reminded the Secretary General in our letter. We appealed to him to do everything in his power to allevate their suffering at the hands of the Iranian Government. Firuz Kazemzadeh, professor of history and chairman of the Committee on Middle Eastern Studies at Yale, and a member of the national governing body of the American Baha'i organization, wrote a moving column in the New York Times on August 6 describing the treatment of Baha'is in Iran. It is reprinted here for the benefit of the Members. FOR BAHA'IS IN IRAN, A THREAT OF EXTINCTION, AUGUST 16, 1981 1 (By Firuz Kazemzadeh) NEW HAVEN.-The Baha'is in Iran are in danger of extermination. Not a week passes without a sinister incident. Already more than 60 people-storekeepers, artisans, teachers, Government employees, doctors and a distinguished university professor-have been lynched by mobs or executed by revolutionary firing squads. Hundreds have been dismissed from jobs; thousands have lost their homes and possessions. From every province pour in accounts of atrocities. Two men are burned alive in Shahmirzad; a clinic is dynamited in Kata; a community center is burned to the ground in Tavil; graves are desecrated at Hoseynabad; houses and shops are set on fire in Zenjan; mobs attack Baha'is in Ardistan; families that refuse to recant their faith are driven out of several villages near Hamadan; a man, his wife, their 7-year old child and 4 year-old grandchild are beaten nearly to death with iron-tipped staves near Birjand; the Baha'is are forbidden to bury their dead in the cemetery at Chahbahar; the Baha'i hospital is confiscated in Teheran; seven Baha'is are executed in Yezd.. 1 1 Copyright 1981 by the New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission. Authorities conduct sham_trials of Baha'is that invariably result in their conviction. The charges hurled at Baha'is by prosecutors, shouted by crowds in the streets, spread by the press, radio and television and glossed from the pulpit by the Shiite clergy are always the same. They include the promotion of prostitution, cooperation with Zionism, spying for imperialist powers, corruption on earth and warring against God. This assault against the approximately 400,000 Baha'is is not confined to individuals not is it a mere outburst of religious passion. It is a case of well-planned genocide. The scope of the attack became clear a year ago when the entire national governing body of the Baha'is of Iran was kidnapped and disappeared without a trace. Allegations that the Baha'i faith is a political conspiracy serving the interests of foreign powers have been made by the Shiite clergy and the Government in Iran and by their representatives abroad. They contend that the Baha'is were favored by the Shah's Government and that they ran both the infamous secret police, SAVAK, and the Government. Stories make it appear that all the ills of a rapidly changing society are directly attributable to the machinations of an accursed group of heretics. The hatred that a large segment of the Shiite clergy and the more retrograde elements of Iranian society feel for the Baha'i faith has nothing to do with politics. It is inspired by a primitive religious fanaticism. A century ago, before the modern notions of religious toleration penetrated Iran, the Islamic religious men did not bother to hide the true reasons for their hostility to the Baha'i faith. They saw it as a dangerous heresy and its followers as apostates who deserved death. That the Baha'is worshipped the same God and held the Koran to be divinely inspired scripture made matters worse. The Baha'is also believe in progressive revelation. They repudiated the notion that non-Moslems are unclean. They taught principles that the clerics found either incomprehensible or odious: universal peace and the unity of mankind, the equality of sexes, the harmony of religion and science, universal education. That the Baha'is have no clergy, trusting the leadership of their community instead to elective bodies, is an affront to the arrogant religious leaders. Unlike Jews and Christians who belong to distinct ethnic groups and cultures, the Baha'is were Persian- and Azerbaijani-speaking converts from Islam. They were an organic part of the Iranian nation and could not be confined to a physical or spiritual ghetto, they could only be exterminated. And the Shiite clergy have long been trying to achieve this. As times change, so change rationalizations and slogans. In the 20th century the Baha'i faith could no longer be attacked on purely theological grounds. Secularism has influenced the educated who embrace nationalism as a surrogate religion. To turn them against their Baha'i fellow citizens it was necessary to show that the Baha'is were unpatriotic. Their opponents resorted to lies, including the production of fake historical documents. During the revolution of 1906-1911, reactionary religious men in the Shah's camp charged that the Persian constitutional movement was a Baha'i plot to take over the country. Simultaneously those clerics who led that revolution in an uneasy alliance with a handful of liberals accused the Baha'is of supporting despotism. Neither side would acknowledge that the Baha'is, adhering to the principle of noninvolvement in partisan politics, remained neutral. During the anti-Communist 1930's, the Baha'is were linked with Russia, Czarist and Soviet. When American influence in the Middle East increased after World War II, the Baha'is were linked by their opponents to the United States. More recently they have been accused of supporting Zionism. One may expect that soon they will be linked to Iraq or some other hostile power. In spite of a century of persecution, Iran's Baha'is remain loyal to the country that is not only their homeland but also the land where their religion was born. However, their fate should not be hidden from the world by a veil of misrepresentation. Humanity should be aware of the plight of a peaceful, law-abiding community in the clutches of a relentless and unscrupulous foe. Mr. BONKER. Thank you for your interest in this issue and your testimony today. I will note for the record that the U.N. Commission on Human Rights which met in Geneva last February and March and which is an arm of the United Nations, has passed a resolution, albeit weak, on the Baha'is. They have invited the Government of Iran to extend its cooperation to the Secretary-General in conducting an investigation of the situation there. You also mentioned that the Baha'is are a relatively small, mildmannered religious group that do not represent a threat to anybody. But I remember reading about the plight of the early Christians. They were fairly passive in their faith, and experienced considerable persecution during those early days. Sometimes the more passive the faith, it seems to me, the greater the threat. History shows that other religions also experienced this persecution. Mr. Hyde? Mr. HYDE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Congressman Derwinski. I want to congratulate you for your foresight. You have been bringing this tragedy to the attention of Congress at least for a year, to my knowledge, and you took the floor in July of last year and called for these hearings. You also pointed out the persecution of the Baha'i people in Iran and rhetorically asking where Ramsay Clark was on this issue, who has been one of the great defenders of the new order in Iran. The resolutions that are before us are useful. They are a statement of policy, but I just wonder if there is not more we can do. Resolutions don't really activate or motivate the objects of the resolutions very much. Now, obviously, Iran is in difficulty, economic difficulty. I see by the newspaper that we have as of April 27, 1982, the United States is going to buy 1.8 million barrels of oil from Iran, and I suppose this is in fulfillment of the hostage agreement, which is really a dark chapter in our history. The fact is that we had to agree to certain terms to have them release some of our citizens and now we are going to live up to our word and be honorable people, but obviously we are carrying on commerce with Iran, which should be an outlaw-nation, and our strongest ally in the Middle East is a supplier of arms to the Iranians. We ought to have some leverage in that, but just passing resolutions does not save anybody's life. I understand that within the framework of what I am saying that Iran is irrational in terms of talking to them across the table with a given set of premises and with a similar perspective, but isn't there something we can do more than pass resolutions condemning their action? Mr. DERWINSKI. I would say that we should look upon this as the first step. I would hope that we could in some way dramatize these resolutions. If I may point out, Mr. Hyde, a problem where we really have to in effect educate the people and, in fact, we have to start educating the media to the plight of these poor Baha'is. It is one thing to have the media concentrate on the Falkland Islands. They all discovered very quickly where they were once the crisis started. Everyone is an expert on the Middle East or the situation in Afghanistan from time to time, but this is something which has not really been called to the attention of the public around the world, and obviously not in areas where the press is closed. The Soviet Union is attempting to manipulate contacts with the Government of Iran, and there won't be any criticism in the controlled Soviet press of what the Iranian Government does. |