Editor’s Note: The following report was filed by the Committee of Human Rights Reporters and appears on their English page. It is reproduced below with minor adjustments for grammar, etc.
Recent unrest in Iran and numerous human rights violation in the past couple of weeks have led the authorities to disregard the violations in other areas. This year, as for the past 30 years, after the first initial results of the entrance exam to institutions of higher education and universities, some applicants who were believers in the Baha’i Faith faced an obstacle which was called “deficient profile”. This scenario is being repeated in spite of all the efforts of university student and civil right activists in the past to stop this and similar violations in the field of education toward university students.
In addition, the majority of those university students who have been tagged by an asterisk (these activists who have been tagged, sooner or later faced in the past and will continue to face punishment by the regime and even by the universities in which they study), as well as activists who defend the right of education for every human being, such as Ziyae Nabavi, Majid Dorri, Shiva Nazar-Ahari, Keyvan Samimi, who have been putting information about these abuses before the public and putting an stop to this inhumane process of the denial of education, are now in prison.
In spite of all these efforts, in the initial published results of the university entrance exam for autumn of 2009 by the official evaluation organization as in previous years, some of our country’s fellow citizens who are believers in the Baha’i Faith have been denied education. It is necessary to mention that such a strange act toward this religious minority in our country comes in different stages. Every year in the initial published results some of them are faced with the designation “deficient profile”. According to last year’s experience, after contacting “Evaluation Organization” no response is received by them. Even appeals to the ministry of science, high courts, parliament and even the official office of the president are in vain, due to the negligence of relevant authorities. Some other applicants who are rank high in the test results and even hold the best results of the exam, after choosing their major face a designation of “failed”! A few other participants who crossed all these obstacles and were accepted in universities, after a while, due to a classified letter from the intelligence department of the ministry of science to those universities, mentioning the denial of education of Baha’i believers, are disenrolled.
Every year, in spite of Article 26 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states the freedom and right of education for all, and that no one can be deprived of this right, a large number of university student activists and Baha’i applicants, in a process totally against the principles of human rights, are being deprived of education, according to resolutions of the “Supreme Committee of Cultural Reformation”.
The image below has been retrieved by entering the required information of one of the applicants. The text in the upper pink box states: “According to the deficient profile of the applicant, contact P.O. Box: 31535-3166 in Karaj providence, the head office of the Office of Evaluation of the country.”
[Posted on August 14, 2009, at: http://www.schrr.net/spip.php?article5082.]
August 29, 2009 6:53 pm
An increasingly common thing i have seen in my own country, is for a group to make statements to encourage its supporters with statements which can be seen as true, to a certain extent, such as “this office does not deny Baha’is admission”, actually meaning that thay have divided the responsibility with other offices. Thus no one who feels the need to respond to the public admits anything. Are some of them ashamed? Yes. Are some proud of the game they are playing? Certainly. Does this eventually educate the public? All those who have eyes to see.