Source: www.bic.org
Geneva—22 January 2025—The Islamic Republic of Iran’s latest outrage against the Baha’is of Iran occurred early this morning when security forces arrested eleven Baha’i women, without arrest warrants or prior notification, in a series of shocking home raids.
The detained women—several of whom are mothers of young children and infants, or caregivers to aging parents—have faced previous convictions for their faith. Security agents reportedly scaled walls, coerced neighbors, and posed as utility workers to force entry into the women’s homes, subjecting them to distressing and invasive searches. Neighbors were intimidated into silence and children in the homes were left traumatized by the operation.
Ten of the women were arrested from their homes in Baharestan, near Isfahan. But when the agents arrived at the home of one of the women, they found that she was not home. Her husband informed them that she was visiting her family in Qarah Village, located in the neighbouring province of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province. The agents waited at her residence in Baharestan until noon for her return and when she did not return, they proceeded to Qarah Village, where they arrested her later that same day.
“The Iranian government has once again shown its true face,” said Simin Fahandej, Representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations in Geneva. “Two days before the United Nations reviews Iran’s human rights record, it commits yet another senseless act against women who are completely innocent. Their so-called ‘crime’ was to serve their local communities, and now the Iranian government has detained them in violent home raids.”
Recently, 18 United Nations human rights experts and the Baha’i International Community (BIC) to the intersectional persecution Baha’i women face in Iran—on account of both their faith, and their gender—and today’s incident is the latest example of this appalling trend.
The BIC condemns these arrests—which are part of a systematic and escalating campaign of persecution against Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority.
Today’s incident comes just two days before Iran’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where the country’s systematic persecution of the Baha’is is expected to be scrutinized.
The BIC urges the international community to use the opportunity of the UPR to call on Iran to:
- End discrimination against Baha’is in all areas of life, including education and employment.
- Uphold freedom of religion and belief.
- Cease state-led persecution, arrests, and property confiscations.
- Stop disseminating hate propaganda against the Baha’is.
- Restore confiscated properties and ensure justice for affected individuals.
The arrests targeted Roya Azadkhosh, Shourangiz Bahamin, Nasrin Khademi, Maryam Khorsandi, Boshra Motahhar, Mojgan Pourshafi, Firouzeh Rastinejad, Sanaz Rasteh, Azita Rezvanikhah, Farkhondeh Rezvanpey, Sara Shakib.
For more information please contact
- Bani Dugal, Principal Representative, New York, [email protected], +19143293020 (English)
- Simin Fahandej, Representative, Geneva, [email protected], +41788800759 (English & Persian)
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