The Plight of Religious Minorities in Iran
I guess at the age of 69, I have seen some of the ugly side of human beings and be able to be cover any story , but unfortunately the combination of human stupidity and savagery is so vast, that one cannot claim that one has seen it all.
For several years I intended to write an article about the plight of the religious minorities in Iran. Finally I found the gulls to do it a few days ago. Writing this article required to call a few old friends and reading about my countryman in depth. Although I knew a lot of it already, but I had managed to compartmentalize a lot of it. Unfortunately, repression works just so much. In order to prevent the readers of this article from feeling the way I feel .I deleted the most gruesome parts of it .besides being sad , I feel ashamed of what is happening in Iran. I feel guilty that I live in a secure part of the world and people like me have to endure the worst kind of human behavior in the same place that I was born at. I write the truth, you be the judge.
I start with the most oppressed:
The Baha'i
Anti Baha'i graffiti on a persons house in Tehran ,when translated to English , calls the owner "filthy infidel" , Israeli traitor.
The Baha'i faith is not recognized under the Iranian Constitution. Over 200 of its followers were executed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, while many Baha'i leaders were assassinated. Its followers are persecuted, arrested, frequently face judicial harassment and unfair prosecution, and are occasionally victims of extrajudicial killings, because of their faith.
Followers of the Baha'i faith are deprived of higher education, and persecuted in schools. They are prohibited from seeking employment in the public sector and their private businesses are subject to various types of unfair legal pressure and brutal administrative closures. In addition, private companies that employ Baha'is face great pressure from the authorities.
A campaign of raids on Baha'i homes and baseless arrests of Baha'is is currently unfolding across Iran. So far, dozens of Baha'i homes have been raided by authorities in Baharestan, Isfahan, and Shiraz, resulting in the detention of over 20 Baha'is and more who can be called to prison at any time. These raids and arrests are the latest in a long list of recent incidents of persecution, including the confiscation Baha'i-owned properties in the village of Ivel in Mazandaran Province, a confidential directive from the Commission on Ethnicities, Sects and Religions in the town of Sari in Mazandaran Province calls to monitor and suppress , the banning of the Baha'is of Tehran from burying their loved ones in land previously allocated to them in Tehran's Khavaran cemetery. Such incidents are nothing less than an extensive government campaign, the aim of which is the systematic eradication of the Baha'i community as a whole.
The Baha'i International Community is concerned that a recent intensification of the persecution of the Baha'is in Iran appears to be underway, signaling the implementation of a larger plan by the Iranian government to increase the persecution of the community, the largest non-Muslim Religious minority in the country.
Sunnis of Iran
The Sunnis are the largest minority in Iran. Twenty percent of Iranians are Sunny, they mostly live in the states of Kurdistan, Baluchistan and some in Khuzestan . The people of these states are systematically oppressed and deprived of governmental assistance. States like Baluchistan are deprived of water and are extremely poor. The most stupid recent event was when the governor of Baluchistan requested that people of Baluchistan should use less natural gas because of the shortages, the idiot did not know that his state does not have a natural gas system or its infrastructures.
The current sectarian and political differences between the Shiite and Sunnis are due in no small part to the Ayatollah Khomeini who instituted an Islamic government based on Shia religious principles. Although both Shiites and Sunnis are Moslem there is not even one Sunny mosque in Tehran.
Anti-Semitism
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