IHRWG-Baha'is have rights too... - President Khatami

Iranian Human Rights Working Group (IHRWG)
P.O. Box 2422
Portland, OR. 97208
U.S.A.
Email: ihrwg@Tehran.Stanford.Edu
www.ihrwg.org


November 1999


Baha'is have rights too...
- President Khatami

President Khatami's pronouncement, in his Paris press
conference on Friday 29th October, on the plight of Baha'is
in Iran is by far the most encouraging statement made by an
Iranian high official of the Islamic Republic in this regard
since the demise of the provisional government of Mehdi
Bazargan in 1979. However, his statement fell far short of
acknowledging the basic rights to religious freedom enshrined
in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to
which Iran is a state signatory.

Baha'is are the single most persecuted religious minority in
Iran (followed, by a large margin, by the Jews). They have
never been recognised by the mainstream religious and
political authorities as a religious community - though they
were commonly tolerated before the 1979 revolution. However,
soon after the revolution, a large-scale hate campaign was
launched against this community by the authorities, resulting
in death, destruction and sufferings for a large section of
the community. Well over 200 Baha'is have been executed
(ostensibly on charges ranging from espionage to apostasy),
hundreds more have been detained, tortured or sentenced to
long imprisonment, thousands have been harassed to eviction,
loss of property or jobs or driven out of the country, while
the rest of the community have been denied of their rights to
employment, education, election, property or religious
practice.

In answer to a question about the persecution of the Baha'is,
Mr. Khatami declared that "nobody should be persecuted
because of their beliefs" and that he would defend the civil
rights of ALL Iranians regardless of their beliefs or
religion. He however, sought to justify the denial of the
rights of Baha'is to practice their religion on the grounds
that the Constitution has declared only four religions as
recognised to the exclusion of the Baha'is.

The Constitution of the Islamic Republic is a collection of
contradictory sets of rights and privileges accorded to
various sections of the society. While in article 19 it
declares all the Iranian people enjoy "the same rights
irrespective of their colour, race, language and the likes
(sic)", it goes on in many other parts to apportion rights on
the basis of religion, religious credentials or what it calls
"Islamic criteria" - contravening many of the articles of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The reference to the
Constitution by the President begs the question of how at the
same time he could reconcile this with his emphasis that NO
citizen will be denied of their civil rights or that he sees
as his duty to guarantee these rights to all citizens "no
matter what their beliefs".

At any rate, the declaration by the president in regards to
the Baha'is, taken at face value, implies that the they
should no longer be deprived of their civil rights such as
jobs, education and owning property. This, if implemented
properly, will mean a significant change of direction in the
policies of the Islamic Republic, and a great reduction in
the long list of injustices suffered by members of this
community. For instance, Bahai children should no longer be
barred from state schools and institutions of higher
education - even though they may have to sit at Islamic
classes as part of their course or go through anti-Bahai
propaganda at schools. This is because the President's
pledge would not extend to freedom of religion, and religious
association, practice, worship and observance recognised as
basic human rights by the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. It appears that in the vocabulary of the President,
civil rights do not include the right to observe one's
religion.

The resort to the provisions in the Constitution by President
Khatami to justify denial of the religious status for the
Baha'is could perhaps be interpreted as a mild criticism of
the Constitution that it has failed to include the Bahai
faith as a recognised religion. But such a criticism is
beyond the point: recognition of a religion as official by
the state, to the inevitable exclusion of some other
religions, is in itself an act of discrimination on the
grounds of beliefs and a recipe for religious intolerance.
It is the right of citizens to adhere to a set of beliefs (a
religion) and the state has no right whatsoever to determine
which set of beliefs are acceptable for its citizens. The
problem is, therefore, not why the Iranian Constitution has
not named the Bahai faith as a recognised religion, but that
it has named any at all. Naming one or more religions in a
constitution as being recognised, not only discriminates
against adherents of other religions at the time, but it also
precludes the formation of any other religious communities in
the future - a fact that bares the constitution of its basic
characters of universality (covering all) and endurance
(being future-proof). It was revealing of the degree that
President Khatami understands this basic principle when in
the same interview he criticised the French Constitution for
not recognising Islam as an official religion!

The Constitution of the Islamic Republic, in naming four
recognised religions, has further violated some basic human
rights by institutionalising a system of religious apartheid.
It restricts the right to representation on religious lines,
declaring that each individual is allowed to vote for a
nominee of their own faith. As a result, adherents of
(recognised) minority religions are destined to electoral
ghettos. This is in direct contravention of the
internationally recognised standards of election laws and
specifically Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. In short, the religious discrimination provisioned
in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic has all the
hallmarks of an apartheid system: declaring an official
religion for the land with all civil and political rights for
its followers, few second-class religions with some rights
for their adherents and token presence in the political
structure, and all others as being non-religions with anyone
associated with them regarded as non-persons. This bears a
startling resemblance to that other bastion of apartheid,
South Africa of pre-Mandela era with a constitution
identifying three classes of people: whites, coloured and
blacks. And as with South Africa experience, only with
removing all references to religion in the Constitution, and
guaranteeing equality of all citizens, can one see that the
civil and human rights of the Baha'is in Iran are restored as
well as those of followers of all other religions.