Arson attacks have been made on homes and vehicles belonging to Baha’is in Iran, the Australian Baha’i Community has learned.
At least a dozen cases of arson targeting Iranian Baha’is have been reported in the last 15 months, with three attacks occurring in July 2008 alone, a spokesperson for the Australian Baha’i Community, Natalie Mobini, said today.
“These attacks are the latest violent tactics directed against the Baha’is of Iran,” Dr Mobini said.
“They follow the arrests in March and May this year of all seven members of Iran’s national Baha’i coordinating group, who are still being held in Evin Prison in Tehran without any charges and without access to their families or legal representation”, she said.
Up in flames
In the early hours of 18 July, the house of the Shaaker family in Kerman went up in flames (see right), only weeks after their car had been torched and in the wake of a series of threatening phone calls.
On 15 July at 1.15 am, Molotov cocktails were thrown into the front courtyard of the home of Khusraw Dehghani and his wife, Dr Huma Agahi, in Vilashahr.
This attack followed anonymous threats that forced Dr Agahi to close her clinic in nearby Najafabad, where she had practised medicine for 28 years.
On 25 July, the car of a prominent Baha’i in Rafsanjan, in Kerman province, was torched and destroyed by arsonists on motorbikes.
Soheil Naeimi, the owner of the car, and 10 other Baha’i families in the town had received threatening letters from a group calling itself the Anti-Baha’ism Movement of the Youth of Rafsanjan.
Among other things, the letters threatened jihad (holy war) against the Baha’is.
Alarm
“Baha’is worldwide watch with alarm this escalation in violence,” said Bani Dugal, principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations, speaking in New York overnight.
“Their only hope is that enough voices of protests are raised around the world to compel the government in Iran to put an end to this violence.”
Visit the Baha’i World New Service for further information and details of other recent arson attacks
Read a CNN report on the arson attacks