The Australian Baha’i Community is shocked to learn that Iranian authorities are allowing the excavation of a Shiraz cemetery which has some 950 graves of Baha’is, including those of ten women hanged in 1983 for teaching the equivalent of Sunday school lessons.
The news of the torture and execution of the innocent women, aged between 17 and 57, led to an international outcry at the time and the outpouring of artistic works commemorating those who had died.
This week Iran’s Revolutionary Guards began excavating the cemetery, used solely for members of the Baha’i Faith, Iran’s biggest non-Muslim religious minority.
A spokesperson for the Australian Baha’i Community, Dr Natalie Mobini, condemned the ongoing excavation and is inviting Australians to join with Baha’is in calling upon the President of Iran, Hasan Rouhani, to order an immediate halt to the work.
“This appalling act of desecration offends the standards of human decency recognised worldwide and is deeply distressing to Australian Baha’is, some of whose relatives are buried in the cemetery,” Dr Mobini said.
“By exhuming bodies, this excavation also offends the laws of Islam, the religion to which the Revolutionary Guards claim adherence,” she said.
Dr Mobini said that the affront to humanity in hanging innocent women should not now be compounded with such a shameful act.
“The failure of local officials to respond to the pleas of local Baha’is to leave the graves in peace leaves no option but to appeal to the president.
“President Rouhani came to his post expressing a wish to counter human rights abuses, and he now has an opportunity to do so.”
Dr Mobini said widespread, systematic persecution of Baha’is is continuing in Iran. Seven leaders remain in prison, six years into a 20 year prison sentence which has been widely condemned by the international community, including the Australian Federal Government.
Between 1979 and 1988, more than 200 Baha’is were executed by the authorities in Iran, despite the lack of evidence of any crime. Under the laws of their religion, Baha’is are obliged to obey the law of the land and to abstain from partisan political activity.
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