Film in Brussels about the institutionalized persecution of the Baha’is

HRWF (01.11.2022) – On 26 October, Brussels Office of the Baha’i International Community (BIC) held the screening of a documentary by Farid Haerinejad, “Others in their own land”, with the participation of the film producer himself. The event was hosted by a Member of the European Parliament, Leopoldo Lopez Gill (Political Group of Christian Democrats, Spain). Rachel Bayani introduced the event and both speakers on the name of the Brussels Office.

 

Farid Haerinejad retraced the history of the Iranian Revolution and the harsh persecution of the Baha’is since 1979 through the testimonies of numerous victims and survivors of the Ayatollahs’ regime.

 

About 200 Baha’is were sentenced to death and executed in the first decade after the revolution for refusing to recant their faith, including women. Nowadays, the persecution is more insidious but not less brutal: no access to higher education and to jobs in public institutions, discrimination and stigmatization at school, dismissals from all sorts of professional activities, closure of shops held by Baha’is, confiscation or destruction of property, economic pressure, police crackdowns on private meetings, arbitrary arrests and fabricated charges, very high bails for a temporary release from pretrial detention, hundreds of people waiting for months and even years before going to prison, physical and psychological torture, etc.

 

The purpose of this anti-Baha’i policy is the suffocation of this faith community whose population is estimated at about 300,000 in Iran.

 

For more information, see

HRWF’s database of documented cases of Baha’i prisoners in Iran: https://hrwf.eu/hrwf-prisoners-database-other-countires/

HRWF’s database of news about Baha’is persecution in Iran from 2020 to 2022: https://hrwf.eu/newsletters/forb/

HRWF’s Annual Report 2020: https://hrwf.eu/forb/forb-annual-reports/

 

Photo: Rachel Bayani and Farid Haerinejad during the debate after the screening of “Others in their own land”. (Credit: HRWF)

Further reading about FORB in Iran on HRWF website