Preserving Education for the Baha’i Community in Iran

A moving and powerful article by Matthew Reisz has appeared in today’s ‘Times Higher Education Supplement’ website. Below is a short extract: for the full post see link.

Once, during Ramadan in the mid-1990s, Erfan Sabeti was on his way to an all-day genetics class at the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education, in Tehran. He had taken to wearing a tie to show he was not a hard-liner, though the Ayatollah Khomeini had just issued a fatwa saying that ties were a symbol of Westernization. As he was about to get into a taxi, he was stopped by revolutionary guards.

Young and fearless at the time, Sabeti immediately told them he was a Baha’i going to a meeting, where the accepted costume was suit and tie. So they took him to their headquarters and one of them said: “You Baha’is are very cheeky, because we’ve got you ‘on our tongue.’ We could swallow you up whenever we wanted, if it wasn’t for pressure from the international community.”

“They interrogated me for three or four hours,” Sabeti recalls now, “cut my tie and fined me about £5. By lunchtime they let me go. My professor was very worried and almost fainted when I told the story, because of the risk that I’d been followed.”

Mona (not her real name) also remembers that she and fellow students of the BIHE had to keep the location of classes and labs secret in order to avoid raids by the government. “We were particularly cautious about the labs, because we didn’t want our textbooks, equipment, photocopiers, computers and teaching materials to be confiscated.”

So what exactly is the BIHE? Why has it long been a target of official hostility in Iran, subject to a notable crackdown in 1998 and now under even more severe threat?

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12/22/underground-online-institute-serves-bahai-students-iran#ixzz1hGNaav2f
Inside Higher Ed

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Iran Bans ‘underground university’

Keivan Mohammad Hassan, a former BIHE student

Yesterday Cable News Network (CNN) published a major article on the suppression of the Bahá’í Institute Higher for Education. Below are a few short extracts. For the full article see link.

London (CNN) — Today, Keivan Mohammad Hassan lives a peaceful life with his family as a civil engineer in Sacramento, California. But things could easily be very different.

Hassan believes that had he not fled his homeland as a refugee, he would likely number among the Iranian Baha’is facing years behind bars simply for working to provide younger members of their community a tertiary education.

“If myself and my wife were there, we would be imprisoned,” he said.

Hassan, 31, is a member of the Baha’i Faith, Iran’s largest religious minority with an estimated 300,000 members. Considered by the ruling clergy to be apostates, Baha’is have been persecuted in Iran since the faith arose there in the mid-19th century.

Its members are systematically denied access to higher education in the Islamic republic today, says Amnesty International.

“People apply for university and their applications are turned down, even though they have strong results from secondary school,” said Elise Auerbach, Iran specialist for Amnesty International USA.

“They can’t get credentials, so they’re barred from pursuing all sorts of professions. They can’t be doctors, lawyers, university professors or scientists.”

In response, Baha’is have improvised a decentralized, semi-underground college known as the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE).

Since 1987, BIHE has run classes in the living rooms and kitchens of Baha’i homes, on the sweat of volunteer Baha’i professors, many of whom lost their jobs in Iranian universities over their religious beliefs. . . . .

In May, more than 30 Baha’i homes across Iran were raided as part of a crackdown on BIHE. The institution was subsequently declared illegal, according to human rights groups, and seven professors and administrators were last month sentenced to four and five years each, for being involved in an illegal group intending to commit crimes against national security.

Among them was Hassan’s academic adviser throughout his five years at BIHE, Mahmoud Badavam.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Hassan. “These are regular people, they’re not anti-government. When the government blocks their education, they just find another way. Now they’re arresting them because they found alternatives to the rights they were denied.”

The global campaign against Iran’s persecution of Baha’is in education is gathering momentum, with the screening of Education Under Fire, a documentary film on the issue at a number of U.S. universities this month.

Nobel Peace Prize laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and East Timor president Jose Ramos-Horta have signed an open letter calling on Iran to unconditionally drop the charges against the Baha’i educators.

“[I]t is particularly shocking when despots and dictators in the 21st century attempt to subjugate their own populations by attempting to deny education,” it reads.

. . . . Alireza Miryusefi, spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations, . . . . said raids on BIHE had been conducted because those involved in the institution had “systematically controlled activities of cult members, and … interfered in their private, social and economic lives.” He said the organization also had the goal of “entrapping” non-Baha’is, with the ultimate objective of creating “an extremist cult movement.”

He said those arrested in the raids had been given a fair trial, and had exercised their right of appeal.

Hoffman, the Education Under Fire campaign’s founder, said the fact that BIHE produced “brilliant students” seemed to be viewed by the Iranian government as an affront.

Related articles

• For Bah’ai educators, a lesson in power from Iran
• Continuing attack on the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE)
• Eleven Bahá’ís Charged in Iran
• Open Letter calling for an end to the oppression of students
• Can You Solve This?
• House of Commons seminar on Iran’s human rights crisis

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Shohreh’s story

On the 28th September the Bahá’í World News Service published the following story. Only the first part is here: for the full story see link.

GENEVA — Like many young people the world over, Shohreh Rowhani grew up with high hopes of a good university education.

But now she has run up against a system which – while promising opportunity on the surface – is cruelly designed to block her and other young Iranians from ever getting a degree.

Ms. Rowhani is a Baha’i, and her experience is made all the more unjust by the fact that she is among Iran’s most gifted students; she ranked 151 in the country after passing the national university exam in her chosen field of languages. In other words, her result put her among the top 1% of candidates who took the exam.

Buoyed by her impressive grades, Ms. Rowhani – who comes from the northern Iranian city of Nowshahr – began the online process of selecting her courses. But when the results of those applications were listed, she discovered that her submission had been rejected as an “incomplete file.”

It is a phrase well known to young Baha’is. For several years now, the term has appeared frequently as one among several ruses crafted to prevent them from actually matriculating even if they pass the national university exams.

Undeterred, Ms. Rowhani courageously went to the regional office that oversees the examination process and asked officials to explain what was wrong.

“They told me that this has happened because you are a Baha’i,” she reported in a letter recently sent to several human rights organizations.

“Since you are a Baha’i you do not have the right to enter university,” she was told. . . . .

Related articles

• Can You Solve This?
• Open Letter calling for an end to the oppression of students
• Continuing attack on the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE)

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Open Letter calling for an end to the oppression of students

The 16 Baha'is initially detained

The Baha’i World News Service reports (see link for the full text of the post) that the Baha’i International Community has written an open letter to Iran’s minister for higher education which calls for an end to the oppression of Baha’i and other students.

NEW YORK — In an open letter to Iran’s minister for higher education, the Baha’i International Community is calling for an end to “the unjust and oppressive practices” that bar Baha’is and other young Iranians from university.

“This letter affirms every person’s duty to acquire knowledge so that they can contribute their talents and skills to the betterment of society,” said Bani Dugal, Principal Representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations.

“To actively deprive any youth of education is reprehensible and against all legal, religious, moral, and humanitarian standards. No government should deny this fundamental and sacred right to its citizens.”

The five-page letter addressed to Kamran Daneshjoo, Iran’s Minister of Science, Research and Technology, recounts in particular the history of Iran’s systematic, 30-year campaign to deny higher education to young Baha’is and its attempts to outlaw an informal community arrangement – known as the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) – which makes use of the volunteer services of dismissed professors to teach Baha’i youth.

Press reports in Iran have recently announced that BIHE has been declared illegal.

“How is it that a government would debar a population of young citizens from access to higher education and then, when their families, with the help of one another, make private arrangements that bring them together in their homes to study such subjects as physics and biology, pronounce such activity to be ‘illegal’ by citing laws that are in fact intended to guide the operation of educational institutions that serve the general public?” asks the open letter.

“Why is the government so ruthless in the face of the earnestness of Baha’i youth to obtain higher education? Are not the professors in your universities calling upon their own students to cultivate the same commitment to learning?”

. . .

Worldwide condemnation

The latest attack on the Baha’i Institute of Higher Education has prompted a global outcry. The raids three months ago on the homes of BIHE staff and faculty members, and the subsequent imprisonment of a number of them, has been condemned in the parliaments of Brazil, Canada and Chile; censured by high-ranking ministers and parliamentarians in Austria, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States; provoked statements from prominent citizens in India and educators in Australia and the United Kingdom; and prompted campaigns of protest from organizations and individuals, which proliferate through online social networks and around university campuses on all continents.

The letter also recounts instances where many government officials to whom Baha’is appeal for redress – including staff in the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology itself – sympathize with Baha’is while telling them that their hands are tied by orders from their superiors.

“With this letter, we are joining with all those people of goodwill throughout the world who are raising their voices in protest,” said Bani Dugal.

“We are saying to the Iranian government that this injustice and oppression must now end.”

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Eleven Bahá’ís Charged in Iran

The Huffington Post yesterday published an article about the current situation of the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education in Iran: see link for full story.

Eleven Bahá’ís in Iran are the latest victims of the Islamic Republic’s relentless campaign to persecute the Bahá’í community – the country’s largest non-Muslim religious minority. They are charged with conspiracy against the state and national security, “by establishing”, according to the authorities, “the illegal Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education”.

It is part of a long-standing pattern of callous abuse: the sentencing to 20-years in prison of seven former community leaders on trumped-up charges; the detention of over 100 other believers; the denial of education and livelihoods; the harassment of school children; the desecration of Bahá’í graves; the razing of homes. Thousands of Bahá’ís have been arrested since the 1979 Islamic revolution and hundreds executed.

The Institute began in 1987 as an informal programme to give young Bahá’ís a chance to study. Bahá’ís were barred from university and had nowhere else to go. It offered 17 undergraduate courses taught by Bahá’í academics who, because of their beliefs, had been dismissed from state positions. A 1991 policy memorandum signed by the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, spells out the government’s purpose – to block the progress and development of the community. It is an official policy of strangulation authorised at the highest level. Iran is trying to systematically eliminate the Bahá’í community by willfully destroying the future of its youth.

The eleven were arrested in May, along with eight others who have been released, after the authorities had raided 39 homes. Criminal charges were filed just before the expiration of a two-month deadline, in a subversion of due process intended to keep the Bahá’ís in jail. The families of the eleven fear that their loved ones will be imprisoned for an extended period of time. But Iranians are now scrutinising the actions of the authorities. They understand better than ever the character of their government. Iran’s actions are at odds with its rhetoric and its officials disregard their human rights obligations. Iran has never yet offered a vaguely tenable reason for persecuting Bahá’ís, other religious minorities, Kurds, intellectuals and journalists, artists, academics, homosexuals, and women.

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Continuing attack on the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE)

On 27 July 2011 the Baha’i International News Service posted an update on the current situation in terms of a Baha’i run education system (see link for full post):

GENEVA — Some nine weeks after they were arrested, 11 Iranian Baha’is – associated with an initiative offering higher education to young community members barred from university – are now reportedly facing charges.

The Baha’i International Community has learned that, by establishing the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education, the 11 are accused of “conspiracy against national security” and “conspiracy against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

“What could possibly motivate the Islamic Republic to make such a charge?” asks Diane Ala’i, representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations in Geneva.

A widespread international outcry has followed the latest attack on the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), in which some 39 homes were raided at the end of May. Of the 19 BIHE staff or faculty members who were originally detained in connection with the raids, 11 remain in prison.

“Callous action”

The recent targeting of the BIHE is the latest attempt in an ongoing policy to keep Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority on the margins of society. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, young Baha’is have been systematically deprived of higher education. With nowhere else to go to, the community initiated its own educational programme. This, in turn, has come under attack on numerous occasions by the Iranian authorities who have now declared it “illegal.”

“This callous action is all part of a systematic plan to impoverish the Baha’is of Iran,” explains Ms. Ala’i. “The authorities are clearly determined to drive Baha’i youth, who long to contribute to their society, out of their homeland.

“Baha’is have been banned from higher education for three decades. And now, their own peaceful initiative – to meet a need created by the government’s own actions – is branded a conspiracy against the state.

“Iran’s actions are being closely scrutinized at home, and around the world by governments, organizations and fair-minded individuals. It’s time for the international community to vigorously challenge the Iranian government on this matter,” she says.

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