On Monday, 3 February the Islamic Republic upheld death sentences for seven Sunni Kurds after some ten years of holding them in detention on charges of Muharibih (waging war against God), and spreading propaganda against the regime. Earlier this year, the Islamic Republic officially barred Iranian Baha’i citizens from holding national ID cards, thereby denying them the basic rights of a citizen, and removing the “other religions” option from official forms.
Criminalizing religious minorities
Iran’s constitution names the Twelver Ja’fari School of Shi’a Islam as the state religion. It recognizes “Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian Iranians” as the only recognized religious minorities. That excludes the Sunnis, Yaresan (Ahl-e Haq), Erfane Halgheh, and the Baha’is from the minimum protections and recognitions that have been granted by Iran’s Islamic Constitution. Although Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian (especially converts) minorities of Iran have historically been persecuted, imprisoned, executed, and forcibly exiled, Sunnis and Baha’is have faced the most brutal persecution over the last four decades. According to Human Rights Activists in Iran, in 2019, Baha’is, Sunnis, and Christians respectively have been the most persecuted by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In Iran, where the Baha’i religion was founded, universities under the government’s direction refuse to admit Baha'i students. Baha'i cemeteries have been destroyed, and current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has confiscated property from Baha'i families. Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran stated in his most recent report that “over the past 40 years, the Baha’is, considered to be the largest non-Muslim and unrecognized religious minority in the Islamic Republic of Iran, numbering an estimated 350,000, have suffered from the most egregious forms of repression, persecution and victimization.”
