Yazd and Shiraz Baha'is Arrested as Crackdown Continues

Iranian authorities have arrested two members of Iran’s persecuted Baha'i religious minority, IranWire understands, over the past 10 days.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence officers arrested Mona Ghodrat on December 19 in the central city of Yazd. The officers raided Ghodrat's home and confiscated her electronic devices. She has been transferred to a detention center in Yazd without being told of her charges. 

Iranian police had previously arrested a Baha'i in Shiraz on December 10. Armed agents raided the home of Massoud Momzat, confiscated personal electronic devices, and took him to an unknown location. No further information on Momzat's condition has been forthcoming since his arrest. 

The Iranian authorities’ crackdown on members of the Baha'i minority appears has accelerated in recent months, starting with the arrest of two former leaders of the Baha'i community, Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, on July 31, and including months of arrests, home destructions and other acts of persecution.

Sabet and Kamalabadi were senteced last week to 10 years in prison on unfounded charges of disturbing national security – a repeat of the same sentence served between 2008 and 2018 on the same charges.

Baha'is in Iran have faced systematic discrimination and harassment since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, including deportation, restrictions to education, property confiscations, imprisonment and torture, and official hate speech against the community. More than 200 Baha'is were executed after the Revolution.

Baha'is number some 300,000 in Iran and are the country's largest non-Muslim religious minority. Shia Islam is the state religion in Iran. The country's constitution recognizes a number of minority faiths, including Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, but not the Baha'i faith.