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Lewisville Bahai: Helping the hidden victims of persecution in Iran
By Michael Boren, Staff Writer
Simin Ziaie flips through the pages of 215 men, women and teenagers.
Their faces represent multitudes of families and personalities. One is a 17-year-old girl who taught Sunday school, another an educator, another a doctor.
But the faces all share one thing in common: they no longer exist because of religious beliefs.
Kamalabadi, 47, has been imprisoned since spring 2008 with six other Bahai faith members.
“She was in a solitary room for four months,” Ziaie, 48, said. “She got very sick. She had pneumonia; she has heart problems. I mean, she needs to come out of the prison as soon as possible.”
There are no formal charges against the Bahai group, which has been denied contact with attorneys. The group is accused of “espionage for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” according to Iranian news reports. The espionage charge results in the punishment of death.
The seven were supposed to be tried in court on July 11, but the trial was delayed, the Bahai World News Service reported. No new trial date has been set.
Ziaie believes her friend, who she’s known since seven or eight years of age, is in prison simply because of religious beliefs, similar to the 215 dead in the book, “A Tribute to the Faithful.”
“In Bahai faith to us, they are martyrs, because they gave their life for their religion,” Ziaie said. “They could have chosen to say ‘We are not Bahais,’ and they would have been freed, but they chose to say, ‘This is our religion … we haven’t done anything wrong.”
Ziaie worries that the government’s allegations against Kamalabadi and the six others are similar to those toward the 215 who were killed between 1978 and 1992.
“I am very concerned that they might execute them without a trial or anything,” Ziaie said.
Kamalabadi is incarcerated at Tehran’s infamous Evin prison, where political prisoners have been jailed for years.
It’s not the first time her bloodline has experienced life behind bars. Her father was also imprisoned and tortured in the early 1980s.
Now, it’s her turn.
Ziaie hasn’t spoken to Kamalabadi since 2007. But she keeps in touch with Kamalabadi’s mother, who recently visited her daughter and witnessed the physical tolls of incarceration.
“She went there a month ago and didn’t even recognize Fariba,” Ziaie said.
However, it’s not just Kamalabadi’s imprisonment that’s hitting home. Ziaie’s husband, Enayat Ziaie, also knows one of the seven detained Bahais.
That individual, Jamaloddin Khanjani, was a friend of Enayat Ziaie’s father.
“He was always very inspiring to me,” Enayat Ziaie, 54, said. “He was always telling me that, ‘You need to serve the community, serve mankind.’”
And that’s exactly what the Ziaies argue the seven Bahais did.
“They have done absolutely nothing but serving humanity,” Simin Ziaie said. “I really want people to hear their stories, because these are innocent people.”
The only reason the seven had been contacting Israel is because the Bahai faith’s headquarters are there, the Ziaies said. Israel is where the religion’s founder was exiled to from Iran at least a century-and-a-half ago.
With the faith’s founding, Bahais began experiencing persecution and prejudice for their ideals of unity of mankind and equality among genders, races and nationalities.
“A lot of those teachings were very progressive over 150 years ago,” Enayat Ziaie said. “So it was not well received by the Muslim community, who saw that as a threat.”
Since then, Bahais have continually faced limitations, with discrimination in some years being more severe than others.
The Ziaies both grew up in Iran, where they finished high school. As kids, they experienced lives somewhat different from the current persecutions.
“There was some prejudices against us, but it wasn’t that bad,” Enayat Ziaie said. “My childhood was really growing up, going to school like any other kid.”
But after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, things began to change. Bahais were barred from attending universities, and Enayat Ziaie’s parents, brother and sister-in-law all lost their teaching jobs.
“All the Bahais basically were kicked out of government jobs,” Enayat Ziaie said.
He came to America for school when he was 18, but it would be 22 years before he saw most of his family again.
“I have nephews, nieces that basically were born and raised, and they were past teenagers,” Enayat Ziaie said. “And I hadn’t seen them.”
Simin Ziaie came to the U.S. in 1985 to escape religious persecution and fulfill the education she was denied in Iran.
As an Iranian child, she faced prejudice at her home, such as when her family made food for holy days and distributed it between neighbors.
“Some of them would throw it out, because they would say it’s coming from a Bahai person’s house,” Simin Ziaie said. “It’s not clean.”
In today’s age, the Ziaies believe Bahai discrimination has accelerated.
“The new government has been using its agencies to pressure Bahais further,” Enayat Ziaie said, arguing that the latest act of pressure was the incarceration of the seven Bahais.
The seven were part of an assembly that took care of Bahai community affairs, such as birth certificates, marriages and deaths.
The Ziaies said the group obeyed the government and never worked against it. That ties partly into the Bahai belief of not getting involved in partisan politics.
But politics or not, life in Iran has been complicated by the razing of Bahai holy buildings and cemeteries, which are required to be separate from common Muslim cemeteries.
“The Bahais don’t have a single building in Iran,” Enayat Ziaie said. “They’re doing all these things to get rid of Bahais in any way possible.”
Simin Ziaie believes, however, that with the recent election disputes, the rest of the Iranian population could comprehend the freedom Bahais have desired all along.
“Now this is happening to all those people because they just want their rights also,” Simin Ziaie said. “So I think they can know a little bit more about what Bahais have gone through for the past 164 years just to have their right.”
To raise awareness of the seven imprisoned Bahais in North Texas, the Ziaies have hosted prayer vigils and written to congressmen.
They want the American public to write to their politicians as well, asking for religious Bahai rights in Iran.
“The government of Iran will respond to that pressure from other governments,” Enayat Ziaie said. “Any pressure from outside governments should help for the Bahais to be freed.”
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have also urged Iranian authorities to release the seven prisoners.
But until that day comes, the Ziaies are left with mixed emotions about the decision to delay the trial of their friends.
“In a way, I think I’m happy, because they didn’t have any lawyers,” Simin Ziaie said. “So I’m hoping that they’re going to allow them to have a lawyer or they’re thinking of releasing them soon.”
Yet Enayat Ziaie was quick to note that they still had no idea what would happen to the group.
“We are still concerned that the worst may happen,” he said. “What we can do is pray, and pray and try to also bring attention to their plight.”
That attention has been received by what Simin Ziaie believes is an increasing number of Iranians willing to help Bahais.
And in spite of continuous persecutions, the Ziaies are hopeful for the future.
“We believe that there will be peace,” Enayat Ziaie said. “There will be tranquility in the world to come. Whether it’s 20 years from now or 100 years from now or 200, we don’t know. But we are very optimistic about the future.”
If that future includes a prison release for Simin Ziaie’s friend, then she believes her friend will stay in Iran and continue to aid Bahais.
“I hope she can stay here longer to serve us, because she can really teach us and help us,” Simin Ziaie said. “She’s just a wonderful person that in this world, we cannot find that many like her, so we still need her here.”
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