[A-List] Bahais

[Louis Proyect]

The Washington Post
July 6, 1983, Wednesday, Final Edition
Executions, Arrests in Iran; U.S. Bahais Denounce Abuses

BYLINE: By Caryle Murphy, Washington Post Staff Writer

When the phone rang in the predawn darkness of Saeid Eshraghi's home in 
Nacogdoches, Tex., two weeks ago, it brought terrible news from halfway 
around the world: After eight months in prison, his 60-year-old father 
had been hanged by Iranian Revolutionary Guards for refusing to recant 
his religious beliefs.

But more was to come. Another phone call 24 hours later relayed the 
message that his mother and 21-year-old sister, along with eight other 
women, three of them teen-agers, had met the same fate.

The Eshraghis are Bahais, members of a religious minority of 350,000 in 
Iran who have suffered increasing persecution and repression from the 
Shiite Moslem government that regards them as a heretical sect.

The executions came a month after President Reagan had publicly 
criticized "the persecution and severe repression of the Bahais in Iran" 
and appealed to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to spare the 
lives of 22 members of the religion who had been condemned to death. 
Reagan's appeal followed requests by congressmen and Bahai leaders that 
he intercede on behalf of the Bahais.

Six days later the ayatollah rejected the appeal in an angry broadcast 
speech, saying Reagan's concern for the Bahais proved that they were 
spies. Reagan's statement was carefully weighed because of fears that it 
might anger the ayatollah and spur him to execute more people.

Firuz Kazemzadeh, a professor of Russian history at Yale and secretary 
for the Bahai National Spiritual Assembly, the governing body for its 
100,000 American adherents, said he cannot be sure the recent series of 
executions was in direct retaliation for Reagan's remarks, but "it may 
have been partly in answer."

Inyaitoloah Eshragi, the father of Saeid Eshragi and a former employe of 
Iran's national oil company, his wife, Ezat, 52, and their daugher, 
Roya, were among the latest group of Bahais executed in the southern 
town of Shiraz in a campaign that has caused 155 deaths, the 
imprisonment of scores of others and the flight of about 15,000 from 
Iran since the Islamic revolution began in 1979.

Charging the Bahais with Zionism, prostitution and spying for foreign 
powers, the Shiite clergy have executed most of the national leaders of 
the religion, confiscated their religious centers and bank accounts and 
allowed mobs to beat their followers and burn and loot their homes, 
according to Bahai leaders in the United States. Bahais have also been 
fired from jobs as teachers and government employes, have had their 
pensions cut off and have been forced to leave schools and universities. 
State Department officials say between 250 and 300 Bahais are known to 
be imprisoned in Iran.

The particular plight of the Bahais has been largely submerged in the 
general accounts of atrocities and executions since the Shiite theocracy 
came to power in Iran. Amnesty International estimated in December of 
1981 that at least 3,800 people had been executed since the Iranian 
Moslem revolution began.

On May 22 President Reagan urged other world leaders to join him in 
appealing to Khomeini to spare the lives of 22 Bahais condemned to 
death, saying this would be "a step forward for Iran and the world 
community."

Khomeini gave Reagan his reply in a rambling, sarcastic speech on 
national radio.

"So he has sought the assistance of the entire world, saying that these 
people are not spies. They do not bother anyone . . . If they had not 
said these things, well we might have, out of sheer simplicity, thought 
that probably they are engaged in their own affairs, exercising what 
they regard as worship.

" But having heard Mr. Reagan's claim that these people have nothing 
else in mind but to exercise their religious rites, how can we believe 
this any longer?

"Had these people not been spies, then Reagan would not have uttered a 
word."

Since Reagan's appeal, 17 Bahais, including Eshragi's family, have been 
executed. Two prominent Bahais were abducted in Tehran last week, and in 
the village of Ival last Friday 130 men, women and children were run out 
of their looted homes after being forced to stand in a walled field for 
three days and nights without food or shelter and told to recant their 
faith, according to Bahai officials here.

An outgrowth of Islam, the Bahai religion was started in 1844 by an 
Iranian merchant in Shiraz named Seyyed Ali Mohammed and now has 
adherents in more than 150 countries.

Although the Khomeini government says Bahais are executed for 
antigovernment politics, Bahai leaders say the enmity is religious. The 
experience of Eshragi's mother would support this view. As her son 
recounts it, when relatives visited her in prison June 17 the day after 
her husband was hanged, she told them: "We're going to go see Dad so 
just be strong. We've already had the 'class.' "

According to her son, the "class" is a session given to Bahai prisoners 
by their captors in which they are told: "If you recant, you are free, 
you have your family, belongings, job, house, everything. If you don't 
recant, you are going to be hanged."

"I'm a 34-year-old man and I never cried in my life, but I just cried 
for one day. I couldn't help it," said Eshraghi, who came to this 
country as an architecture student in 1978 but became a restaurateur in 
Nacogdoches because of the upheaval in his homeland.

Fearful of further alienating Khomeini, the Bahai leadership in the 
United States initially refrained from speaking out against the persecution.

But as the disappearances, arrests and executions increased, their 
patience gradually ended.

"It was only when a policy of persecuting the Bahais began to emerge and 
when dire appeals to the Iranian government were rejected, telegrams not 
accepted, pleas went unanswered and foreign Iranian diplomats would look 
us in the eye and tell us most outrageous things," that they changed 
their tactics, Kazemzadeh said.

Following testimony by Bahai leaders on Capitol Hill, Reps. Jim L. Leach 
(R-Iowa), Edward J. Derwinski (R-Ill.) and Don Bonker (D-Wash.) wrote to 
President Reagan in November 1982 asking him to have U.S. 
representatives condemn the persecution in international meetings and 
provide humanitarian relief to those who had left Iran.

At present any Iranian Bahai who asks for asylum in the United States is 
granted it, but a debate continues among officials about whether public 
statements hurt or help the Bahais.

"The problem is not being able to evaluate what a statement's impact is 
going to have. We're still the 'Great Satan' as far as Iran is concerned 
and they are very resentful of what they see as interference in their 
domestic affairs," said one State Department official.

There are no diplomatic relations between the two countries and economic 
pressures are limited by the fact that trade consists mainly of U.S. 
imports of Iranian oil bought on the spot market in Europe. In the first 
quarter of this year those purchases made up the bulk of the $185 
million worth of imports from Iran to this country.

"I may be fooling myself, like the Jews in Europe thought it could never 
happen, but I don't think they are going to start a large-scale 
massacre," Kazemzadeh said.

These days Saeid Eshraghi tries to soothe his grief with the thought 
that he is now the "son of a martyr," and says his Bahai faith has grown 
stronger.

"I had two little birds called finches," he related. The day after he 
learned of his father's death, "I was just crying. I went outside and 
freed the birds. I didn't want to see any creature caged."