Baha'i Student Expelled Because of his Faith

A student at the University of Isfahan’s Khansar School of Mathematics and Computer Science has been expelled for being a Baha'i.

Sina Shakib first discovered he had been kicked out on April 19 after trying to log into the school’s intranet to take part in an online class.

According to HRANA news agency, he then contacted the university’s education department only to be told that he was barred from continuing his studies.

Confidential letters had been exchanged between the university and the Ministry of Education in a selection process known as gozinesh: the assessment of a person’s eligibility based on religious and ethnic criteria, which since 1985 has been used to lock Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities out of full participation in civic life.

Shakib was born in 2001 and is a fourth-semester student of statistics and applications at the University of Isfahan.

His two sisters, and their mother before them, were also subjected to gozinesh and lost out on their higher education because they were Baha’is.

Sara Shakib was expelled from Kashan National University in her first semester in 2015, while Samira Shakib was locked out of completing her university application in 2018 due to the now-infamous “incomplete dossier” error message the online system shows to Baha’is.

More Baha'is Face Travesty of Justice in Shiraz

In a separate case, seven Baha'i citizens have now been held in detention in Shiraz for 20 days without any information being issued on their status or the charges against them.

Alieh Foroutan, Sedigheh Aghdasi, Saeed Ittihad, Siamak Honarvar, Soroush Abadi, Ghasem Masoumi and Behrooz Farzandi - an Iran-Iraq war veteran - were detained in a spate of arrests and raids on their homes earlier this month.

They have been variously held in detention centers run by FATA, Iran's cyber police, the Revolutionary Guards and the intelligence agencies in Shiraz. They have been allowed only patchy contact with their families, who were barred from entering the courtroom during the preliminary hearing in the case against them.

At the time of his arrest, Behrooz Farzandi was being treated for heart and nerve disease caused by injuries he sustained during the war. Abadi is still suffering from mental health complications due to his previous detention in 2019 and so far his family have been denied permission to visit him.

Related coverage:

Baha'is Barred from Entering University for the Fortieth Year in a Row

The Crush Continues: Rouhani and the Ban on Baha’i Education

Baha'i University Candidates Summoned for Interrogation

Baha’is Banned from Education: “The Order Comes from the Top”