Baha’i Teenager Banned from School

A school official has banned a 17-year-old Baha’i student from attending school in Isfahan.

“Like all other pupils, I went to enrol in school and was shocked to find that the headmistress refused to enrol me,” Kamand Agahi wrote on her Facebook page. She was initially told to come back to the school the following week, but when she returned to Safura School with her father, the headmistress informed her she could not enrol. “She treated us very disrespectfully,” Agahi wrote.

The headmistress said the ban followed a committee decision but did not provide a reason, and a school deputy ordered the student to collect her belongings from the school on July 20. Agahi said on Facebook that she was being discriminated against because she had “advertised” her religion. “It is 37 years now that all Baha’is have suffered injustice throughout the country.”

“We received my school file and went to one of the offices of the Ministry of Education to complain,” Agahi wrote. She said she had wanted to complete her education along with her classmates but that once she was evicted she wanted to make sure news of the ban was widely distributed. The Iranian people should be aware of the government's persecution of Baha'is, she said. "I am happy that more people know that our rights have been violated quite unfairly,” she said on Facebook.

Iranian authorities prevent Baha’is from attending further education and from working in government jobs, though banning children from school is less common.

But Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary general of the Human Rights Committee — which is part of the Ministry of Justice — has repeatedly denied there is any discrimination against Baha’is. Speaking to the Iranian Labour News Agency in March 2014, he said said: “Human rights reports about discrimination against minorities is an open lie. Nobody is tried or expelled from school for the simple reason of being Baha’i.”

“It is forbidden to arrest or deprive people from education due to their colour, race or faith,” Larijani said. “The Baha’i’ faith is not an official religion. Despite this, authorities have never mistreated its followers merely because of their faith. According to the constitution, all Iranian citizens have equal rights, and no one can be deprived of these rights.”

Read the original article in Persian

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Authorities Target Baha’is in New Arrests

Find out about Education is not a Crime, which campaigns for the rights of Baha’is in Iran

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