The following report analyzes the situation of religious minorities in Iran over April-June 2024.
The Iranian authorities impose severe restrictions on access to information and to the victims of its repressive measures. Many Iranian activists, including those focusing on human rights and freedom of expression and information, as well as lawyers, have been given harsh prison sentences because of their work, and others are routinely surveilled and threatened with similar repercussions for them and their families.
Context: A System of Religious Monopoly
Religious minorities in Iran face a fundamental challenge to enjoyment of equal human rights: a state structure built and maintained to preserve a religious monopoly. The preamble of the constitution of the Islamic Republic declares that “Islamic principles and norms” are the basis for “advancement” of “institutions of Iranian society,” while Article 12 enshrines Twelver Ja’fari Shiism as the official state religion. Vague “Islamic criteria” or “Islamic principles” condition virtually all facets of governance, from political participation to criminal law.
Religious minorities in Iran can be broadly divided into two categories: those which enjoy official recognition and those which do not.Officially recognized minorities comprise Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, who as a result enjoy certain freedoms in “rites and ceremonies,” “personal affairs,” and “religious education,” but “within the limits of the law” (Article 13). Certain Sunni Muslim schools are also to be “accorded full respect” (Article 12). These groups are in practice further qualified (“Christians” include only heritage Assyrians and Armenians, and not converts from Islamic to Christianity) and exercise of their limited rights depends on compliance with state red lines.
Officially non-recognized groups like Baha'is, Christian converts, atheists, and followers of new religious movements face an even harsher reality. These groups are at special risk of arbitrary arrest and prosecution (often on trumped-up security charges), asset appropriation, denial of education and unemployment, denial of the right to worship and to observe other ceremonies, and even capital punishment on charges of apostasy.“Minority” status is not simply demographic, but also the outcome of an ongoing historical process of marginalization.
This report, covering developments in the human rights situation of religious minorities in Iran for the period April 1 through June 30, 2024, is based primarily on IranWire’s own findings. These reports present an analysis of the IranWire coverage of religious minorities in Iran, which is based on first-hand reports from members of these groups, or by citizen journalists, and checked by professional journalists; and also, of secondary sources published by reliable human rights organizations.
Judicial Repression
Religious minorities are routinely subjected to judicial repression in connection with peaceful religious activities. In a judicial system marked by a lack of institutional independence (especially in the Revolutionary Courts, which try political and security cases), such defendants face vaguely-defined security charges derived from the Islamic Penal Code.
Cases of Baha'is
A recent spate of prosecutions of Baha'is, which intensified around the Iranian New Year in late March, is emblematic of this pattern. According to IranWire reports, at least 85 Baha'is were summoned or imprisoned in Iran from the beginning of March through mid-May alone.
Fifteen Baha'is – all women living in Baharestan in Isfahan – received summons onApril 10 to appear before the Branch One of the Revolutionary Court of that city on May 1. They faced charges including “propaganda against the regime of the Islamic Republic” and “participation in perverse promotional and instructional activity contrary to Islamic shariah.” On May 18, the court sentenced them each to five years of imprisonment, 50 million toman fines, and a complementary sentence of a two-year ban on exiting the country and a five-year ban on social activities.
On January 16, Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran sentenced Baha'i Keyvan Rahimian to five years of prison, a 50 million toman fine, and a six-year revocation of social rights for “promotional activities disrupting or contrary to holy Islamic shariah” and four years of prison for “assembly and collusion against national security.” On April 7, the Branch 26 Appeals Court located in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court upheld his sentence on appeal. He had been arrested at his home on July 28, 2023. Rahimian has previously served five years in prison for teaching psychology to Baha'i youth, who do not have a right to higher education in Iran.
Due Process Failures
Systematic due process failures which mar prosecutions in Iran also affect religious minorities.
Roya Sabet’s story is emblematic of the arbitrary detention of religious minority members. A 57-year-old Baha'i woman living in the United Arab Emirates, Sabet traveled to Iran in early January to visit ailing parents, only for Revolutionary Guards intelligence agents to raid her residence and seize documents needed for return travel on January 25. Sabet was summoned and eventually arrested on February 15. Taken to a detention facility belonging to the Revolutionary Guards, she was held incommunicado for three weeks before being permitted a closely-controlled phone call with her family. In the first three months of detention, she was granted just one opportunity to meet with family members in person, at a Prosecutor’s Office and in the presence of state agents. On May 20, she was abruptly transferred to Adelabad Prison in Shiraz, where family members were allowed to meet with her only in the presence of armed, camera-wielding agents. Through at least June 10, she continued to be detained without formal charges. Authorities had told her family only that she was “not cooperating” with them, but they refused to elaborate.
Cases of Sunnis
Arresting agents also routinely fail to produce warrants. On June 8, Ministry of Intelligence agents in Zahedan raided the house of Baluch Sunni cleric Bismallah Khougiani, Imam of the Sedighi Karimabad mosque, and took him into custody. A local informed source told the Baluch Activists Campaign that the officers failed to produce a warrant or communicate a charge against him.
Detainees may also be held in substandard conditions and denied adequate medical care. Obeidollah Hamali, a Sunni ethnic Baluch from the village of Homunat, Mehrestan County in Sistan and Baluchistan, was initially arrested during a home raid by Ministry
of Intelligence agents on October 10, 2023, according to the Baluch Activists Campaign. The arrest was violent and ended in Hamali’s leg being broken. Agents sent him to a clinic in Iranshahr, where a superficial bandaging was performed. They then transferred Hamali to the Ministry of Intelligence detention facility in Zahedan County. By April 3 – 163 days into his detention – his leg was infected and his critical condition meant he needed medical care. Doctors in Zahedan said the physician in Iranshahr should continue treatment, and so he was sent back there, according to a local informed source. Hamali’s family had requested medical leave on bail so that he could be treated at a clinic; the Ministry of Intelligence has still not granted this as of early April.
Cases of Christians
Laleh Sa’ati, an incarcerated Christian convert, needed specialist neurological examination due to interrogator abuse as of mid-May; the Prosecutor’s Office denied such treatment. Sa’ati was arrested at her father’s house in Tehran on February 15. On March 26, she was sentenced to two years in prison and a two-year ban on exiting the country for a conviction of “acting against national security by way of communicating with Christian Zionist organizations.”
The Right to Life
For years, Iran has been one of the world’s most active executioner states, with one of the world's highest per capita rates of imposing death sentences. Religious minorities remain at disproportionate risk of capital punishment in the country. For instance, according to figures from Iran Human Rights, of 834 executions conducted by the Islamic Republic in the year 2023 alone, 20% were of predominantly-Sunni Baluchs, though that ethnic group comprises only two to six percent of the country’s population. In cases of the ultimate punishment, due process violations are all the more grave.
Cases of Sunnis
On May 1, ethnic Kurd prisoner of conscience Anvar Khezri, a Sunni native of Mahabad, West Azerbaijan Province, was put to death on a conviction of spreading “corruption on earth.” Transferred to solitary confinement the day before, he was not granted a final visitation with family members. His death sentence had been issued by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court (presided over by Judge Salavati), reportedly under pressure from the Ministry of Intelligence office in Orumieh, following the Supreme Court’s overturning
of an earlier capital verdict. In a letter published years after his early 2010 arrest, Khezri said he had confessed to interrogators under physical and psychological torture.
In mid-spring, Branch 15 of Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Bukan-based Kurdish Sunni religious teacher Mohammad Khezrnejhad on the charge of spreading “corruption on earth," according to Hengaw. The verdict was first handed down by Branch 3 of the Revolutionary Court of Orumieh (presided over by Judge Reza Najafzadeh). At that court, Khezrnejhad was tried by videoconference. The verdict was issued on the basis of Ministry of Intelligence reports, and the judge did not hear Khezrnejhad’s defense. Khezrnejhad was violently arrested in November 2022 during crackdowns on widespread the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, and held for 100 days in the Ministry of Intelligence detention facility in Orumieh. He was tortured and coerced into confessing, according to Hengaw.
Economic and Social Rights
When it comes to social and economic rights, Iran’s legal framework paired with a history in which Shia Islam has been privileged over other currents have produced striking inequalities along religious lines, which often intersect with ethnic identity.
Cases of Sunnis
Official government data show that Sunni-majority Kurdistan Province had the country’s highest unemployment rate in the Persian year 1401 (2022/2023); 67 percent of jobs which do exist are informal. Iran’s poorest province is Sunni-majority Sistan and Baluchistan, according to Iran's Parliament Research Center findings from last year.
Cases of Baha'is
Baha'is in particular are subject to forced business closures. On May 1, authorities shut down battery, radiator, and muffler shops belonging to at least four Baha'i proprietors in the cities of Shahrkord and Farakhshahr in Chaharmahal o Bakhtiyar Province.
A drive toward “smart” online services foreseen in the government’s Eighth Development Plan, proposed in the fall of 2023, raised special concern for the economic and social rights (among others) of unofficial religious minorities. The plan would require all Iranian citizens seeking any government service to verify their identity and personal details, including religion, in a common database accessible to state agencies. Atheists, Baha'is, and others with dissident beliefs, whose beliefs are not recognized by the
constitution, may risk difficulties in completing car or real estate transactions or accessing medical care or employment. The system could also be used to flag them for surveillance or prosecution.
Freedom of Speech and Assembly
The aforementioned Eighth Development Plan would also oblige the government to compile information about Iranians’ daily lives in a “People’s Lifestyle System,” which early versions of the bill specified was to be used to “assess public religiosity.” Given the government’s efforts to limit internet access to women who do not comply with mandatory head coverings, the fear is that such data will be used to curtail online activities of dissenters.
Cases of Zoroastrians
Official religious minority organizations are, in some cases, compelled to echo state messaging. After the unexpected death of Ebrahim Raisi in May, the Zoroastrian Association of Tehran held a ceremony honoring him. The fact that the Association had held no such ceremony for a political leader since the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Komeini in 1989, coupled with the fact that such proceedings are never organized spontaneously in Iran, suggests coercion by authorities.
Religious Sites
Cases of Baha'is
In March and April, unknown vandals defaced the Baha'i cemetery in Semnan on multiple occasions, an informed source told IranWire. The vandals sprayed derogatory, inflammatory language on the building used for traditional body washing as well as gravestones. Local religious authorities have encouraged such acts with anti-Baha'i messaging in recent years.
Right to the Truth
Raisi’s death raised a too-often overlooked aspect of the religious minority human rights crisis: denial of the right to truth about past grave violations. As a Tehran vice prosecutor, Raisi was involved in the three-man “death committees” which, in secretive
and highly arbitrary proceedings in the summer of 1988, condemned political dissidents (many serving prison sentences) to death. In the case of secular leftists in particular, death committees would issue capital verdicts solely because individuals failed to identify themselves as Muslim: a flagrant, inquisitorial abuse of the death penalty and freedom of conscience. Iranian officials have failed to provide even minimal transparency and accountability for these killings, including by facilitating the rise of abusers like Raisi to the highest levels of political leadership.
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