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Iranwire – Iranian police arrested a member of Iran’s persecuted Baha’i religious minority on December 10, IranWire understands. Armed agents raided the home of Massoud Momzat, in the southeastern city of Shiraz, confiscated personal electronic devices, and took him to an unknown location. No further information on Momzat’s condition has been forthcoming since his arrest.
The Iranian authorities’ crackdown on members of the Baha’i minority appears has accelerated in recent months, starting with the arrest of two former leaders of the Baha’i community, Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, on July 31, and including months of arrests, home destructions and other acts of persecution.
Sabet and Kamalabadi were senteced last week to 10 years in prison on unfounded charges of disturbing national security – a repeat of the same sentence served between 2008 and 2018 on the same charges.
Baha’is in Iran have faced systematic discrimination and harassment since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, including deportation, restrictions to education, property confiscations, imprisonment and torture, and official hate speech against the community. More than 200 Baha’is were executed after the Revolution.
Baha’is number some 300,000 in Iran and are the country’s largest non-Muslim religious minority. Shia Islam is the state religion in Iran. The country’s constitution recognizes a number of minority faiths, including Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, but not the Baha’i faith.
