| 2019 (In the year) |
Bahá'í Communities in a number of countries experienced persecution during 2019:
In Egypt where it had been estimated that there were between 1,000 and 2,000 believers, the law does not recognize the Bahá'í Faith or its religious laws and bans Bahá'í institutions and community activities. The law does not stipulate any penalties for banned religious groups or their members who engage in religious practices, but these groups are barred from rights granted to recognized groups, such as having their own houses of worship or other property, holding bank accounts, or importing religious literature. Since a 2009 court order, Baha'is are identified on their national identity cards by a dash where it indicates "Religion". Since the state does not recognize Bahá'í marriage, married Bahá'ís are denied the legal rights of married couples of other religious beliefs, including those pertaining to inheritance, divorce, and sponsoring a foreign spouse's permanent residence. Bahá'ís, in practice, file individual demands for recognition of marriages in civil court. The government continued to ban the importation and sale of Bahá'í literature and to authorize customs officials to confiscate their personally owned religious materials. [US State Department report]
In Brunei the Bahá'í community was banned as the Faith was considered "deviant."
In Iran, Bahá'ís faced multiple restrictions and were barred from certain types of work, especially in the food industry, because they were considered "unclean." Members of the faith also were blocked from government jobs, higher education institutions and receiving national pensions. They could not inherit property or have their marriages fully recognized.
In Eritrea, only four religious groups were officially recognized: the Eritrean Orthodox Church, Sunni Islam, the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eritrea. Other religious groups cannot register and are treated as illegal. [Pew Research Centre report 15 November 2021]
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Persecution, Iran; Persecution, Egypt; Persecution, Brunei; Persecution, Eritrea; Egypt; Brunei; Iran; Eritrea |
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| 2019 19 Dec |
The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated for sanctions, two judges presiding over branches of the Iranian regime's Revolutionary Court who, for years, had punished Iranian citizens and dual-nationals for exercising their freedoms of expression or assembly. In many cases, these judges sentenced political prisoners to death. Through their respective branches of the Revolutionary Courts, Abolghassem Salavati and Mohammad Moghisseh oversaw the Iranian regime's miscarriage of justice in show trials in which journalists, attorneys, political activists, and members of Iran's ethnic and religious minority groups were penalized for exercising their freedom of expression and assembly and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, lashes, and even execution.
Both Salavati and Moghisseh had been sanctioned by the European Union for presiding over a series of show trials following the June 2009 Iranian presidential election, which imposed long prison sentences and several death sentences for political activists and journalists.
Moghisseh, Head of Tehran Revolutionary Court, Branch 28, had also pressed questionable charges against several members of Iran's Bahá'í religious minority, prosecuting them for supposed participation in activities such as propaganda against the state and assembly and collusion against national security, after they reportedly held prayer and worship ceremonies with other members. [US Dept of the Treasury; Iran Press Watch 30 June 2017]
As the Head of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, Judge Abdolghassem Salavati had been responsible for multiple human rights violations by presiding over unfair trials, suppressing protests, persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, making excessive use of the death penalty, and issuing heavy prison sentences for activists. He had prosecuted and delivered harsh sentences, including many death sentences, to scores of political prisoners, human rights activists, and peaceful demonstrators, earning him the moniker "the Judge of Death." Salavati is responsible for executing prison sentences for Bahá'í professors on the basis of their faith after they were charged with national security-related charges for their work at a virtual Bahá'í university. [ifmat.org]
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Abolghassem Salavati; Mohammad Moghisseh; Persecution, Iran; Washington, DC, USA; USA; Iran |
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Canada