Coincidentally…
It seems that I have become very sensitive to what is going on around me these days. It maybe due to leaving this special place in two weeks. I know I have mentioned this before but that’s the word that comes to mind when people ask me how I am feeling so close to my departure from the Holy Land: Grateful, grateful for being able to practice my faith without any fear of retribution.
I was intently staring at some email on my screen when Colleen said that more Baha’is in Iran have been arrested. My heart just stopped for a sec and I had this very uneasy feeling.
In my last year of Uni one of my assignments for my media class was to make a video about an issue of social justice – famine, poverty, racism… My friends and I decided to do it about the situation in Iran and how Baha’i students of our age were denied education simply based on their beliefs. We collected a lot of information from the net, from various documents that had already been prepared to raise awareness and we interviewed students. From the information obtained, was a very poignant picture of a man who had been martyred. I remember that picture pretty well because of some Farsi words that had been inscribed on him after his death. The video would then be screened for all the students at Uni and a special screening would take place with General Romeo Dallaire as the guest of honour. Coincidentally, he was also the one who drew parallels between the Genocide in Rwanda and the alarming situation of the Baha’is in Iran.
A few months ago, I went to a talk given by a certain lady that had lived in Iran and who had also faced persecution for being a baha’i. As she was about to depart the Holy Land a last talk was organised so that the friends could hear of her story and of her courage in the face of trials and thus inspire us youth. Her story was very moving and many of us cried that night – for me it was the first time that I was hearing someone speaking firsthand about the persecution that the Bahais undergo in Iran. After telling her story, part of which was about her husband who had been imprisoned and later executed she showed us pictures of him before and after being executed and of her house after it had been searched. Of the pictures of her husband was the picture that I had used for my video project.
Yesterday again six of them were arrested in early-morning raids at their homes in Teheran, Iran.
http://news.bahai.org/story/632
