Intelligence agents arrested a member of Baha’i religious minority Farajollah Bongaleh on March 28, 2018, after completely searching his home in an unwarranted raid.
Farajollah Bongaleh has been transferred to a detention center known as “Plaque 100.”
Baha’i faith is the largest non-Muslim religious minority with a population estimated more than 300,000. The Iranian regime has hurt many religious and political groups in Iran, but Baha’i community has borne an especially heavy burden.
Since 1981, the group was targeted by Iran’s security services and its religion followers have been deprived of many of their fundamental rights, including access to higher education and the right to work freely. They are barred from holding government jobs. Iranian regime has also made a familiar habit of shutting their businesses and confiscating their properties.
Their marriages are not recognized and their cemeteries and holy places have been desecrated.
Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa urging Iranians to avoid all dealings with members of the banned Baha’i community calling them as “deviant and misleading.”
According to Asma Jahangir, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, discrimination against Baha’is is legally sanctioned by a lack of constitutional recognition. “Baha’is continue to be systematically discriminated, targeted, and deprived of the right to a livelihood,” Jahangiri said in her March 6 report.
