When non-Muslim minorities in the Islamic world face atrocities that are committed by Muslims, there is seldom is criticism by any of the major players in the international community. From the massacre of Rohingya Hindus to the oppression of the Iranian Bahai community to the atrocities committed by Turkey and its allies against the Yezidis, where is the international outrage?
In recent times, Turkey has committed many atrocities against Yezidis in the Afrin region. According to a Gatestone Institute report, the Kurds have been booted out of the area, Afrin is now ruled under Muslim law, and there are reports that Yezidi temples in the area have been destroyed. According to some reports, Yezidi residents have been forcibly taken to mosques in order to convert to Islam. But few in the international community are speaking out against the persecution of Yezidis in Afrin.
According to Article 13 of the Iranian constitution, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians are the only recognized religious minorities in the country, implying that the Bahai faith receives no protection. As an Iranian Islamist judge stated in 1983, the Iranian government "cannot tolerate the perverted Bahais who are instruments of Satan and followers of the devil and of the superpowers and their agents. It is absolutely certain that in the Islamic Republic of Iran, there is no place whatsoever for Bahais and Bahaism."
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Bahais have been systematically persecuted. Just in the first decade after the revolution, more than 200 Bahais were executed or otherwise killed by the regime, hundreds more were tortured or imprisoned and tens of thousands lost their jobs, access to education and other basic human rights solely because of their religious beliefs. Aside from that, Bahai holy places and other monuments including historic ones have been systematically destroyed. The Iranian government treats Bahai national historic treasures no better than the Taliban treated the ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. Among the destroyed Bahai historic treasures were the home of Mirza Abbas Nuri, a 19th-century statesman whose home was considered a classic example of Iranian architecture; the home of the Bab, the holiest Bahai shrine in Iran; and the childhood home of Bahai holy figure Baha'ullah in Takur.
As Douglas Martin, author of "The Persecution of Bahais in Iran, 1844-1984," wrote regarding the plight of the Bahais in the early days after the Islamic Revolution: "Horrors multiplied daily. An elderly man and his wife in the village of Nuk were drenched in kerosene, set afire and forced to run through their own fields until they fell dying. Bahai girls were kidnapped from their families, forced to marry Muslims and threatened with divorce and disgrace once they became pregnant unless they recanted their faith. Graves were broken up and the bodies of highly respected Bahais were dragged through the streets to be burned on garbage heaps. The Bahais were declared by the mullahs to be subhuman, were bridled like donkeys, led through the streets, chained in stables and fed on the grass. Widows were compelled to pay the price of the bullets that had killed their husbands and then they were evicted from their homes only with the clothing that they were wearing."
Unfortunately, the oppression of Bahais continues. Since 2005, over 1,005 Bahais have been arrested and there have been at least 52 incidents of arson attacks against Bahai properties with the perpetrators not ever being arresting. During the same period, there were at least 60 incidents of vandalism and the desecration of Bahai cemeteries. More than 26,000 pieces of anti-Bahai propaganda have been disseminated in the Iranian media during Hassan Rouhani's presidency alone. According to the Bahai international community, "A new wave of arrests and raids on Bahai homes across different cities in Iran has raised the concern for the Bahai community in the country. The systematic nature of the arrests, which have unfolded in multiple provinces such as Isfahan, Alborz and Razavi Khorasan, suggests a coordinated strategy on the part of the government authorities. In many cases, detentions have been accompanied by raids on personal homes and the seizure of religious books and writings."
However, the international community is virtually silent about the plight of the Bahais in Iran, just as they were regarding the oppressing of the Yezidis by Turkey and its allies in Afrin. In addition, while the international community has had much to say about the plight of the Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar, it did not have much to say about the massacre of Rohingya Hindus, even though Amnesty International reported that up to 99 Hindus were massacred by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a Muslim terrorist group, in August 2017.
According to Amnesty International, in the village of Kha Mung Seikh, "armed men dressed in black and local Rohingya villagers in plain clothes rounded up dozens of Hindu women, men and children. They robbed, bound, and blindfolded them before marching them to the outskirts of the village, where they separated the men from the women and young children. A few hours later, the ARSA fighters killed 53 of the Hindus, execution-style, starting with the men. Eight Hindu women and eight of their children were abducted and spared after ARSA fighters forced the women to agree to convert to Islam. The same day, all of the 46 Hindu men, women, and children in the neighboring village of Ye Bauk Kyar disappeared. Members of the Hindu community in northern Rakhine State presume the community was killed by the same ARSA fighters."
For members of the U.N. Human Rights Council and diplomats from many countries across the globe, the Hindus in Myanmar, the Yezidis in Afrin and the Iranian Bahais are invisible victims whose plight does not matter. They are not European, are not Christian, and in the case of the Hindus of Myanmar, they have brown skin. Therefore, their lives do not matter in the eyes of many. This is a travesty of justice. As the late Elie Wiesel once stated, "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice but there must never be a time when we fail to prowwww. Silence encourages the tormenter, never the tormented."
