By Mark Browne
Esquimalt News
Jun 23 2006
She was seven years old when the Iranian Revolutionary Guards stormed into her family's house.
It was 1982, a time when the regime in Iran had stepped up its oppression against members of the Baha'i faith in that country.
"When they attacked, my mom asked them what is the purpose for invading our house," says the Esquimalt resident who's name is being withheld to protect relatives still living in Iran.
A Revolutionary Guard responded to her mother's question by kicking her in the stomach. Her mother had just given birth 15 days earlier.
"They slapped my father next in the face," she recalls.
The men who entered her family's home then proceeded to collect family photos, Baha'i literature, rugs, her mother's jewelry and other valuable items.
"They took away my father. The whole family was in shock," she says.
While the woman is learning English, she chose to speak through an interpreter during the interview because of the difficulty of articulating her painful past in her new language.
Her father had been arrested simply because he was an elected member of the local Baha'i assembly.
Her mother contacted legal authorities in Iran in an attempt to learn about her husband's whereabouts. Nine months later the family learned that he was being held in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.
Her mother was given permission to visit her husband in the prison. The visit took place over a phone behind glass. What her mother encountered came as a shock as her husband had lost weight, had long hair and looked several years older.
"She didn't even recognize him in the first place due to the torture," she says.
During the third and final visit to the prison her mother didn't see her husband but learned some devastating news.
"They told my mother, 'we have killed your husband - he's been executed,'" she says, noting that her family was forced to pay for the bullets expelled during the execution.
The family visited a mass graveyard where she says Baha'is, political prisoners and other "infidels" were buried after being executed by Iranian authorities.
The family was randomly given a grave number and a row where their father was supposed to be buried. But there was no way of knowing where his body was really located. And to this day, the family doesn't know where his body was buried in the graveyard.
The Baha'i faith was established in 1844 in Persia, or what is now Iran, and has since spread around the world. There are about five million members of the faith worldwide and about 30,000 in Canada.
The Baha'i faith is a progressive religion as members believe that religious history is an evolving educational process, and that all religions are essentially the same in terms of their universal spiritual message of the oneness of humanity.
Baha'is have been persecuted in Iran since the faith was first established. Much like the Nazi persecution of the Jews in the 1930s in Germany, members of the faith are not permitted to work for the government and many companies won't hire them, she says.
"A lot of Baha'is are unemployed because they try to restrict your income," she says.
As well, Baha'is are not allowed to attend Iranian universities and it's common for them to have their telephone lines tapped by authorities.
Her father's imprisonment and subsequent execution was only the beginning.
"Since that time we were constantly harassed at school," she recalls.
Her brother was expelled in the seventh grade because he was a Baha'i.
"Even for myself the teacher would tell other students to 'stay away from her - they are dirty people,'" she says.
When she was 15 she and a group of Baha'i youth were arrested by Iranian authorities at a gathering where they were holding prayers, meditation and discussing Baha'i community activities. The youths were then blindfolded and taken to a prison reserved for murderers.
She and the other youths were interrogated individually and she recalls being asked what she was doing in the prison.
"I said 'I don't know - you guys brought us here,'" she says.
Each youth was placed in a cell with no window and two dirty blankets.
"We had no concept of time and constantly we were hearing screams and voices from the hallways," she recalls. "I thought I'd never see my mother again."
Four days later, the young Baha'is were released without any explanation. They were taken to a separate location where their parents picked them up and took them home.
The ordeal of being in an Iranian prison continued to haunt the young teen.
"I was always scared when I left home because I always thought that someone was following me - the nightmare continued," she says.
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