During a 30-day period from mid-January to mid-February 2007, some 150 incidents of insults, mistreatment, and even physical violence by school authorities against Baha’i students were reported in at least 10 Iranian cities. Such incidents have continued sporadically around the nation.
The Baha’i children of Semnan have not been spared these attacks. In 2008-2009, the following incidents were reported:
On more than two occasions, Muslim clergymen were invited into classrooms in Semnan in order to give lectures insulting the Baha’i Faith. This has occurred at various educational levels.
School authorities on at least two occasions have refused to register Baha’i children for school.
Muslim students have been encouraged by their teachers or other school authorities to physically hurt Baha’i students.
School authorities have sought to segregate Baha’i students by forcing them to sit separately from others.
While exact details of what has been said or done in the classrooms of Semnan are difficult to come by, attacks on Baha’i schoolchildren in other places have been marked by a clear effort to pressure students to convert to Islam.
They have been required to sit and listen to the slander of their faith by religious instructors, and they have been taught and tested on ‘Iranian history’ in authorized texts that denigrate, distort, and brazenly falsify Baha’i religious history.
Baha’i schoolchildren have also been repeatedly told that they are not to attempt to “teach” or discuss their religion with other students.
On 18 May 2008, on the last day in school in Shiraz, every primary school child received a sealed envelope as a “gift” from a publishing company, containing a 12-page color children’s booklet that provided an erroneous and misleading version of the life story of the Bab, the Herald of the Baha’i Faith, presented in a mocking and degrading manner.
These attacks plainly follow the outline of the 1991 Baha’i Question memorandum.
Under the heading “educational and cultural status,” that document states that Baha’is can be enrolled in schools, “provided they have not identified themselves as Baha’is.” Moreover, it states that Baha’is, where possible, “should be enrolled in schools which have a strong and imposing religious ideology.”
The Baha’i Question memorandum also states that Baha’i students must be expelled from universities, “either in the admission process or during the course of their studies, once it becomes known that they are Baha’is.”
On a national level, the effort to deny Baha’i university students access to education is an ongoing problem. Shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, large numbers of Baha’i youth and children were expelled from school. The expulsions were not systematic, focusing mainly on children who were most strongly identified as Baha’is, but they ranged across the entire education system, from primary, through secondary, to the college level, where the ban was virtually total.
In the 1990s, partly in response to international pressure, primary and secondary schoolchildren were allowed to re-enroll. However, the government maintained the ban on the entry of Baha’i youth into public and private colleges and universities until 2004.
Until then, the government used a very simple mechanism to exclude Baha’is from higher education: it simply required that everyone who takes the national university entrance examination declare their religion. And applicants who indicated other than one of the four officially recognized religions in Iran – Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism – were excluded.
In late 2003, the government announced it would drop the declaration of religious affiliation on the application for the national university entrance examination. This, Baha’i youth believed at the time, cleared the way for them to take the examination and to enroll in university in academic year 2004-2005.
In 2006, Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research and Technology sent a confidential letter to 81 Iranian universities—including Semnan University—instructing them to expel any student who is discovered to be a Baha’i. And over the years, dozens if not hundreds of Baha’i students have been expelled.
Baha’i university students in Semnan have faced similar trials. One, for example, was dismissed from the Fazilat Institute of Higher Education in December 2008. In March the following year, a Baha’i student in economic studies was expelled from Semnan University. Later that year, three other Baha’is were also expelled by order of the university’s Security Office one week after the start of the semester. Protesting their expulsion, they were informed that the university had received the order from “a higher authority.”
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