BIC GENEVA — The intensification of attacks against the Bahá’í community of Iran in recent months is a manifestation of the ongoing persecution that has afflicted the Bahá’ís of that country since the inception of their Faith. These persistent attacks, instigated by the government, have been well documented over the years.

An extensive and growing body of these records is being collected by the Bahá’í International Community and made available online on the Archives of Bahá’í Persecution in Iran website. This website aims to provide historians, researchers, filmmakers, journalists, and the wider public with access to historical documents that chronicle the course of this persecution and its numerous incidents.

At present, the unique collection contains more than 10,000 documents, images, and audio and video recordings related to persecution incidents in Iran dating back as far as 1848. Most of the material in the archives pertains to the most recent wave of persecutions since 1979.

The documents in the fully searchable archive are presented not only as images but have also been painstakingly transcribed in text format, available in both their Persian original and English translation. These features make this a unique database of its kind, one with great historical significance offering a mass of documentary evidence about a dimension of the Bahá’í experience in Iran.

The events documented in the archives have profound resonance with the social unrest now gripping Iran, where an ever-wider cross-section of the country’s population is experiencing hardships endured by the Bahá’ís for decades.