The international tension between Iran and Western countries has ratcheted up to an alarming level. Although both sides are full of bluster, everyone is hoping that the P5+1 meeting to take place in Turkey on April 14th will provide an alternative to war.

The Islamic regime in Iran may shock everyone and ameliorate its stance on its ‘right to nuclear energy’. But even if it does, it will be for only one reason: self-preservation. For that same reason Iran is not letting up any pressure on human rights or freedoms of expression within its borders.

The recent UN special rapporteur’s report outlines just how bad the situation is in Iran and how it is worsening every year; not just for Baha’is but for anyone who falls foul of the Islamic regime.

In a few months access to the internet will be severely curtailed as Iran rolls out a “clean internet” which will be devoid of gmail, google, hotmail, twitter, etc. to be replaced with Iran Mail and “Iran Search Engine”. Iranians must register with their full legal name, address and national ID in order to use it. The next step will be a fully self-contained national intranet scheduled to go live in August 2012.

As human rights abuses perpetrated on the Iranian Baha’is continue, the 7 members of the Yaran (the alternative to an NSA which operated as the administrative body for the Baha’is of Iran) have been incarcerated for 10,000 days. The news of their arrest was broken first on Baha’i Rants in 2008: Baha’i Administrative Body of Iran Arrested.

This tragic milestone has lead to a redoubled effort by Baha’is to advocate on their behalf. A recent Op-Ed by Dr. Kishan Manoucha on the Wall Street Journal is one example of this.

Another is the Sentinel Project, a non-profit NGO based in Canada with the aim of providing an early warning system to prevent genocide around the world. Right now there are two situations of concern that they are monitoring, the Baha’is of Iran and Kenya.

The Sentinel Project monitors several important variables such as “symbolization”, “dehumanization”, “preparation” and “polarization”. They base these reports on available information, including the work of Sen McGlinn in reporting and translating Iranian reports.

The Sentinel Project has released several reports about its work on behalf of the Baha’is of Iran, including “Threat of Genocide to the Bahá’ís of Iran” and a Supplementary Report.

The reports by the Sentinel Project mention several important variables including the Hojjatieh Society which I wrote about in 2005.

While the efforts of NGOs like the Sentinel Project are laudable and all decent persons everywhere wish to see a free and democratic Iran which upholds human rights, the Baha’is that are able to leave Iran and remove themselves from harm should continue to do so (Farewell to Iran). It is my sincere wish that the UHJ acts as it did in the previous intensification of persecution of Baha’is in Iran and actively encourage and support the emigration of Baha’is from Iran for their safety.

The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran, Dr. Ahmad Shaheed, is included below. When the interim report was announced last year it sent ripples through diplomatic and human rights channels.

Iran’s human rights violations are many, the section below (section F) highlights the plight of Baha’is. At the bottom you can view and download the report in full.

F. Unrecognized religious communities

59. The Special Rapporteur continues to be alarmed by communications that demonstrate the systemic and systematic persecution of members of unrecognized religious communities, particularly the Baha’i community, in violation of international conventions. Moreover, the Government’s tolerance of an intensive defamation campaign meant to incite discrimination and hate against Baha’is violates its obligations as set out in article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. According to one report, 440 instances of slanderous speech against Baha’is were published or broadcasted in the past two years. One such article, posted by the Rasa news agency on 8 March 2011, accused the Baha’i community of attempting to subvert Islam.

60. Baha’is continue to be arbitrarily arrested and detained for their beliefs, in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In a report submitted to the Special Rapporteur, it was alleged that 474 Baha’is had been arrested since August 2004. Of that number, 97 were currently imprisoned (see annex, table IV); 199 had been released on bail and were awaiting trial; 26 had been released without bail; 96 had been tried and sentenced, and free pending appeal or summons to begin serving their sentences; 34 had been tried and sentenced and had completed their prison terms and/or paid a fine; 14 sentences had been overturned on appeal; and 5 Baha’is had served their prison sentences and begun their terms of internal exile. An additional 35 arrests were reportedly made between August and November 2011.

61. Baha’is are subjected to severe socio-economic pressure, in violation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; in some cases, they have been deprived of property, employment and education. In recent months, for example, 10 shops and a well owned by Baha’is in two cities in Semnan Province were sealed by the authorities. Moreover, copies of several unsettling Government documents dating back to 1991 prescribe deprivation of education, the establishment of an office to counteract Baha’i publications, the denial of “positions of influence” to them and the trades prohibited for them. One Baha’i student reported in an interview that 800 Baha’is were denied university admission the year that his application was denied. In addition, several Baha’is recently arrested were affiliated with the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), which is a university designed to educate Iranian Baha’is that are excluded from education.

The University of Toronto, in conjunction with the Foundation for Iranian Studies and the Toronto Initiative for Iranian Studies, is sponsoring a conference about the Baha’is in Iran.

The conference will take place July 1-3rd 2011 and offer an array of speakers, many of which should be familiar already to the readers of this blog: Abbas Amanat, Moojan Momen, Payam Akhavan, Muhammad Afnan, etc.

Here is the synopsis of the conference’s topic:

As a genuinely Iranian intellectual and religious movement emerging in the mid-nineteenth century, the Baha’i Faith has encountered relentless and sustained repression and scapegoating in the country of its origin. Exploring various aspects of the Baha’i Question in Iran over the past century and a half, the scholars participating in this international conference will critically reflect on a wide range of issues related to the similarities and differences of Shi’i Islam and Baha’i Faith, the role of Baha’is in Iranian cultural and intellectual life, and the fact of their continued repression and intellectual Othering.

Since a prominent Baha’i blogger will be attending, hopefully we can read about the experience soon after the conference. If you’re in the Toronto area or can travel and are interested to attend, the cost is minimal ($100 Canadian) – Registration.

The event’s facebook page also contains more information, including many videos of the upcoming presenter’s past speeches and related research.

UPDATE: You can view the videos of the conference presentations here, both in translated English as well as the original Persian.

By now you’ve no doubt learned about the recent raids on the Baha’i Institute Higher Education by Iranian government authorities. This resulted in the confiscation of teaching materials as well as the arrest of several Baha’is serving as faculty. Sen wrote about this almost immediately after it occurred: Many searches and 14 arrests of BIHE faculty.

In case you’re not familiar with the BIHE, it was setup as a result of the systematic persecution of Baha’is in Iran. Part of the organized persecution of the Baha’i community is the Iranian government’s explicit policy to exclude Baha’is from the education system. As the BIHE’s website explains:

In 1987, after failed attempts to persuade the government to admit qualified Bahá’í students to Iranian universities, the Bahá’í community of Iran rallied its forces and expertise and established the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE)…. Professors and researchers in Iran who had been discharged from their universities and colleges for no reason other than their membership in the Bahá’í faith dedicated themselves to the BIHE project that has evolved from a compensatory institution to a university with academic standards not only on par with the Iranian public university system, but also equaling the standards adopted by universities in the West.

Sadly, this is not the first time that the Iranian government has raided and interfered with the activities of the BIHE. There were similar raids in the 1990′s and again in 2001/2.

Since the malicious intents of the Islamic Republic of Iran is clear, one alternative is to implement a different model. If the BIHE operated as an online education platform instead of an offline, real world decentralized one, it would be much more difficult to curtail. This way there is nothing to confiscate since the servers which contain all the necessary data are in a centralized location outside the purview of the Iranian regime. An example of this model already gaining traction is the Khan Academy.

Baha’i students could use a VPN to tunnel into servers and bypass any Iranian internet security that may prevent them access. This would also prevent hacking/eavesdropping by the authorities. For an extra layer of security the site can be anonymized via an .onion TLD (and accessed via TOR). Yes, there’s more to the internet than just http: IRC, torrents, usenet, etc. There is a whole darknet out there.

Of course, not all disciplines being taught at the BIHE will be compatible with an online teaching format, however many will. As well, the added advantage is that students can take courses even if they are geographically isolated.

Even if implemented, such countermeasures run headlong into Iran’s recent plans to close their internet off completely. Currently, as with many other countries in the Middle East, Iran has restricted access to thousands of sites. Many of these are popular ones you may use without a second thought everyday (twitter, youtube, facebook, etc.). But that doesn’t mean that Iranians can’t get around the restrictions.

In fact, ways to circumvent the Islamic firewall are well known. Just recently, Houshang Fanaian, a Baha’i living in Iran was sentenced to 4 years in prison for his activities on facebook. Ironically, Iran is putting in place such monitoring and censorship with the software and hardware sold to it by US companies such as Secure Computing Corp., Juniper Networks, and Fortinet.

As if by coincidence, just as news arrives of Iran’s intentions to heavily restrict internet access, a report from the United Nations declares unfettered and universal access to the internet a human right:

Given that access to basic commodities such as electricity remains difficult in many developing States, the Special Rapporteur is acutely aware that universal access to the Internet for all individuals worldwide cannot be achieved instantly.

However, the Special Rapporteur reminds all States of their positive obligation to promote or to facilitate the enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression and the means necessary to exercise this right, including the Internet.

Hence, States should adopt effective and concrete policies and strategies –- developed in consultation with individuals from all segments of society, including the private sector as well as relevant Government ministries -– to make the Internet widely available, accessible and affordable to all

Obviously if Iran is successful in isolating itself and forming its own massive ‘intranet’ instead of being connected to the same internet that you and I use, the countermeasures suggested above for the BIHE are useless.

Another obstacle is the cost of internet access in Iran. If you are connecting to an online site to learn via video and other rich content, you will need a high speed ADSL (or equivalent) connection. That is rather expensive in Iran. A 2 Mb connection costs the equivalent of $400 US per month. In Europe or North America the cost is less than a tenth of that.

Ultimately, the best of the worst options is for young Baha’is in Iran to leave and pursue productive and happy lives elsewhere. The continuing human rights abuses of the IRI regime will not stop and attempts to adapt and survive will in the end be nothing more than a cat and mouse game leaving the community harried and exhausted.

There are many countries that would be happy to provide a new home to Baha’is. Many are taking the offer and saying “Farewell to Iran” every day. To the young Baha’is in Iran that are able to leave but may be reluctant because of feelings of doubt about the West or perhaps due to nationalistic loyalty I’d like to remind Baha’u'llah’s words:

Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.