What will Iran’s May 19 presidential election mean for the Baha’i, the country’s largest non-Muslim religious group? Given that every candidate was handpicked by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s Guardian Council, the answer is simple: Nothing good.

The Islamic Republic considers the Baha’i faith heretical because it was founded after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, who is perceived in Islam as the final prophet. Since its founding 1979, the Iranian regime has taken this theological assertion to a violent extreme and used it to intensify persecution of Baha’i believers.

Discrimination against this community, which numbers around 300,000, is codified into Iranian law. The group is banned from careers in the military and is often denied other employment since many companies don’t want to run afoul of the authorities. Baha’is cannot legally leave property to their heirs.

Tehran makes it impossible for the Baha’i to practice their faith openly. Unlike other minority religious groups such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, Baha’is aren’t recognized in the Iranian Constitution. They are therefore legally forbidden from establishing places of worship or independent religious associations.

Government officials at all levels won’t recognize Baha’i marriages as they do for Muslims, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, and make it almost impossible for Baha’is to obtain death certificates. Baha’i cemeteries, holy places and community properties often are confiscated or desecrated. Many religious sites have been demolished, primarily by elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

But employment and religious worship barriers are the least of the Baha’is problems. Since 1979, Iran’s security and intelligence agencies have executed more than 200 Baha’i leaders. Over the past year, pro-government media outlets have published hundreds of articles that vilify the Baha’i and encourage violence against them. In September, two men stabbed to death Farhang Amiri, a Baha’i member, outside of his home in Yazd in central Iran. Both men confessed to killing him for being an “apostate.”

While the government rarely brings these attackers to justice, it routinely arrests and jails innocent Baha’is. Nearly 1,000 Baha’is have been arbitrarily arrested over the past decade alone. At least 90 remain imprisoned for religious “crimes.” Over the past year alone, dozens have been arrested.

Sunday marks the ninth anniversary of the imprisonment of six of the “Baha’i 7”: Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Behrouz Tavakkoli, Vahid Tizfahm and Fariba Kamalabadi. These Baha’i leaders are serving 20-year sentences based on groundless charges ranging from espionage to “corruption on the earth.” Thanks to a 2013 change in Iran’s penal code that reportedly allows sentences to be served concurrently, not consecutively, all seven should be released next year. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, on which I serve, urges their immediate release.

I am personally working on behalf of the two female members of the Baha’i 7, Ms. Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet. Ms. Sabet is a 64-year-old educator with two grown children. Fired from her job as a school principal for her religious faith, she joined an underground teaching movement for fellow Baha’is, the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education, where she worked for 15 years before her arrest.

Ms. Kamalabadi is a 54-year-old psychologist, teacher and mother of three. Banned as a Baha’i from studying at a public university, she obtained a master’s degree from the Advanced Baha’i Studies Institute, where she joined Ms. Sabet to teach Baha’i youth. Along with the other five imprisoned Baha’i leaders, both of these women have languished in prison for nearly a decade in deplorable conditions.

Iran’s election next week holds little hope for the Baha’is or for other religious minorities. It holds scant hope for the hundreds of Sunni and Sufi Muslims and Christians incarcerated for religious reasons, including Maryam Naghash Zargaran, on whose behalf USCIRF Commissioner Cliff May is advocating. And it holds no hope for Jews and Zoroastrians, who also suffer discrimination.

How will we know when real change arrives? We will know when Tehran immediately releases the Baha’i 7 and all other religious prisoners of conscience, and when it replaces religious repression with religious freedom for every Iranian.

CUBA: USCIRF Condemns the Expulsion of Félix Yuniel Llerena López from the University of Cuba

USCIRF Calls on the University to Reinstate Félix as a Student and for the Castro Government to Cease Its Harassment of Him

WASHINGTON, D.C. –  The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) condemns the latest harassment of Félix Yuniel Llerena López by the government of Cuba.  He traveled to the United States last month – his first trip ever outside of Cuba -- to discuss the restrictive and repressive religious climate in Cuba. Félix was immediately detained and questioned on his return and forced to sign a pre-arrest warrant for public disorder.  Now the University of Cuba – an arm of the Castro regime -- has expelled this promising young religious freedom leader.

Félix visited USCIRF as part of a delegation including Reverend Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso, Raudel García Bringas, and Rev. Yiorvis Bravo Denis.  They discussed Cuban religious freedom conditions with USCIRF’s Chair, Father Thomas J. Reese, S.J., Vice Chairman Daniel Mark and Commissioners Kristina Arriaga, Jackie Wolcott, Tenzin Dorjee, and Sandra Jolley.

“I call on the Cuban government to immediately cease its harassment of Félix Llerena and his fellow religious freedom advocates,” stated USCIRF Chair Thomas J. Reese, S.J. “We find it most disconcerting that the Cuban government took these actions immediately after Félix visited USCIRF. They must stop these repressive actions and instruct the university to admit him immediately.”

In USCIRF’s 2017 Annual Report released last month, the Commission stated that the “Cuban government actively limits, controls, and monitors religious practice through a restrictive system of laws and policies, surveillance, and harassment.” The report also highlights that Cuba uses policies of “short-term detentions of religious leaders, demolition of churches, and threats to confiscate churches.”  The Commission again placed Cuba on its Tier 2 list of countries that have serious religious freedom violations characterized by at least one of the elements of “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations perpetrated or tolerated by the government.

“USCIRF has been in touch with the U.S. State Department, NGOs active in Cuba, as well as other individuals inside and outside of Cuba to monitor the situation for young Félix,” said Chair Reese. “When he met with us, he described a ‘recent wave of religious-related university expulsions’ and said he feared that this fate awaited him upon his return.  Félix added, however, that he intended to stay true to his faith and continue to push for religious freedom in his homeland.  He now suffers the fate of many others in his country.”

To view the full USCIRF 2017 Annual Report visit www.USCIRF.gov. The Cuba chapter may be found here and the Spanish translation here.

To interview a Commissioner please contact [email protected] or John D. Lawrence, Director of Communications ([email protected]/+1-202-786-0611).

By former USCIRF Commissioners Thomas J. Reese and Daniel Mark

On April 26, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report on conditions for religious liberty abroad.

Among the countries we reported on is Russia, where just this month, the nation’s highest court issued a chilling decision allowing the government to ban all operations of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

This ruling, horrifying on its own, was the latest dramatic example of how violations of religious freedom have worsened in recent years. From administrative harassment to arbitrary imprisonment to extrajudicial killings, Russia’s government continues to perpetrate violations in a systematic, ongoing, and egregious way.

The United States needs to send an unmistakable message. We urge the U.S. State Department to do so by designating Russia a “country of particular concern” under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.  We should recognize President Vladimir Putin’s government for what it is — one of the most serious violators of religious freedom in the world.

For years, Russia has vigorously applied its anti-extremism law, with Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses often targeted. The law, which does not require the use or threat of violence for prosecution, is so vague as to permit the persecution of virtually any kind of expression — religious, political, or otherwise — that the government opposes. The law has enabled authorities to ban thousands of items from both of these groups, including a Jehovah’s Witnesses children’s book, My Book of Bible Stories.

A year ago, the Kremlin began deploying that law against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in an appalling new way. In March 2016, the Ministry of Justice warned the Jehovah’s Witnesses that the organization was in danger of losing its legal right to exist in Russia due to questions of “extremism.” Subsequently, authorities were captured on videotape planting banned “extremist” material in prayer halls belonging to the Witnesses. Based on this so-called evidence, the Ministry of Justice suspended all activity of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

And now, with Russia’s Supreme Court having recently ruled for the Justice Ministry, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are legally abolished in Russia. It is the first time that Russia has legally banned a centrally administered religious organization.

This is but one example — though a stark one, to be sure — of how Russia’s religious freedom conditions have gone from bad to worse. Other examples range from an anti-blasphemy statute enacted in 2013 to the Yarovaya amendments enacted last July. including a measure targeting groups that place a premium on sharing their faith with others. The measure makes it illegal to preach, teach, and publish religious content anywhere other than government-approved sites. More brutally, in the North Caucasus, Russian security forces regularly carry out arrests, kidnappings, disappearances, and killings of people suspected of links to “nontraditional” Islam.

Moreover, Russia has spent the last three years imposing its homegrown religious repression on Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.

It has used its anti-extremism laws as a pretext for persecuting Crimean religious minorities, and authorities have conducted repeated raids on Muslim homes and mosques. In September, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld the banning of the Mejlis, the representative body of the Muslim Crimean Tatars, as extremist.

Pro-Russian authorities also have harassed Crimean churches that operate independently of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, which the Kremlin has made into a de facto state church, forcing some leaders to leave the peninsula. In January 2016, authorities ordered the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s Kyiv Patriarchate to vacate its last prayer space in Crimea’s capital of Simferopol, and in December they shuttered a Pentecostal church in Bakhchisaray.

Similar abuses have been visited on parts of eastern Ukraine since Russian-backed groups conquered some territory and created separatist enclaves. These forces have seized Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Jehovah’s Witness houses of worship and schools, and perpetrated church attacks, abductions, and assaults on Kiev Patriarchate and Protestant representatives.

Clearly, Russia has vastly escalated and expanded its practice of religious repression. The United States government should respond, shining a spotlight on Moscow’s behavior. A “country of particular concern” designation would be a good place to begin.