The Baha’i World News Service have just published the following report:

The Baha’i International Community has received a copy of a confidential 2006 letter from Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research and Technology instructing Iranian universities to expel any student who is discovered to be a Baha’i.

The letter refutes recent statements by Iranian officials, who say Baha’i students in Iran face no discrimination – despite the fact that more than half of the Baha’i university students enrolled last autumn were gradually expelled over the course of the 2006-2007 academic year.



This letter from a government ministry to 81 Iranian universities instructs them to expel Baha’i students.

In early March, for example, newspapers carried a story by the Reuters news agency reporting that some 70 Baha’i students had been expelled from universities in Iran since autumn 2006.

In the Reuters story, however, an anonymous spokesperson for the Iranian Mission to the United Nations was quoted as saying in reply: “No one in Iran because of their religion has been expelled from studying.”

Read the full article here.

There is too much awareness and too much proof of the fact that Iranian Baha’is suffer from horrific discrimination which the government repeatedly attempts to deny. Another article posted on Iranian.com reveals the following by a Baha’i student (another excerpt of this was previously posted here):

Since 1979, the government of Iran has systematically sought to deprive its largest religious minority of the right to a full education. Specifically, the Islamic Republic of Iran has for more than 25 years blocked the 300,000-member Bahai community from higher education, refusing young Bahais entry into university and college.

Eventually, in response to an international outcry over this oppressive behavior, the government officially announced in late 2005 that it would drop the declaration of religious affiliation on the application for the national university entrance examination. Consequently, the Bahai students could take the examination in 2004 and 2005.Yet, later in the admission procedure, Bahai youth were passed over and not accepted.

In 2006, for the first time in 29 years, more than 200 Bahai students could enter national universities. However, from the very beginning of the school year, gradually most of these students were expelled according to a previously planned strategy.

Read full article here.

Iran’s systematic abuse of Baha’is is unjust and unacceptable, we must all unite in condemnation of this human rights violation.