An Overview of Religious Freedom Status in the Country in 2015

Hrana News Agency – Statistical Report – The following comparative report examines the status of religious freedoms in the country during the past calendar year. These reports have been compiled by the Statistics Department of the Iranian Human Rights Activists Group, within the framework of this human rights defender institution’s annual reports.

Over the past year, 113 reports of violations of religious freedoms were registered by the statistics department. On this basis, 163 citizens were detained, 3 cases of beatings were recorded, 31 home searches were conducted, 3 cases of closure of religious premises, 48 cases of prevention of economic activity of religious minorities, 35 cases of summons to security-judicial authorities, and 4 cases of deprivation from education were also reported.

31 members of religious minorities were sentenced by judicial authorities to a total of 1072 months of imprisonment and 12 months of suspended imprisonment.

From the total of 113 reports extracted in this field, 112 cases of violations of the rights of religious minorities for at least 331 individuals were registered.

In the realm of religious and denominational freedoms, Baha’is with 47% of the reports are at the forefront of human rights observers’ monitoring, followed by Sunnis at 30%, Dervishes at 10%, and Christians at 9% in subsequent monitoring categories. It should be noted that reports classified under “Other Cases” refer to reports that have general coverage in this field and are not specifically categorized under followers of a particular religion. Other religious groups are not mentioned due to the small volume of their reporting share in civil monitoring groups’ supervision.

In the realm of religious and denominational minorities, the detention of citizens decreased by 65% compared to the previous year, and the issuance of imprisonment sentences by the judicial authority was also accompanied by a 74% reduction.

In monthly comparison, the violation of the right to freedom of religions based on the number of individual violations decreased by 57% compared to the previous year, with the highest increase in this field reported in February and the highest decrease in May.

To view the chart of individual violations of human rights compared to 2014 in the category of rights of religious and denominational minorities, see the following chart.