"Baha'is banned from burying the dead in part of Khavaran Cemetery"
Simin Fahandezh, spokesperson for the Baha'i International Community at the United Nations Office in Geneva, has announced that the Baha'is of Tehran are prohibited from burying their dead in a part of the Khavaran Cemetery that is not related to mass graves.
Ms. Fahandezh stated on her Twitter that representatives of Behesht Zahra want to "force" Baha'is to bury their deceased in the mass graves of those executed during the revolution, instead of the usual section in the Khavaran Cemetery (known as Golestan Javid), even though that usual section "has room for at least the next 50 years."
The Khavaran Cemetery in eastern Tehran is known as a symbol of those executed in the 1960s, and a number of Baha'is are also buried there.
Simin Fahandezh told HRANA News Agency that Behesht Zahra representatives claim that the Khavaran mass graves, which were the burial sites of many of those killed after the revolution in the 1960s, have been completely destroyed and emptied.
Cemeteries of Baha’i citizens in Iranian cities and villages are being systematically destroyed, and in some cases, even graves have been dug up and bodies exhumed. For example, in November 2018, the body of Shamsi Aghdasi, a Baha’i citizen, was buried in the Gilavand region of Damavand, but four days later his family was informed that his body had been found in the deserts around Jaban in the Damavand region.
Previously, security forces had warned the Baha'is of Gilavand that they no longer had the right to bury their dead in the city.
This ban has been repeatedly imposed in other cities in Iran, preventing the burial of Baha'is in cities such as Tabriz, Kerman, and Ahvaz. In 2014, the Baha'i International Community reported that local authorities had closed the Baha'i cemetery in the city of Ahvaz and built a wall in front of it.
Following the death of a Baha'i citizen in Sanandaj in July 2015, security agents prevented his burial in the city, arguing that, according to a resolution of the National Security Council, only one cemetery is reserved for Baha'is in each province.
With this resolution, deceased Baha'is who were previously buried in their cities must be transferred from across the province to a provincial cemetery and buried there.
Source: Radio Farda
