“This is not the first time Mahvash has been imprisoned for being a Baha’i.
In 2005, on the day of her daughter’s wedding, six unexpected guests arrived early, knocking at their door around 6:30 a.m to arrest Mahvash. They were officers of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, and they came bearing a gift: a court order to search the home and arrest Mahvash.
Several guests, family and friends from out of town, were staying with Mahvash, and they attempted to persuade the officers to delay her arrest until the next morning so that Mahvash might attend her only daughter’s wedding. The officers refused and proceeded to search the house, ravaging through even the most personal items until noon. Throughout the ordeal, Mahvash consoled her guests and gave her friends instructions for conducting the ceremony in her absence.
Mahvash was arrested and detained in Evin Prison for 35 days, during which time her family was intentionally kept in the dark and her daughter cried daily. They had no idea where Mahvash was or whether she was even alive.
This episode of arbitrary arrest and detention was not Mahvash’s first experience of persecution because of her religion, either. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the treatment of Baha’is had not yet reached the heightened levels of systematic oppression that it reached after the Revolution, and it was possible, even as a Baha’i, to find good work. At that time, Mahvash was a schoolteacher.
She was so exemplary in her field, and popular among her students, that she was hired as the principal of a prestigious school in Tehran. Before she could assume that post, she was promoted to an even higher post as the principal of the school for Tehran’s Air Force Base personnel. Soon after the Revolution, when Baha’is became prime targets for state-sponsored persecution, Mahvash was dismissed from this post.
In the years after her dismissal, she found ways to serve her community, despite the intense oppression. She became an instructor and administrator for the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), an informal network of higher education that the Baha’i community established to provide college-level education to Baha’i youth, who are excluded from the nation’s university system. During this time, she served as a member of the Yaran, ministering to the basic needs of Iran’s Baha’i community, such as marriages, divorces, and other community affairs, as Baha’is have no clergy and the Iranian government banned Baha’i institutions following the Revolution. It was Mahvash’s membership in this seven-person leadership group that landed her in prison in 2008.
While Baha’is are strictly nonviolent, law-abiding, and do not seek political power, Mahvash and the other Yaran were brought up on various false charges, including espionage, acting against the security of the country, and “spreading corruption on earth.” Mahvash and the others spent the first four months of their imprisonment in solitary confinement, and have since endured countless interrogations, inhumane conditions, and years of separation from loved ones. They were eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison, the longest sentence of any prisoner of conscience in Iran.
Mahvash’s commitment to her beliefs, and her grace in such appalling and unjust circumstances, is an inspiration not only to the beleaguered Baha’i community of Iran, but to all supporters of religious freedom and human dignity.”
By Bijan Masumian
Bijan Masumian is a Baha’i living in Texas and the cousin of Mahvash Sabet.
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Teacher and poet Mahvash Sabet is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Evin prison, Tehran. She is one of a group of seven Baha’i leaders known as the “Yaran-i-Iran” – “Friends of Iran” – who have been detained since 2008 for their faith and activities related to running the affairs of the Bahá’í community in Iran. Mahvash Sabet began writing poetry in prison, and a collection of her poetry entitled Prison Poems was published in English translation on 1 April 2013.
PEN International is calling on the Iranian authorities to release Mahvash Sabet and all other writers imprisoned in Iran solely for exercising their right to legitimate freedom of expression.
To take more action for Mahvash Sabet visit here
To read more about, and take action for, all of the cases highlighted by PEN International on the Day of the Imprisoned Writer visit here
This is dreadful to be sent to prison because of believing in a particular Faith. Its such a person thing and nobody elses business but their own.