|
APPEAL TO UNITED NATIONS- Nor can I in this survey allow to pass unnoticed the energetic and commendable efforts exerted by Baha'i communities the world over for the support, protection and relief of the persecuted members of the Persian Baha'i Community subjected to one of the severest ordeals experienced in recent years by the steadfast followers of the Faith in the land of its birth. Following this barbarous recrudescence of religious persecution and the transmission of over one thousand messages by Baha'i communities, some in writing and others telegraphically, to His Majesty the Shah, the Government, the Majlis and the Senate, and reinforcing the wide publicity given in the world's leading newspapers and the numerous protests voiced by scholars, statesmen, government envoys and people of eminence such as Pandit Nehru, Eleanor Roosevelt, Professor Gilbert Murray and Professor A. Toynbee, a written communication accompanied by a memorandum listing the atrocities perpetrated throughout the Persian provinces, was submitted in Geneva to the Secretary General of the United Nations, who appointed a commission of United Nations officers, headed by the High Commissioner for Refugees, instructing its members to contact the Persian Foreign Minister and urge him to obtain from his government in Tihran a formal assurance that the rights of the Baha'i minority in that land would be protected. Copies of this communication addressed to the United Nations were delivered to the representatives of the member nations of the Social and Economic Council, to the Director of the Human Rights Division, and to certain specialized agencies of nongovernmental organizations with consultative status. Furthermore, the American President was appealed to by the national representatives of the American Baha'i Communities as well as by all local Assemblies and groups in the United States. A courteous and reassuring letter was subsequently received by the American Baha'i National Spiritual Assembly from the State Department in Washington, acknowledging the receipt of the appeal, while the Director of the Division of Human Rights addressed in his turn a communication to the Secretary of the American National Spiritual Assembly, informing him that summaries of both the letter and petition forwarded to him would be furnished to the Commission of Human Rights, and copies sent to the Persian Government. Assurance was moreover given that summaries would also be sent to the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. As a further measure to obtain redress a forty-thousand dollar publicity campaign was initiated by the American Baha'i Community designed to lend an impetus to the proclamation of the fundamental verities of the Faith, the aims and purposes of its followers, and of the disabilities suffered by the overwhelming majority of its adherents in the land of its birth.
(97:1)
|