Some write-ups on Ms. Kamalabadi, one of the 7 imprisoned Yaran, from the L.A. Times (here and here) and Middle East Quarterly (Link to PDF here).
Posted: 29 Jul 2009
Mrs. Kamalabadi is one of the seven former Baha'i leaders who continues to languish in Tehran's notorious Evin prison on false and fabricated charges. She was arrested in May 2008. Several items of interest related to her condition and family efforts to inform the world of her plight became available in recent days:
Two countries are worlds apart for Bahai faithful by Kate Linthicum and Amber Smith of LA Times
DW-Kamalabadi09-Summer is a report by Dissident Watch which provides some important details.
Iraj Kamalabadi of Rancho Cucamonga constantly worries about his sister Fariba Kamalabadi, who is sitting in Tehran's infamous Evin Prison, nearly 7,600 miles away.
According to her brother and statements from human rights groups, Fariba Kamalabadi's home was raided in May 2008 and she was taken into custody. She is still being held, as are six other leaders of the Bahai community. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom says that according to the Iranian Students News Agency, the seven are accused of "espionage for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the Islamic Republic." Their trial was scheduled for July 11, but has been postponed indefinitely.
Iraj Kamalabadi says that his 47-year-old sister is physically weak, but remains committed to her faith. Monday, when her mother, husband and daughters visited her, she was gaunt and her skin was in terrible condition, but she assured them she was OK.
Journalist Roxana Saberi, who came to know Kamalabadi and her colleague Mahvesh Sabet while in Evin Prison, said Kamalabadi spent four months in isolation while Sabet spent six. In an e-mail Monday, Saberi described Kamalabadi's resolve. "Fariba's spirit was very strong. She gave me the impression that she trusted in God to do what was best for her and her six colleagues who are also imprisoned in Evin," Saberi says. "However, she did not seem to think about what was best for them as individuals but what might be best for Iran's Bahai community, its principles and its future."
While in solitary, Saberi says that Kamalabadi "tried to keep her spirits high by praying, reading and exercising, even though her prison cell was small, and she had to exercise in place most of the time."
Saberi, who was released from Evin Prison in May, implored in a letter this month to the White House, U.S. Department of State and a religious rights commission that more be done to "raise the case" for their release.
In May, on the one-year anniversary of her mother's arrest and detention, Kamalabadi's daughter Alhan Taefi, 23, wrote a letter reflecting on her grief. "I remember in preparation for the mothers' day, when all my friends were talking about what presents they were going to buy for their moms, I forced myself not to burst into tears, in order to be strong," she says. "The same way you wanted me to be, the same way you are."
Earlier this year, Kamalabadi noticed that a piece of a carrot from her meal had signs of growth. She took it, wrapped it in paper and watered it inside the poorly lit prison. It grew into a small plant, which she gave her daughter Taraneh Taefi, 14, for her birthday. The experience was so emotional that fellow visitors and prisoners burst into tears as Taefi received it. In Alhan Taefi's letter, she says, "This plant stood as a symbol of you for me. When I was lonely, I would go and cuddle it, talk to it, caress it, and kiss it — I would feel it was you standing before me."
— Amber Smith in Los Angeles
96 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY SUMMER 2009
Dissident Watch
Fariba Kamalabadi
by Vargha Taefi and Nazila Ghanea
Nazila Ghanea is a lecturer in international human rights law at the University of Oxford and editor-in-chief of the international journal of Religion and Human Rights.
Fariba Kamalabadi, 47, who had been serving in a voluntary capacity on an Iranian Baha'i body known as the Yaran (The friends) since 2006, was detained at her home on May 14, 2008, and then taken to Tehran's Evin Prison. Simultaneously, five of her colleagues on the Yaran were also arrested and taken to Evin while a sixth had previously been arrested in Mashhad on March 6, 2008. Amnesty International recognizes all seven as prisoners of conscience.
1After Kamalabadi endured months of incommunicado detention, mistreatment, and denial of heart medication,Then, in response to an announcement by Iranian attorney general Ayatollah Qorban-'Ali Dorri-Najafabadi that all Baha'i establishments run counter to Iranian constitutional law, the Baha'i community in March 2009 disbanded the Yaran and all other Baha'i organizations in Iran. Dorri-Najafabadi further announced that the very declaration of Baha'i belief is illegal.4 The government requires Baha'is to declare their religion—for example when registering births, seeking inheritance, applying for business licenses, or registering for school—so this declaration puts Baha'is in a situation of having to engage in illegal activity.
When the Yaran was operational—with the full knowledge and tacit agreement of the Iranian authorities—it was recognized by Iran's three hundred thousand Baha'is as their informal organizational body. Since Baha'is do not have a clerical religious structure, this body handled all community needs.
Kamalabadi is not new to religious discrimination. She had wanted to follow in her father's footsteps and become a physician, but university entrance was denied her in the early 1980s on religious grounds—no Baha'i has completed university studies since then. When the Baha'i community in Iran established the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education in 1987, Kamalabadi was among the first group of students to graduate and later completed her postgraduate degree in education, specializing in developmental psychology.
Kamalabadi faced arrest twice in 2005: first in a raid at her home by officers of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence on May 25, 2005, after which she was held for thirty-five days, twentytwo of which she spent in solitary confinement. Later that year, she was seized while traveling and detained in Mashhad and later Evin Prison, spending nearly two months in solitary confinement. During her period of captivity since 2008, Kamalabadi has only been afforded a handful of visits with her family and has been denied access to her lawyer, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi.
While Kamalabadi is not alone in the battle for free expression in Iran, she has become a symbol for those seeking religious freedom and the right to say who they are and for what they stand.
1 Amnesty International, May 15, 2008, Aug. 6, 2008, Feb. 12, 2009.
2 Radio Free Europe, Feb. 17, 2009.
3 Press TV (Tehran), Feb. 15, 2009.
4 Journalist Club, Feb. 19, 2009; Baha'i International Community to Ayatollah Qorban-Ali Dorri-Najafabadi, attorney general, Islamic Republic of Iran, Mar. 4, 2009; Baha'i World News Service, Mar. 6, 2009; Iran Press Watch, Mar. 12, 2009.
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