2021-11-24
The Iranian citizens in “Your Voice” talk about the discrimination against religious minorities that they have witnessed. They provide short stories about the suffering of millions, who have become “simple incidents” in Iran. This is a story of Neda, a Jewish woman, who shares her testimony when she had to go through a “humiliating “ process to get a passport. It was the year 1987 that she set to apply for a passport and leave Iran but for her, getting a passport was not as much of a breeze as she once thought it was; actually, the Jews had to face questioning and contempt by the authorities in the process. […]
2021-11-24
Mvoices invites a variety of people, including equal rights activists, researchers, and journalists, to share their experiences and their views on the challenges, achievements and rights of the religious minorities and civil society in Iran at the Mvoices’ “Carte Blanche”. In this issue, Awin Mostafa Zadeh / Kurdpa Human Rights Organization writes the story of “new slaves” in Iran, “Koolbars”.The Kurds suffer from discrimination for being both Sunni Muslims as well as an ethnic group in Iran. The people living in Iranian Kurdistan have been systematically targeted by economic deprivation, such that on the one hand Koolbari is imposed on them but on the other hand they are killed […]
2021-11-24
The Yarsan faith, or Ahl-e Haqq, is a religious minority not recognized by the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a result, its followers face constant discrimination and harassment in Iran as many of them are forced to deny their faith in public. Some have even resisted the government’s de-identification by organizing cultural groups and publishing open letters to officials. Seyed Amin Abbasi, a member of the Yarsan Civil Activists Advisory Council, told Mvoices: “The forced abandonment of faith by some Yarsanis has weakened their identity and promoted hypocrisy among them. Religious acceptance is no longer based on individual interest, desire, or awareness, but primarily aimed at obtaining […]
2021-11-24
A Social History of the Zoroastrians of Yazd was written by Dr. Ali Tashakori, a historian and history professor at the History Department of Yazd University (Yazd, Iran), and published by Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies in February 2020 in the USA. The three-volume book published in Persian discusses the treatment and lives of Zoroastrians from “the arrival of Islam” to “the Islamic revolution.” The first volume covers “the arrival of Islam in Iran to the establishment of the Nasseri Anjoman.” The second volume discusses “from the Nasseri Anjoman to the Fall of the Qajar.” The last volume focuses on the Zoroastrians’ situation from the rise of Reza Shah […]
2021-11-24
Fred Petrossian–It is enough just to take a look at the newborn babies in an Iranian hospital. The future of a child under the rule of the Islamic Republic, even with hard work and high intelligence, can be easily predicted in a few words. The child for the rest of his/her life will be deprived of the most fundamental human and civil rights because he/she comes from a family belonging to a religious minority. In the future, he/she may be called Najis, or unclean; he/she may be sent to prison and even forced to leave his/her homeland or deprived of work and education. In any case, he/she will be a […]