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Letter of Appeal from the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

23 June 1999

Hojjatoleslam val
Moslemin Sayed Mohammad Khatami
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
The Presidency
Palestine Avenue
Azerbaijan Intersection
Tehran
Islamic Republic of Iran

Your Excellency:

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the largest organization of natural and social scientists in the United States, and the world's largest federation of scientific organizations, with 143,000 individual members and 282 affiliated learned and professional societies. Our Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility was formed in 1976 to protect the human rights of scientists and to deal with issues relating to scientific freedom worldwide.

We are writing to you on behalf of the Committee to express our concern regarding the sentencing of four faculty members of the Baha'i Institute of Higher Education (BIHE), ranging from three to ten years imprisonment. The Committee previously wrote to you on 5 November 1998 when we received reports that at least 36 BIHE faculty members were arrested. We continue to be concerned about four members: Sina Hakiman, Farzad Khajeh Sharifabadi, Habibullah Ferdosian Najafadi, and Ziaullah Mirzapanah, who were arrested between 30 September and 3 October 1998 on charges of crimes against national security. We are concerned that the actions taken against these individuals may be part of a widespread assault by the Iranian government against the Baha'i community, which has reportedly included barring Baha'is from public universities, confiscating classroom equipment, plundering more than 500 Baha'i homes, arbitrarily arresting and imprisoning members of the Baha'i community and imposing death sentences on and executing Baha'i prisoners.

The arbitrary arrest of Baha'i educators and the exclusion of Baha'is from access to higher education in Iran constitute serious violations of internationally accepted human rights standards as promulgated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted without opposition by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948), including the right to freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile and the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Under the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, to which Iran is a State Party and which your nation is therefore legally obligated to recognize, such actions constitute violations of the entitlement to the enjoyment of the rights enunciated in the Covenant "?without discrimination of any kind as to race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion;" the right of everyone to education; the right to work; and the right of parents or legal guardians to choose schools for their children, other than those established by the public authorities, "to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions."

The Committee calls on the Iranian government to end its persecution of the Baha'i community. We request the immediate and unconditional release of the four BIHE faculty members who are named above. We call on you to assure that Baha'i students in Iran will be permitted to pursue higher education of their choosing without government interference.

Sincerely,



Irving Lerch
Chair
AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

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