Athens Residents Call for Universal Education in Iran

Education is a big part of life. It is hard to imagine in this age that people are arrested, jailed, and even executed for educating or being educated. But this is what is happening in Iran.

On April 2nd, more than 20 Athens residents gathered at for a campaign that calls for the universal education in Iran. They called out: it is time for us to stop taking education for granted.

“My family moved from Iran to the US for my education; I couldn’t go to university in my country because of my Baha’i beliefs,.” aid Farid Nick Parsa, a Finance major student in UGA.

Baha’is are the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran. According to Homa Rastegari, who teaches English to oversea students in Athens, “every Iranian Muslim student of mine has a Baha’i friend.”

Before the discussion and a petition drive, a documentary named Education Under Fire was played, showing that the Baha’is have been deprived of the right to attend any university since the 1979 revolution. For more than thirty years, the Iranian government has been arresting, imprisoning, and even executing people who gave lessons or took courses from Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE).

BIHE is the only option that was available for this minority to receive an education and become educators, engineers, doctors, as do other university students.

In May 2011, the government launched an attack against the Baha’i schools.

They raided dozens of homes, detaining 18 professors and administrators.  Seven of those arrested had received four-or five-year prison terms. Their only charge: educating the youth in their community.

“It is pretty scary to me,” said Kamron Moshtael, a 13-year-old who watched the documentary,

“My difficulties in life pale in comparison to what these student have to go through to try and study,” said Athens resident Minou Rysiew, whose parents are Iranian and African American descendants. She cried after watching the plight of those who suffer at the hand of Iran’s government.

“It reminds me of World War II,” Howard Leeb, an Athens senior citizen and a Baha’i said. “I mean, there is not much difference between what Fascists did and what Iran’s government is doing now.”

Shortly after the attack, Nobel Peace Prize laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jose Ramos co-authored a letter to the International academic community about the abuses done by the Iranian government.

Some Muslim teachers in Iran offer to teach the Baha’i students in spite of the fact that the government intends to deny any educational opportunity to these citizens and wants to tear down all its schools.

“I heard about what is happening in Iran. It is terrible, nobody should be taken away from knowledge,” said Arash Aboutorabi, a Muslim Iranian as well as Persian language instructor at UGA.

M. Anees, a Muslim from Afghanistan, who is teaching Persian language in UGA, also came to the campaign and signed the petition. He relates to the suffering of this minority group.

“Everyone must has the right to choose his or her own religion; everyone came to this world free and must be free,” he said. “I am ashamed of Muslims who do this, this is not in the Koran.”

There was a concern that expressed by people in the documentary. They said that some Baha’is who graduated from BIHE want to come to the US to continue studying, but the credits are not acknowledged here.

Sohayl Moshtael, a technology department staff member at UGA, said, “The good news is, UGA is among a few universities in America that accepts credits from BIHE.”

Emily Kopp, treasurer of Amnesty International UGA, joined the campaign and expressed sympathy. “We should work together,” she said. “I will consider including this campaign into our activities. ”

According to the Education Under Fire official website, there are 28 universities in US and Canada that will participate in this campaign in the coming two months, including Stanford, UCLA, and Alberta University.

And the petition website which the people are called to sign shows that the number of petitioners had surpassed 20,000 by April 5. The petitions goal is to reach 25,000 before May 2012, the one year anniversary of the tragedy, and submit this petition to the Iranian authorities.