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The Baha’i International Community released a video reporting the destruction of rice fields belonging to Baha’i citizens in the village of Ahmadabad, Sari. In January of last year, at least 60 hectares of farmland belonging to Baha’i residents of this village were confiscated by police and forest protection forces.
According to Harana News Agency, the news arm of the Human Rights Activists in Iran, farmlands and rice paddies belonging to Baha’is in the village of Ahmadabad, Sari, were destroyed using construction equipment such as bulldozers.
The Baha’i International Community, in releasing a video on this matter, stated: “Iranian government agents destroyed rice farms belonging to Baha’is in Ahmadabad, Mazandaran with bulldozers and ruined their crops. In January, the agents had illegally fenced off these lands. This is economic apartheid and religious cleansing aimed at driving Baha’is off their own lands.”
It is worth noting that in January 2024, Harana reported the confiscation of at least sixty hectares of farmland belonging to Baha’i residents of this village by police officers along with forest protection forces.
The representative of the Mazandaran governor, in an interview with IRNA News Agency, called this action a “land reclamation and eviction operation of natural resource areas” and claimed that “unauthorized constructions and land-use changes had taken place on these lands.” Meanwhile, Harana sources rejected this claim, stating that no construction had taken place on the mentioned lands and that they have been used for agriculture by the owners since 1946.
The confiscation of Baha’i lands has a precedent. For example, in 2020, farmlands of Baha’i farmers in the village of Eyvul, a suburb of Sari, as well as last year, lands of Baha’is in the village of Roshan Kooh, Sari, were confiscated by government forces.
According to unofficial sources, there are more than three hundred thousand Baha’is in Iran, but the Iranian constitution only recognizes Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism and does not recognize the Baha’i religion. For this reason, the rights of Baha’is have been systematically violated in Iran over the past years.
