Iran: Pressure on persecuted Baha'i community intensifies

Atossa Najafi tries to keep her composure as she describes what happened. "About three weeks ago, security forces searched our apartment, confiscated personal belongings, and took my brother away," she recounts.

Since that day — June 6 — she has been plagued by worry for her brother Parsa, 19, and their parents in Isfahan, Iran.

Najafi herself is in Germany. The 23-year-old came here as a student three years ago and has been studying dentistry at the Charite hospital in Berlin. "Since then, we have been living with uncertainty," she told DW. "We know nothing about his whereabouts."

Najafi's family are members of the Baha'i faith, a religion that originated in the mid-19th century in what was then Persia (now Iran) and is considered a monotheistic world religion. However, it isn't recognized in Iran, and the Shiite Muslim regime there consider Baha'is heretics. As a result, the Baha'i population in Iran has been persecuted for decades.

Many Muslim countries do not recognize the Baha'i faith because its founder claimed to be a prophet, following Islam's most important prophet Mohammed.

A persecuted religious minority

According to Amnesty International, the Baha'is, who are Iran's largest non-Muslim religious minority, are particularly badly treated in Iran.

For decades, they have been denied educational and professional opportunities, arrested, had their property confiscated and seen their cemeteries and holy sites desecrated. In Iran, business licenses can be denied on the grounds of affiliation with the Baha'i faith. Businesses can also be arbitrarily closed, with the owners summoned to appear before disciplinary committees.

In the 1990s, German newspapers regularly featured obituaries that German Baha'is had published, memorializing fellow believers who had been executed in Iran.

At the start, it was hard for Najafi to find out anything about her family's fate. The authorities took the parents' mobile phone and she couldn't reach them. Najafi now occasionally has contact with them in Isfahan. But the authorities have still not provided any information about her brother.

"We are very worried about what's happening to him and his mental and physical state," she noted.

Najafi is sitting in a central Berlin office belonging to the local Baha'i community. Photos of important holy sites hang on the walls: The mausoleum of the faith's founder on the slopes of Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, and the House of Worship in Hofheim am Taunus, in the state of Hesse. The latter is the only Baha'i temple in Europe.

German support

The German Bahai community's commissioner for human rights, Jascha Noltenius, shares Najafi's concerns.

"The number of imprisoned Baha'is in Iran has risen to 65 in recent months," the 35-year-old lawyer told DW. "Before the war between Israel and Iran, there were around 20. According to information from the Baha'i community, some prisoners have been severely tortured. At least two Baha'is were subjected to so-called mock executions in prison."

Noltenius explains what this means: The prisoners were "placed on a chair, a noose was put around their necks, and they thought they were about to take their last breath."

The human rights representative now fears that the Iranian regime might crack down even harder and could actually execute Baha'is for the first time since the early 1990s.

Noltenius is in contact with the Iran department at Germany's Foreign Ministry, with the country's commissioner for freedom of religion or belief, Thomas Rachel, and also with the commissioner for human rights policy.

"Other members of the German parliament are also listening to us and assuring us that they too will advocate for the Baha'is in Iran," explained Noltenius, who is also networking with other human rights organizations.

Rachel condemns the violation of the Baha'is' religious freedom "in the strongest possible terms."

"The approximately 300,000 Baha'is in Iran are systematically discriminated against, disenfranchised and persecuted," he told DW. Baha'i women also face gender-based discrimination, Germany's commissioner for freedom of religion added. And all of that has intensified in the wake of the Iran-Israel-US war.

Raising awareness

Around the world, the Baha'i community numbers around 6 million and is represented in approximately 200 countries. One of the largest Baha'i communities still lives in Iran even though it was banned in 1983 following the Islamic Revolution. Its spiritual center is located in Haifa, Israel.

There are around 6,000 Baha'is in Germany, and the community has long welcomed people like dentistry student Najafi, young Iranians who come to Europe to study even as their families in Iran are under pressure.

"Many people in Germany have no idea what is happening to Baha'is in Iran," Najafi said, explaining that she wants to help raise awareness.

The Baha'is in Iranian prisons must not be forgotten, Noltenius adds.

The German government's Thomas Rachel is trying to help. In May, he took on the political patronage of Iranian cousins ​​Peyvand and Borna Naimi, both Baha'i, who were arrested in early 2026 on charges of inciting unrest at anti-government protests. No evidence has been presented and according to their supporters, the two may face the death penalty.

For student Najafi, it is the not knowing that hurts. She worries about her brother Parsa, she says, because she has no idea where he is, whether he's receiving medical care, or whether he's being mistreated. Getting more information could bring some clarity or it could confirm her family's worse fears.

"We simply don't know what is happening to my brother," she says. "And this uncertainty is the worst part."

This article was originally written in German.

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