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Mission

The Belief Rights Law Institute is a California registered 501(c)3 non-profit non-government organization dedicated to advancing the cause of emancipation for members of the Bahá'í Faith around the world.  The Belief Rights Law Institute is a privately created and managed organization, not affiliated in any way with the Administrative Institutions of the Bahá'i Faith.

Through print and online media, BRLI is dedicated to producing, collecting, and distributing information relevant to the struggle for Bahá'í human rights around the world.  

Through news reports, academic publications, video, music, articles, animations, essays, letters and even poems and drawings, BRLI serves as a vehicle for the production and viral distribution of media relevant to the cause of Bahá'í human rights.

BRLI also stands as an ongoing news outlet for updates on the ongoing crises in Iran and around the world concerning the human rights status of affected Bahá'í's.

Additionally, BRLI can assist individuals and organizations wishing to incorporate segments on Bahá'í human rights for external projects and events, by directing them to official Bahá'i Institutions.  BRLI is not associated in any way to the Administrative Institutions of the Bahá'í Faith, and does not speak or act in any such capacity itself.

 

 

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Documentation

  • Folder

    Secret anti-Bahá'í Memorandums from the Islamic Republic of Iran

    In this directory you will find facsimiles of actual Memorandums from the Islamic Republic of Iran to various institutions and other government sectors, ordering protocols of persecution against the Bahá'í community.
  • File

    Community Under Siege: The Ordeal of the Baha’is of Shiraz

     (5.7M)
    Prepared by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. "The sentencing of twenty-two members of the Baha'i community of Shiraz to death for refusing to recant their faith in 1983 resulted in the largest mass execution of Iranian Baha’is since the Islamic Revolution. Many other members of the community were also imprisoned and abused. The ordeal of the Baha’is of Shiraz is emblematic of the treatment of the Baha'i Faith by the Islamic authorities in Iran. This report exposes the religious of intolerance of the Islamic Republic and puts a human face on the suffering of a community still under siege today."
  • File

    A Faith Denied: The Persecution of the Baha'is of Iran

     (3.3M)
    Prepared by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. "This report explores how Baha'i religious practice has effectively been criminalized inside Iran. Baha’is are subjected to a level of social exclusion and harassment in Iran that shocks the conscience and A Faith Denied illuminates the persistent role played by the clerical establishment in perpetuating such abuse. Community leaders have been murdered and sites of irreplaceable religious significance destroyed. The report finds rising levels of persecution since the 2005 election of President Ahmadinejad and resurgence of other conservative political figures."
  • File

    A Revolution Without Rights? (2008)

     (3.1M)
    A Revolution Without Rights? Women, Kurds and Baha'is Searching for Equality in Iran. (2008) In this Foreign Policy Centre pamphlet, written by Geoffrey Cameron and Tahirih Danesh, the authors examine the religious, legal and social obstacles to equality faced by women, Baha'is and Kurds in Iran, comparing the experiences of the groups. Cameron and Danesh evaluate the Iranian government's compliance with its own constitution and look at how Iran's treatment of women and minorities measures up to the international agreements it has signed. The pamphlet lays out practical steps that British and European policy-makers can take to support the equal treatment of women and minorities with their fellow citizens in Iran.
  • File

    Bahá’í-Inspired Perpectives on Human Rights

     (2.3M)
    Edited by Tahirih Danesh. This body of articles represents an expression of a collective desire to value human life and preserve its dignity and development. Eleanor Roosevelt, per- haps the most prominent figure in the conception of this Declaration,4 called it “the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere”5 Many rejoiced at the accomplishment of this “epoch-making event.”6 The Universal Declaration, com- bined with the subsequent Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, and Eco- nomic, Social and Cultural Rights represent the basic standards for the protection and development of human life regardless of race, religion, gender or class.
  • File

    Closed Doors: Iran's Campaign to deny higher education to Bahá'í's

     (14.3M)
    Prepared by the Bahá'í International Community. (2005) A guide to a very specific and targeted embodiment of Bahá'í persecution in Iran - denying Bahá'í's the right to a higher education.
  • File

    Crimes Against Humanity: The Islamic Republic’s Attacks on the Bahá’ís

     (521K)
    Prepared by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. "This report complements two earlier publications, A Faith Denied The Persecution of the Bahá’ís of Iran (2006) and Community Under Siege: The Ordeal of the Bahá’ís of Shiraz (2007). It argues that the Islamic Republic’s campaign of persecution against Iran’s Bahá’ís involves acts contrary to the principles of common humanity under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, customary law and international criminal law – acts that amount to crimes against humanity."
  • File

    FPC Briefing: Terroracracy

     (223K)
    By Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, Tahirih Danesh. FPC Senior Research Associate Tahirih Danesh and Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, Senior Fellow at European Foundation for Democracy have produced a hard hitting and challenging briefing that explores the way in which the Iran regime's revolutionary character defines the way it operates both within and beyond its borders.
  • File

    Iran Human Rights Review: Religion

     (1.2M)
    Edited by Tahirih Danesh and Adam Hug. This inaugural edition of the review focuses on the critical issue of religion in relation to human rights in Iran. It contains short essays from some of the world's leading experts on Iranian human rights: Dr Shirin Ebadi, Dr Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, Dr Shireen Hunter, Dr Abdol-Karim Lahidji, Hamid Hamidi, Dr Hossein Ladjevardi, Dr Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, and John Weston MP. Cherie Blair has kindly provided a preface.
  • File

    Nature of the Persecution against the Bahá'ís in Iran (mid-2008 edition)

     (107K)
    Prepared by the Bahá'í International Community’s United Nations Office. (2008) In addition to presenting a review of the human rights violations to which members of the Bahá'í community in Iran have been subjected for decades, including its historical and legal context, this background document re-examines the upsurge in persecution that has been a matter of great concern since 2005.
  • File

    The Baha'is in Iran: Twenty Years of Repression - non-Muslim religious minority

     (124K)
    by Firuz Kazemzadeh. (2000) A comprehensive history of Bahá'í Persecution in post-revolution Iran until 2000 (year of publication), by a leading Bahá'í academic on the issue.
  • File

    The Bahá'í Question: Cultural Cleansing in Iran

     (5.3M)
    Prepared by the Bahá'í International Community. (2008) A comprehensive historical study of the background and context for the persecution of the Bahá'í religious community in post-revolutionary Iran.
  • File

    Twenty Years of Tolerance (Bahá'í persecution in Iran under the IR) (1999)

     (188K)
    Twenty Years of Tolerance: An account of the persecution of the Bahá'í community of Iran under the Islamic Republic (1999). This paper aims to describe some of the main categories of persecutions; execution, expulsion, and confiscation carried out against the Baha’i community in Iran over the past twenty years. This time span is divided into three periods: first, the turbulent months during which the Revolution was in process between 1978 and 1979; second, an eight-year period of intense persecution following the establishment of the Islamic Republic; third, a twelve-year period of dispersed and mostly veiled persecutions between 1987 and 1999.