INTOLERANCE IN PERSIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19415, 25 August 1926, Page 13

INTOLERANCE IN PERSIA.

PERSECUTION OF .BAHA'IS. ATROCIOUS, MURDERS ALLEGED. Statements regarding intensive persecutions, in Persia in which believers of the Baha'i faith are suffering martyrdom at- the hands of Moslems of the fanatical Shi'ita sect, have been made in London by Miss Martha Root. She told of tragic happenings in several Persian communities news of whteh have reached the Baha'i headquarters at Haifa, Palestine. Miss. Root, an American Baha'i, who has been travelling round the world as an advocate of the Baha'i movement, says that she has communications from the Baha'i head- i quarters which state that in the Persian town of Jahrum alone 12 persons, men, women and children, have been put to death, some of them in most atrocious ways. It is also asserted by Miss Boot that in the town of Maraghih .the Baha'is have been denied the civic rights arid privileges extended to every citizen of the land. They bave been refused the use of the public bath, and been denied access to' such shops as provide the necessities 1 of life. They have been declared deprived of the benefit and protection of the law, and all association and dealing with them denounced, as a direct violation of the precepts and principles of Islam. It has even been authoritatively stated that the decencies of . public interment have been refused to their . dead. The Baha'is, says Miss Root, became, objects of persecution because their outspoken belief in the universal tenets of the Baha'i faith are considered •by the fanatical religious leaders in this and other Persian comnvanities similarly afflicted to be in violation of the principles of Islam atjd therefore not to be tolerated. It is not asserted, however, that, the Persian (government authorities arc in any wise the instigators of the persecutions which arc attributed solelv to the fanatical element among the Moslem priesthood. .