November 15-2013
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the Islamic Republic to treat Iranian Sunnis as real citizens and end its repression of them.
HRW issued a statement last week noting that President Rohani has promised better treatment for all of Iran’s minorities, of which Sunnis are the largest. Iran is about 90 percent Shia, 9 percent Sunni and 1 percent Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian and Baha’i.
HRW said the most basic reform Iran needed to make is to allow Sunnis to gather and pray freely in their own mosques in Tehran and other areas of the country. The Islamic Republic has never allowed the Sunnis to build their own mosque in Tehran.
Human Rights Watch said it sees signs that the new government may be trying to fulfill its promises of better treatment of minorities.
“Rohani’s special adviser on ethnic and religious minorities recently met with a Sunni leader to discuss the rights of the Sunni minority and work toward removing barriers preventing Sunnis from achieving full equality under the law.” HRW said.
“The meeting followed incidents in which security forces in Tehran prevented Sunnis from gathering and praying in designated sites to commemorate holy days, Sunni activists told Human Rights Watch. Local activists say that in recent years security forces have restricted Sunnis from praying in mosques during Eid holidays.”
HRW said a former member of the Majlis told it that during the early hours of October 16 dozens of security agents surrounded the Sadeghiyeh prayer house in northwest Tehran, one of the largest and most important Sunni prayer sites in Tehran province, and prevented Sunni worshipers from entering the building to mark Eid-e Ghorban, the Feast of the Sacrifice.
Sunni activists also reported that security forces prevented worshipers from entering another prayer site, in Saadatabad, in northern Tehran. Worshipers in other parts of the capital apparently entered prayer sites freely and worshiped without hindrance.
Jalal Jalalizadeh, a Tehran resident who represented the northwestern, Kurdish-majority city of Sanandaj in the Majlis during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, said security forces prevented him and other Sunni worshipers from entering the Sadeghiyeh prayer house, refusing to give a reason.
The Persian-language site Islah Web, the website of the Gathering to Call and Reform Iran, a Sunni group, reported that on October 15, Tehran police had summoned a board member of Sadeghiyeh and informed him that Sunnis could not use the site for prayers during Eid-e Ghorban, the holiday that commemorates the willingness of the prophet Ebrahim [Abraham] to sacrifice his first-born son, Esmail [Ishmael], as an act of submission to God.
Previously, on August 4, the day after Rohani took office, local police summoned another Sadeghiyeh board member, warning him that security forces would not allow Sunni worshippers to conduct Eid-e Fitr prayers there, according to Islah Web and a member of the Gathering to Call and Reform Iran. Eid-e Fitr is the feast to mark the end of the Ramadan fast month.
Luqman Sotudeh, a member of the Gathering, who is also on the board of Sadeghiyeh, told Human Rights Watch that since 2010, local police in Tehran have routinely summoned board members of Sunni prayer houses, especially Sadeghiyeh, to inform them that they would not be allowed to gather and conduct prayers during Eid.
Police officers have told the board members that the Tehran Provincial Council ordered the restrictions, and that in at least one case the order reportedly came from the Interior Ministry’s Security Council, Sotudeh said.
Since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the government has denied Sunnis in Tehran province permission to construct and operate Sunni mosques. More than a decade ago, the Sunni Mosque Affairs Council of Tehran helped establish a system of namazkhanehs, or prayer houses, to accommodate Sunni worshippers in Tehran province during Friday prayers and Eids, Sotudeh said.
The council manages 10 namazkhanehs. Only one of these rented sites, just outside of Tehran’s city limits, is architecturally a mosque, while the others, including Sadeghiyeh, are rented rooms, halls and other spaces. Other Sunni groups and independent operators run another 20 or so namazkhanehs in Tehran province, Sotudeh told HRW.
The restrictions on namazkhanehs in recent years have forced some worshipers to perform Eid prayers at other sites, including people’s homes, another Sunni cleric, Sheikh Hassan Amini, told HRW.
Some government officials have responded to criticism from Sunni activists by saying mosques are open to all Muslims regardless of sect. They have called on Sunnis to show their “unity” with their Shia counterparts and join them in prayer, despite significant differences in ritual.