Dervishes in Iran continue to face a range of human rights violations, including intimidation, harassment, attacks on their prayer centres, destruction of community cemeteries, arrest and torture.
They have been sentenced to long prison terms. Lawyers who defended the Sufis were removed from the judiciary or imprisoned themselves. Journalists who wrote about their complaints were fired. The authorities are waging an on-going smear campaigns against them.
On 13 April 2011, authorities arrested eight Gonabadi dervishes: Abdolreza Kashani, Shokrollah Hosseini, Alireza Abbasi, Ali Kashanifar, Mohammad Marvi, Nazarali Marvi, Ramin Soltankhah and Zafarali Moghimi. The men had been part of a group of dervishes previously sentenced to five months in prison, 50 lashes and one year’s exile on charges of “disrupting public order”, mainly for assembling in front of the Gonabad Justice Department and prison to protest the detainment of a leader of the order.
In May 2011, Mostafa Daneshjou, a lawyer who represented Sufi dervishes pressured by Iranian authorities was arrested.
On 1 September 2011, a violent confrontation of plainclothes forces and Basijs with Gonabadi Dervishes took place after unrest was provoked by the anti-Sufi preaching of fanatical clerics, Mohammad-Reza Shahbazi and Ali-Reza Ghaemi, who travelled through the Shiraz district, started widespread propaganda against Islamic mysticism and distributed CD’s insulting dervishes and calling on local Muslims to demonstrate against the Sufis. The plainclothes security forces attacked the town of Kavar but the local police intervention resulted in the arrest of some 200 Dervishes who were blamed for the violence.
The violent confrontation led to the death of Vahid Banâni, a member of the Gonabadi Sufi Order, who was shot and killed by Iranian Security Forces. Three other Gonabadi dervishes were also shot (Ibrahim Fazli, Asghar Karimi, Mohammad Ali Saadi) and taken to hospital in critical conditions.
At 1 a.m. on September 3, 2011, security forces arrived at the office of Majzooban Noor website, which covered the aforementioned developments. Authorities broke down the door, confiscated books, computers and office documents; surrounded all 12 employees with guns and arrested them, breaking the arm of one website reporter in the process. Later that day, three lawyers from the community, Amir Eslami, Afshin Karampour and Gholamreza Shirzadi, who were reportedly invited by the Kavar Governor’s Office to discuss the attacks, were also arrested.
Since September 2011, following the attacks by Basijs and plain-clothes on Gonabadi Dervishes in Kavar town in Fars Province, pressures on Gonabadi Dervishes increased. In the second half of 2011 and first half of 2012 more than 100 Gonabadi Dervishes in the city of Kavar were arrested and without written summons been tried. The procedure for arresting Gonabadi Dervishes was always with harsh violence by security forces and plain-clothes forces and after the arrest and transfer to Intelligence detention centres or in the detention centre of security agents, the dervishes were interrogated and in some cases severely beaten by security agents.
On 3 May 2012, the trial of 189 Dervishes who were arrested in November 2007 began. The defendants were arrested at a protest against the demolition of their mosque. All charges, except for “disturbance of public order”, were reportedly dropped. It was also reported that 22 lawyers volunteered to represent the defendants, but that only two attorneys were allowed to participate in the trial for all 189 individuals. The presiding judge reportedly asserted that the number of lawyers wishing to participate in the trial would disturb the proceedings.
On June 26, 2012, Gonabadi dervish’s lawyer, Ehsanollah Heidari was disqualified of the second election period Board of directors in Lorestan Bar Association. He was disqualified only because he belongs to the Nematollah Gonabadi Order and also because he defended the rights of the jailed Gonabadi dervishes. In 2011, despite 11 years experience of full-time teaching in Islamic Azad University faculty of Law, he was fired
On July 9, 2012, Gonabadi dervish and Majzooban Noor website’s personnel, Ali Reza Roushan, was sentenced to 1 year imprisonment and 4 years of suspended jail term. He was arrested along with 15 dervishes’ lawyers and personnel of Majzooban Noor website in September 2011
On September 9, 2012, Nosrat Tabasi, was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment and 4 years and 6 months of suspended jail. Nosrat Tabasi, was arrested along with 15 dervishes’ lawyers and personnel of Majzooban Noor website in September 2011.
On January 18, 2013, a municipal official of Shahrekord, in an interview with “Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari province network” threatened to demolish the house of Mr Saffarian because the house was sometimes used as a worship-place.
Later in January 2013, Mansour Saffarian and Mehdi Davari, members of the Gonabadi Sufi order of Shahrekord, found one morning that regime agents had broken into their private courtyard and destroyed a large tent set up to accommodate weekly ceremonials led by the local chairman of the Sufi group.
The two occupants of the property, Mansour Saffarian and Mehdi Davari, protested against the intrusion and were arrested. The two arrested men were released on probation, but some 4,000 Sufis camped around the house during the night to prevent further raids.
On January 15, 2013, Saleh Moradi and Kasra Nouri, imprisoned in the Adel Abad Prison in Shiraz started a hunger strike to protest the transfer of seven Gonabadi dervishes’ lawyers and Majzooban Noor website Managers to solitary confinement of Evin prison and the lack of medical treatment for these prisoners. Only after 90 days their demands were met and they ended their hunger strike. During their hunger strike they were harassed, beaten and at once instant forced to eat.
January 31, 2013, Gonabadi dervish, Ali Moazzami was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment. This dervish was affiliated with Majzooban Noor website and arrested along with 15 dervishes’ lawyers and managers of Majzooban Noor website in September 2011.
April 2013: Kasra Nouri, Gonabadi Dervish and one of the collaborators of Majzooban Noor website, (arrested twice: once on Jan 11, 2012 and released after 46 days released on bail – second time on Mar 14, 2012) was sentenced to 4 years and 4 months in prison.
June 4, 2013:
Mostafa Abdi was sentenced to 3 years in prison.
Saleh Moradi received a 1-year prison sentence plus 1 year of exile.
Mostafa Abdi and Saleh Moradi were arrested along with 15 dervishes’ lawyers and managers of Majzooban Noor website in September 2011.
11 Gonabadi dervishes were convicted in unfair trials and informed of their sentences in July 2013:
Hamid Reza Moradi (Majzooban Noor website manager and human-Dervish rights activist) was sentenced to 10 years and 6 months imprisonment,
Reza Entesari (photo journalist, webmaster and human-Dervish rights activist) to 8 years and 6 months imprisonment,
Mostafa Daneshjou, Farshid Yadollahi, Amir Eslami, Omid Behroozi (Lawyer, webmaster and human-Dervish rights activist) and Afshin Karampour (Juristic, webmaster and human-Dervish rights activist) were sentenced to 7.5 years in prison.
Saleh Moradi 3 years imprisonment – 3 years exile in Hormozgan Province (he received already a sentence of 1 year and 1 year of exile on June 4, 2013 for other charges)
Farzaneh Nouri: (mother of Farzaneh Nouri, arrested and imprisoned only to pressure her son) 2 years imprisonment plus 3 years internal exile in Khuzestan province
Behzad Nouri: 2 years imprisonment plus 3 years internal exile in Bushehr Province
Farzad Darvish: 1 year imprisonment plus 3 years internal exile in Sistan and Baluchestan Province
While in custody, the dervishes are subject to intimidation, beatings, torture, held in solitary confinement and other ill-treatment.
Hamid-Reza Moradi, Mostafa Daneshjou, Reza Entesari, Amir Eslami and Kasra Nouri are in poor health and are in need of urgent medical treatment but they are denied adequate medical care and specialized treatment, which aggravate their ailments. In itself, this is torture.
During September and October 2013, the Majzooban Noor Sufi News Agency, which covers news about the Nematollah Gonabadi Dervishes in Iran experienced a series of cyber attacks.
November 15, 2013, a number of religious extremists who are known as “Fatemiyon group”, have started a wave of intimidation against the Gonabadi Dervishes in the city of Khorramshahr. The threats started with a series of phone calls to Dervishes residents in Khorramshahr and continued with graffiti against Sufis written on the door of the Dervishes’ places of worship with the intention to stop Dervish ceremonies. The fundamentalist group kidnapped Amin Azadi after he left his home and was transferred to a place out of the city where he was tortured and severely beaten. He was left unconscious. The police found him. The extremists wanted Azadi to sign a letter of repentance of being Dervish, of his faith and beliefs. The letter was prepared ahead of Azadi’s kidnapping. The Dervish did not accept their orders.
On November 22, 2013, plainclothes security officers attacked a house in Hassan Abad in Karaj, where fifteen Dervishes in the night of Ashura were doing their ceremony. The fifteen “Qaderi kasanzani” Dervishes, were all arrested.
On January 2, 2014, three Gonabadi Dervishes, Hamid-Reza Arayesh, Kazem Dehghan and Mohammad-Ali Shamshirzan, who were arrested in relations with the Kavar unrest in September 2011, were sentenced to deportation for the rest of their lives and to life in exile in the provinces of Sistan and Baluchestan, Khuzestan and Hormozgan (Bandar Abbas).
The International Organization to Preserve Human Rights in Iran
January 2014