Mr. Chair, my name is Shakib Nasrullah. I am an Iranian Baha'i currently residing and studying in Montreal. It is my honour to stand here before you to explain a portion of what has happened and is happening to my wife, my family, and me.
For the purpose of this presentation, I will focus on only two broad areas of discrimination that we have been subject to. The first is the denial of access to education and my imprisonment related to that. The second is economic pressure.
Like all other Iranian Baha'is, I was not allowed to enter any university in Iran. I followed courses offered by the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education, BIHE, an education initiative started by the Baha'i community as a response to the fact that Baha'is are deprived of access to higher education, but the history of persecution related to education in my family runs across all the elementary and secondary school years.
Each year at the time of school enrolment, my parents worried that they would not be able to enrol us because we were Baha'is. It has happened in the past that expressing our religion in the classroom would result in expulsion. School was never a safe place for me, as teachers and administrative staff every now and then would disseminate hatred and lies against Baha'is.
To mention just one example, I clearly recall how I was frightened by one of my grade 7 teachers. This particular teacher repeatedly bragged about how they attacked the Baha'is of their city in Yazd, and either killed them all or forced them to leave the village. He went on to include details about how Baha'is are not human and in fact have tails and hooves. I never revealed my Baha'i identity to my very few school friends and never invited any of them over, fearing the unknown consequences.
In 1999, knowing that as a Baha'i I could not enter any university, I decided to take the psychology courses offered through BIHE. It was the first year after the massive coordinated attacks on the BIHE when intelligence service officials ransacked approximately 500 Baha'i homes across Iran. The program had still not fully recovered from these attacks, and we had to take extra caution when going to our classes, which were held in private homes.
After finishing my bachelor's degree, I was amongst the very few students who came to Canada in 2007 to start a master's level program. In 2009, right after finishing my master's in counselling psychology from McGill University, I went back to Iran to start teaching for BIHE and support this initiative. Since I was a Baha'i, my McGill diploma and my previous education were not recognized by the Psychology and Counselling Organization of I.R. Iran and, therefore, I could not officially work in any clinic or private practice.
I had just married and was under so much financial pressure. Through the help of a friend, I was lucky to find a clinic in which I could unofficially work as a psychologist. All of this fell apart when, in May 2011, the intelligence service of Iran attacked BIHE once again. I was with a client when my friend came in and told me that they had attacked the houses of many Baha'is. Within a few days, they called me and asked me to present myself for interrogation. My interrogator requested that I sign a sheet saying that I would no longer help BIHE or help Baha'i students to obtain higher education. I refused to sign.
A few days later, he called me and three other friends of mine and summoned to us to the notorious Evin prison. The Canadian Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi was arrested in front of this same prison and finally tortured and killed. All of us who were entering Evin were psychologists. Two of us were graduates of the University of Ottawa, close to here, and I was a graduate of McGill University. Our official charges were acting and colluding against the regime, acting against national security, and membership in a Baha'i institution. The first two charges are the exact same charges for many Baha'is who are currently in prison in Iran, including many of my friends.
While I was in solitary confinement in Evin, my interrogator claimed that he could keep me there forever and I would no longer see my wife and family unless I did as they said. The physical torture was limited to slaps and kicks, but the extent of the emotional and psychological tortures was much more extreme.
Even though my charges were those of acting against national security and colluding against the regime, all the interrogation questions were focused on my membership in the Baha'i community, working as a Baha'i in the clinic, and teaching psychology to Baha'i students. Specifically, the interrogator was keen to know why I wished to stay in Iran when I could easily go back to Canada and live there. I will quote what he once said: “If you have a master's degree from a Canadian university, why don't you go back there and stay there? I assure you that I will never allow you to work even in the furthest and the smallest villages of Iran.” My answer was, “I am an Iranian and I wish to stay in Iran and serve Iranians.” But apparently this was not what he wanted to hear. He in fact kept his promise and made sure that I would be fired from the clinic.
I was fortunate to leave Evin after 10 days, but my three friends are still in prison on the same charges. As I left Iran in 2012 to pursue my Ph.D. studies at McGill, the revolutionary court issued a sentence in my absence. The exact details of my sentence of imprisonment are unclear to me, since Iranian officials refuse to give Baha'is any written documents, probably in an attempt to eradicate any trail of these persecutions.
Mr. Chair, when I left Evin, I had lost my job, just like my dad had right after the 1979 revolution, both of us solely because we are Baha'is. My wife and my family were on a constant state of alert and were traumatized by phone calls from the intelligence service of Iran. My family members in Iran are still receiving these calls and are under constant pressure to pay the bail that my father set for my temporary freedom. For my dad, paying that amount of money is equal to selling his business.
This is a summary of a portion of what has happened to me and is happening right now to many other Baha'i friends of mine in Iran.
Thank you very much for your kind attention, Mr. Chair.