Minorities

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Article 64
Separating minorities from the rest of the nation

June 1, 2001
The Iranian

In less than a week, the Iranian citizen will go to the electoral cafeteria and select, a la carte, from the pre-ordained list of dishes; the one that better represents her taste of life in Iran. She will be voting not for herself but also for what will be in store for some 30 million Iranian women. To put it in perspective, that is a population equal to the number of all women in California, Texas, and New York, combined.

The gullible among the Iranian women have bought into the notion that they enjoy separate but equal rights under the law. The worldly among them know the truth to be different: From the segregated beaches of the Persian Gulf to the men-here/women-there ski resorts of the Alborz highlands, from the boys-girls classrooms in western Iran to gender-specific seating on the buses in eastern Iran, the country has been for more than twenty years a monument to gender-apartheid.

If the treatment of women in Iran violates the most fundamental precepts of gender equality and personal freedoms, the treatment of Iran's religious minorities borders on constitutionally-sanctioned genocide. This is worth noting as Iran's religious minorities too go to the poll on June 8 in order to elect their own representatives under Article 64 of the constitution. This seemingly progressive article requires Iran's religious minorities to elect separate representatives to the Iranian Consultative Assembly (Majlis), or parliament. That is "separate," as in isolated, alienated, out of the mainstream elections.

As originally enacted in 1979, Article 64 stated that the Zoroastrians would have one representative from among them; the Jews also one; the Assyrians and Caldean Christians together would share one elected representative; and the Christian Armenians in the north and south of Iran each would have one elected representative. The Article also provided for additional representation every ten years if a given minority group increased by 150,000 souls.

Every time Iran is criticized for the mistreatment of its religious minorities, a sincere-looking official and people of naive temperament cite Article 64 as a testament to Iranian tolerance and progressive treatment of its religious minorities -- Bahai's excepted, of course, because they are viewed as heretics within the Islamic faith itself and not one of the People of the Book like the other aforementioned groups. In fact, there is nothing progressive about Article 64: One would be hard-pressed to find its equivalent in any modern and progressive rights-based system or society.

In the event that Iran's religious minorities would go on a mating binge, thereby one day overwhelming the Umma's elected representatives, in the 1980s the Iranian parliament amended Article 64 of the constitution in order to ensure that no automatic political gain is derived by the religious minorities from procreative activities or sudden influx of their co-religionists from abroad! The provision for automatic increased representation based on the ten-year census was replaced by the following non-committal language: "The limits of the election constituencies and the number of representatives will be determined by law."

By providing for separate representation, Article 64 sets apart the Iranian religious minorities from political participation in the country's mainstream issues-related parliamentary elections. No Moslem candidate need not vie for the votes of the religious minorities who reside in his district. And no voter from a religious minority group should worry about tipping the balance in favor one or another candidate competing to represent his district.

Article 64 turns Iran's religious minorities into a human version of Persepolis. This only monument to Iran's pre-Islamic grandeur is tolerated by the Islamic regime largely because it is a source of domestic and foreign tourism and that means cash. It is unlikely that the government would ever allow architecturally comparable structures multiply across the Iranian landscape. Like Persepolis, Article 64 is for show; good public relations. It is apartheid in its most insidious form, for which Persian has an apt phrase -- maari khosh khat-o-khaal -- meaning "a snake camouflaged as a pretty thing."

In its working, Article 64 separates Iran's religious minorities from the mainstream. By denying them the right to participate in broader electoral activities, Article 64 makes it impossible for the religious minorities to affect public policy and play a role in matters that are of concern to them as citizens and worshippers. This marginalization eventually diminishes the economic status of the religious minorities. While many prosper in the trades, they are scores, in the thousands, who do not; all are second-class citizens regardless. And virtually there are very few who have managed to remain in government service. Because Iran's human rights record already falls short of the ideal with respect to its Moslem citizens, little else need be added here about the systematic violation of the human rights of non-Moslem citizens.

Governmental mistreatment of the members of religious minorities is presumptively persecutorial in nature, especially in Iran. Couple that with the political and socio-economic marginalization of the religious minorities, pretty soon Article 64 becomes genocidal. In the first place, Article 64 and the depressing socio-economic life conditions that stem from it act like a condom: A constitutional prophylactic measure to ensure that the religious minorities in Iran have neither the desire nor the emotional fortitude to procreate, or to remain in the country.

Then, there is inbreeding, a phenomenon that is promoted by Article 64 and its ramifications. It is not that Iran's religious minorities are so religio-centric that they abhor inter-faith marriages, even between the non-Moslem groups. In part, it is also that the Moslem community shuns the prospect of inter-faith marriage and, as the dominant player, impliedly dictates by example a doctrine of "separation of religions" for all religions. The Persian has the phrase "ghaaz baa ghaaz, baaz baa baaz," which means "birds of the same feather flock together." In a small religious community, which is ever-decreasing due to lower birth rates and out-migration, intra-faith marriage plays havoc with the natural selection process, as the gene pool begins to shrink further, perhaps to a point of extinction.

The United Nations Convention on Genocide (1948) entered into force on 12 January 1951. That is over fifity years ago, when the world was a smaller place and Iran was one of the architects of the world order. The convention outlawed genocide, which it defined as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." Examples of such acts included "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group," and "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." Of course, the apologists for the Iranian constitution would say that nothing in Article 64 intends or calculates to commit genocide. There is no doubt that Article 64's unintended consequence is nevertheless genocidal.

What to do? Stop the genocide of Iran's religious minorities! First, the Iranian parliament, recently reputed to have been populated allegedly by progressives and reformists, must abolish Article 64. If the parliament is wise enough to enact laws promoting open and fair trials by jury, as it did in May of this year, it can certainly see the good that will come from ending Iran's religious apartheid. Until that time, the members of Iran's religious minorities must be allowed to emigrate: Iran must allow them to travel freely, and the Western world in particular should extended a more hospitable hand to these human relics of Iran's experimentation with pluralism.

It is all in the hope that one day there will be no more human Persepolises! May one day in the elections for the first district of Isfahan one Akbar be competing with a George for the vote of Abigael. And in Agarestan, Igal will be seeking Asqar's vote for "A better life for all of God's Iranian children."

Author

Guive Mirfendereski is a professorial lecturer in international relations and law and practices law in Massachusetts.

Comment for The Iranian letters section Comment to the writer Guive Mirfendereski