Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. I thank the member for Moore for bringing this motion to the House to highlight the, unfortunately, ongoing persecution of members of the Baha'i faith in Iran. The people of the Baha'i faith in my electorate of Wills and across Australia are deeply concerned about their brothers and sisters in faith in Iran—as they should be. Since 1979, the government of Iran has made it official policy to discriminate against and persecute members of the Baha'i community, Iran's largest non-Muslim religious minority. In 2016, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, described the Baha'i as 'the most severely persecuted religious minority' in Iran. The Australian parliament, in 2012 and 2015, condemned the persecution and treatment of members of the Baha'i faith in Iran.

Last year, the Baha'i people in Iran faced new and increased oppression through Iran's national ID program. The national ID card now requires people to identify with one of four religions—Islam, Christianity, Judaism or Zoroastrianism. Anyone who does not, including the Baha'i people, are denied an ID card, effectively rendering them a nonperson, at least in the administrative sense. Without this card, a person in Iran can't get a drivers licence, passport or work permit, open and use a bank account or enter into a contract. These are basic rights, which are being denied to a group of people based on their religious faith. This change has forced Iranian Baha'i to either lie about their religious identity or be blocked from essential services.

I'm also extremely concerned about the reports of violent home raids, of being barred from education, of Baha'i homes being set on fire, of relatives being detained in crowded prisons rife with coronavirus or, worst of all, of arbitrary executions by the authorities. And then to have loved ones' graves desecrated adds a further level of pain to the Baha'i people.

Australia is a democracy, and I believe it has a responsibility to call out these types of human rights abuses across the world whenever we see it. I, along with some of my colleagues last year, wrote to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, to express our concern about the ongoing persecution of the Baha'i. I've also met with the Iranian ambassador and expressed to him the Australian Baha'i community's deep concerns.

In December last year Australia at the UN General Assembly co-sponsored a resolution which highlighted the human rights situation in Iran and the situation of the Baha'i community. We, as elected leaders in a pluralist democracy that holds the value of equality before the law high, regardless of one's ethnicity, faith or gender, must speak up for people around the world who are being denied their rights on the basis of ethnicity, faith or gender.

The Baha'i community has been a part of our diverse nation for a century, for 100 years. We have a duty to the community here in Australia and to the Baha'i in Iran. Whether we are speaking in support of democracy in Myanmar or Hong Kong, speaking out against the persecution of the Uighurs, speaking up for the rights of self-determination for Palestinians or the Rohingya people who have been forced into IDP camps, or the Kurdish community in northern Syria, it's something that I've tried to do as an elected representative since I was elected back in 2016. I've always tried to do this as part of our democracy and as part of our responsibilities and obligations in this place. Because, frankly, what we say in this place has real meaning, real impact. We are representatives in a democracy—one of the oldest continuous democracies in the world—and that comes with a degree of responsibility for all of us, regardless of our political persuasion. As such, and alongside many of my colleagues who are speaking on this motion today, I join the member for Moore and my colleagues across the aisle who've spoken up about this issue, the persecution of the Baha'i people, many, many times in this chamber, in this place. We will continue to do so because what we say is a matter of solidarity and we are standing in solidarity with the people of the Baha'i faith who are suffering persecution in Iran. I know that it might not change things overnight, but what we say here does give the people of the Baha'i faith in our Australian community some solace that we are standing side by side with them in their time of need. We will continue to do so for as long it takes.

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