Soheil, taken in two weeks before his brother, was jailed for the second time in six years. Authorities reportedly went to his house and took everything of value, including passports and a personal computer. His first arrest resulted in his five months of tortuous captivity, and those close to him have had a hard time connecting, Rohanifard said.
Unlike Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, Iran’s Bahais have not been granted religious recognition.
“The first time they tortured him,” she said. “They closed the blinds and they said, ‘We will kill you.’”
More than 7,500 miles away, their sister clings to the belief that “we’re all brothers and sisters,” that the self-sacrificing plight for religious freedoms outweigh her physical and emotional scars.
Still, all of this, she said, has become too much to bottle inside of her small frame.
“I can’t really put this into words,” she said, recalling the challenge of having to explain the arrest to her young niece. “You can’t go deeply to the emotion of a 5-year-old. I couldn’t answer her question straight.”
Regarded as the youngest of the world’s independent religions with more than 5 million followers, Bahaism’s central theme is its founder’s message of unity of mankind. But over the years they’ve been made to endure humiliation and beatings, vandalism and arrests, and the denial of education and work as members of the outlawed religious minority in Iran.
Rohanifard, who hails from the central Iranian province of Yazd, is no different. She recalled her father’s frame shop, where men stood outside the door and warned potential customers not to shop there.
The religious persecution forced him to shutter the business.
