Sydney icons feature in global call to free Baha'i 7

Driving around Circular Quay: mobile billboard with Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House in background

A mobile billboard appeared on April 1, 2012 in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and Bondi beach.

The eye-catching design carried the images of the seven leaders, made up of smaller photographs of hundreds of other prisoners of conscience currently held in Iranian prisons.

Photographs and video of the billboard are being linked in a media and internet campaign featuring iconic sites in 12 cities around the world: Amsterdam, Berlin, Brasilia, Cape Town, Pretoria, Johannesburg, London, New Delhi,  Paris, Sydney, Washington, D.C., Wellington. 

The campaign, organised by the NGO United4 Iran, marks 10,000 days that the seven leaders have collectively spent behind bars in Iran.

The seven were each sentenced to 20 years imprisonment after an internationally-condemned trial characterised by a lack of due legal process. 

Australian relatives

Accompanying the mobile billboard in Sydney were Australian relatives of the Baha’i leaders. 

Sydney-sider Mehrzad Mumtahan told interested members of the public about his uncle, Saied Rezaie, and Ghodsieh Samimi spoke about her niece Mahvash Sabet.

Mr Rezaie and Mrs Sabet were arrested in 2008 for being members of the seven-member informal national-level group that attended to the spiritual and social needs of Iran’s Baha’i community. 

Australian Baha’i Community spokesperson Venus Khalessi said there was a positive response to the billboard message from members of the public, ranging from surfers at Bondi to visitors to the Opera House.

“At Bondi, one couple recalled a campaign on the same theme in Berlin last year and they said they supported the efforts to free the Baha’is, and told us that we should keep praying for their release,” Ms Khalessi said.

Also present and supporting the event was Claire Hammerton, former chair of the NSW Young Lawyers human rights committee, which has written to the Iranian Ambassador raising concern against the imprisonment of the leaders. 

The Australian Government, the Federal House of Representatives and State Governments have called for the release of the seven. Australia has co- sponsored a series of resolutions in the General Assembly of the United Nations against Iran’s treatment of Baha’is.