You are seated in a classroom at your American University and two armed officials enter in military garb. The room goes silent. All eyes look towards the front of the room as one of the guards calls your professor aside and whispers something into her ear. The professor turns for a moment and looks in your direction. She points at you. Your classmates watch in nervous silence as the guards cross to you and insist that you follow them out of the room. Now you are in a wing of the Dean's office-a makeshift interrogation chamber. Your heart races as the guards question you about your political beliefs. They seem fine with your answers. Then they ask you about your religious persuasion. You pause for a moment. You take a breath, stealing yourself against the mounting anxiety. You answer them truthfully. The officials smile knowingly and nod at one another. They leave the room. You find yourself expelled from the University and barred from ever attending any institution for higher learning in the country.
An interesting idea for a film? Perhaps. An unbelievable scene that could never happen in the free world? Probably. But it is the essence of a scenario that plays out every day in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Education Under Fire (EUF) is a campaign developed to address the Iranian government’s denial of the right to education for ideological and religious reasons. Beyond the goal of encouraging specific action in order to mitigate the effects of these policies in Iran, the campaign will begin conversations on university campuses and within communities around the country in order to raise awareness of and shine a light on the importance of defending Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees education as an inalienable right of every human being.
A new 30-minute documentary by the same title, Education Under Fire, focuses on the Islamic Republic of Iran's three decade long policy of denying the members of its Bahá´í community the right to attend any institution of higher education. In May 2011 the government launched a coordinated attack against the Bahá´í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) raiding dozens of homes, confiscating computers and materials and detaining a number of that institution’s professors and administrators, some of whom continue to languish in prison without formal charges yet having been levied. The BIHE, referred to by the New York Times as “an elaborate act of communal self-preservation,” was founded in 1987 and offers at present the only access to higher education available to Iranian Bahá´ís.
The Iranian government also bans students from pursuing higher education if they have expressed views, joined organizations or engaged in activities that are construed as critical of the government. In addition, the authorities have attempted to prevent instruction in several fields in the humanities and social sciences and have dismissed faculty for ideological reasons.
Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President (of East Timor) José Ramos-Horta, have written an open letter about these abuses addressed to the International Academic Community. Click here to read and endorse that important letter and to send it on to otrhers to do the same.
Screenings of the film on university campuses, in human rights gatherings and other community settings, accompanied by action-oriented conversations will find audience participants comprised of university students, faculty and administrative staff, humanrights workers and others.
You can make a difference. By helping to set in motion, promoting or attending a screening-conversation on your campus or in your community you will be joining forces with countless others. By doing so, you will help shed light on the importance of protecting the right to education and access to information for all of the peoples of the world.
