CAIRO: Local schools are denying Bahais the right to enroll their children, five months after an Egyptian court recognized the right of members of the minority religion to leave the religious affiliation field on birth certificates and ID cards blank.

The US Congress will be voting soon on resolution H. Res. 1303 calling on the Egyptian Government to respect human rights and freedoms of religion and expression in Egypt.

The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Frank Wolf [R-VA] and cosponsored by several other congressmen, was submitted to the US House of Representatives and referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs on June 24, 2008.

NEW YORK — Seven prominent Baha’is imprisoned in Iran have each been allowed a brief phone call to their families, the Baha’i International Community has learned.

The calls were the first contact with the jailed Baha’is since six of them were arrested on 14 May in pre-dawn raids at their homes in Tehran. The seventh was arrested in March in the city of Mashhad.

Five Toronto-based Iranian leaders of thought have asked the UN Secretary General to press the Iranian authorities to release the Baha'is arrested three weeks ago. Though not themselves members of the Baha'i community, in a strongly worded letter (below), they have expressed their concern at the arrests along with other human rights violations in Iran.

IranVNC (link) just reported the arrest of five [or six] more Baha'is following the detention of the seven leaders of Iran's Baha'i community less than two weeks before. Three of the recent detainees were arrested in the Isfahan area on the 24th of May. The news report writes:

The arrest of the three men, Hooshmand Talebi, Mehran Zini, and Farhad Ferdowsiyan, was first reported yesterday by the Iran-based rights organization Human Rights Activities in Iran.

NEW YORK, — Allegations by Iran that six Bahá’ís were arrested last week “for security reasons and not for their faith” are utterly baseless and without documentation, said the Bahá’í International Community today.

“All of the allegations issued in a statement on Tuesday by the Iranian government are utterly baseless,” said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations, referring to statements made in a press conference given yesterday in Tehran by Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham, at which he acknowledged the arrest and imprisonment of six Bahá’í leaders last week.

All seven Bahá'ís who form a group that sees to the needs of the Bahá'í community of Iran have been arrested, six of them in early-morning raids on 14 May 2008 at their homes in Tehran.

NEW YORK — Six Bahá’í leaders in Iran were arrested and taken to the notorious Evin prison yesterday in a sweep that is ominously similar to episodes in the 1980s when scores of Iranian Bahá’í leaders were summarily rounded up and killed.

The six men and women, all members of the national-level group that helped see to the minimum needs of Bahá’ís in Iran, were in their homes Wednesday morning when government intelligence agents entered and spent up to five hours searching each home, before taking them away.

In Auckland, New Zealand, a representative of the New Zealand Police presents the winner's shield for the 2008 Race Unity Speech Award to Charon Maseka of Wellington. With them are the other finalists for the award.

The New Zealand Police, a government department, has signed a formal funding agreement with the Baha'is for a speech contest for teenagers about race unity.

The Race Unity Speech Award, now in its eighth year, was established by Baha'is and already had received the support of the national Human Rights Commission. The nationwide contest is open to students in the last three years of high school.

The New Zealand Police has pledged NZ$50,000 (US$39,500) over a five-year period and also is supporting the competition in a variety of other ways at both the regional and national levels.

The persecution of Baháí’s in Iran has spilled over to a high-profile non- Bahá’í citizen, an eminent personage no less than the 2003 Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. On April 14 the AFP reported that she had been receiving death threats pinned to her office building entry, signed by the “Association of Anti- Bahá’ís.”

A small group discussion at the University of Alberta symposium in October.

Canadian Campus Associations for Baha'i Studies (CABS) chapters have responded vigorously to the refusal of Iranian authorities to allow Baha’is to attend universities and colleges. The 2007-2008 school year has seen a number of initiatives designed to raise awareness of the way in which Baha'i students in Iran continue to be denied their right to higher education.