Senior BJP leader L K Advani today appealed Iran to release seven Bahai leaders who have been sentenced 20-year jail, saying the success of democracy is in showing "tolerance to the diagonally opposite point of view."
Advani, addressing a gathering of Bahai community here and people of different faiths, said the seven Bahai leaders were being subjected to "torture and persecution" and it would be a great service to urge the Iranian government to release them.
The BJP leader along with former Attorney-General Soli Sorabjee, Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, Chief Imam of the All India Organisation of the Imams of Mosques and others signed the appeal which would be sent to the Iranian Embassy and the Ministry of External Affairs.
"For the success of democracy, the most important attribute is tolerance to the diagonally opposite point of view. Intolerance to different point of view is found greatest in the field of religion, where a person who subscribes to a form of faith is reluctant to accept any other form of faith," Advani said.
In an apparent reference to the Emergency, he said, democracy in India had been a great success, except for a brief period of 19 months when his colleagues and even he himself had been jailed for 19 months.
Except for that patch, we have been a proud democracy and in this proud democracy, all people are accepted and so far religions are concerned, they are respected, he added.
Bahais across the world are campaigning for the release of their seven arrested leaders in Iran. "For five years, seven Bahai leaders -- Behrouz Tavakkoli, Saeid Rezaie, Fariba Kamalabadi, Vahid Tizfahm, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi and Mahvash Sabet -- have been wrongly imprisoned in Iran," said Farida Vahidi, Director, Bahai Office of Public Affairs.
Their 20-year sentences were longest given to any current prisoners of conscience in Iran and are lodged in Iran's two notorious jails, she said.
In the joint appeal, the community said the harshness reflects the (Iranian) government's resolve to completely oppress the Iranian Bahai community.
"We call for their immediate release, along with the countless other prisoners of conscience in Iran," the community said.
