Recognize the Yarsan and End Their Persecution

Addressed to the President of Iran, the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the Judiciary, and all relevant authorities of the Islamic Republic

Remember the names Hassan Razavi, Nikmorad Taheri, and Mohammad Ghanbari. In June and August 2013, these three Yarsani citizens set themselves on fire and died in protest against state discrimination. Their acts followed the forcible shaving of a Yarsani prisoner’s moustache, which, for many observant Yarsani men, carries deep religious and cultural significance.

Eleven years later, on 6 August 2024, Reza Rasaei, a 34-year-old Kurdish man and follower of the Yarsan faith, was secretly executed in Dizelabad Prison in Kermanshah. Amnesty International reported that he had been sentenced to death following a grossly unfair trial that relied on confessions extracted under torture. Neither his family nor his lawyer was notified in advance of his execution.

These were not isolated tragedies. They form part of a long-standing pattern of state-sponsored discrimination, denial of identity, and repression directed against the Yarsan community.

Who Are the Yarsan?

The Yarsan faith, also known as the Yari tradition and referred to in some sources as Ahl-e Haqq, is a longstanding religious tradition rooted in western Iran and northern Iraq. It took a more clearly organized form in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries around the teachings of Sultan Sahak in the Gurani and Hawraman regions. Scholars and Yarsani communities differ in their interpretations of the faith’s earlier history and its relationship to Iranian, mystical, and Islamic traditions.

The Yarsan’s religious heritage has largely been transmitted through sacred hymns known as kalams and through oral tradition, especially in the Gurani language. Communal worship in the jamkhaneh, the recitation of sacred texts, ritual music and the tanbur, offerings, and mutual assistance are central features of Yarsani religious and cultural life. Belief in successive manifestations of divine reality and in dunaduni, the passage of the human essence through different embodiments, also occupies an important place in many branches of the faith.

The Yarsan community is internally diverse. Its different families and traditions do not all understand the relationship between the Yarsan faith and Islam in the same way. No government or outside institution should therefore impose a religious identity upon them. The right to define a community’s religious identity belongs, first and foremost, to the members of that community.

A large proportion of Iran’s Yarsani population lives in Kermanshah Province, particularly in Sahneh, Dalahu, Gahvareh, Kerend-e Gharb, Sarpol-e Zahab, and Qasr-e Shirin. Other communities live in Lorestan, Ilam, Hamadan, Azerbaijan, Tehran, and Alborz provinces. Most Yarsanis are Kurdish, but there are also Lak, Lur, and Turkic-speaking Yarsani communities.

No reliable population figures are available. Estimates vary considerably because Iran does not conduct an open and credible census of the Yarsan, and many followers fear disclosing their religious identity.

Denial of Identity and Structural Discrimination

Article 13 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic recognizes only Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians as religious minorities. The Yarsan are excluded from this limited constitutional recognition and its associated legal protections. Iranian authorities commonly classify them as Shia Muslims with Sufi practices, contrary to the self-identification of a substantial part of the community.

This official denial has serious consequences in everyday life. Human rights reports have documented:

• Pressure on Yarsanis to identify themselves as Shia Muslims on official forms and in schools, universities, military service, and employment screening;
• Discrimination in public-sector employment, professional advancement, education, and access to public office;
• Restrictions on the construction and administration of jamkhanehs and on the free conduct of religious ceremonies;
• Insults to Yarsani beliefs, sacred traditions, and outward religious practices, including the forcible shaving of men’s moustaches;
• Restrictions on publishing and teaching Yarsani religious texts and on preserving the community’s linguistic and cultural heritage;
• Summonses, arrests, and prison sentences imposed on activists peacefully defending the rights of the Yarsan community;
• Derogatory portrayals of the Yarsan and the treatment of their religious and civil activities as security threats by state institutions and official media.

On 18 November 2022, security forces used tear gas and gunfire to disperse a memorial gathering in Sahneh for Seyed Khalil Alinejad, a distinguished Yarsani musician and religious figure. Numerous participants were arrested. Siavash Hayati, spokesperson for the Yarsan Civil Activists’ Advisory Council, has been repeatedly arrested for his civil-rights work and was sentenced to one year in prison on the charge of “propaganda against the state.”

The gravest recent example is the case of Reza Rasaei. He was arrested after participating in the 2022 protests and accused of killing a security official. Amnesty International reported that he was subjected to beatings, electric shocks, suffocation, and sexual violence in an effort to force him to confess. Despite serious concerns about the evidence and the fairness of his trial, he was executed without advance notice to his family or lawyer. His case illustrates the intersecting forms of political, ethnic, and religious repression experienced by many marginalized citizens in Iran.

Our Demands

We, the undersigned, call upon the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran to:

1. Recognize the distinct religious identity of the Yarsan community and enact the laws and regulations necessary to guarantee its members equal freedom of religion, belief, and conscience.
2. End the practice of compelling Yarsanis to identify themselves as Shia Muslims and respect every individual’s right to define, disclose, or withhold their religious identity.
3. Eliminate direct and indirect discrimination in education, employment, military service, public services, economic activity, the registration of children’s names, and access to public office. An independent mechanism should be created to document and investigate complaints of religious discrimination.
4. Guarantee the Yarsan community’s full freedom of worship and cultural expression, including the right to establish and administer jamkhanehs, hold communal ceremonies, recite sacred texts, publish religious literature, provide voluntary religious education, and preserve the Gurani language, tanbur music, and other elements of Yarsani cultural heritage.
5. End the harassment of Yarsani religious and cultural practices. The forcible shaving of moustaches, desecration of sacred traditions, dissemination of religious hatred, and other degrading treatment in prisons, schools, military facilities, and government offices must be prohibited and subject to prosecution.
6. Immediately and unconditionally release all individuals detained or convicted solely for their religious beliefs or peaceful advocacy of Yarsani rights, and overturn the sentences imposed upon them.
7. Establish independent, public, and impartial investigations into the execution of Reza Rasaei, security-force attacks on Yarsani gatherings, allegations of torture and deaths in custody, and the circumstances that led to the 2013 protest self-immolations. The findings must be made public, and those responsible for violations must be held accountable through fair judicial proceedings.
8. Guarantee the rights of victims’ families to truth, justice, and reparation, and end all threats, intimidation, and restrictions on memorial ceremonies.
9. Include independent and diverse representatives of the Yarsan community, including women and young people, in the development of policies affecting them. The state must not appoint compliant representatives or impose a single official interpretation of the Yarsan faith.
10. Fulfil Iran’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly those concerning freedom of religion and belief, equality before the law, freedom from discrimination, and the right of religious minorities to practise their faith and enjoy their culture.

The rights of the Yarsan are not privileges that a government may grant or withdraw. They are inseparable from human dignity and equal citizenship. A society in which people must conceal their beliefs, names, language, religious practices, or cultural identity cannot be considered free or equal.

By signing this petition, we stand with the Yarsan people and affirm a simple principle:

No one should be denied education, employment, security, liberty, or life because of their beliefs, identity, or cultural heritage. The denial and persecution of the Yarsan must end.-