Mona Mahmudnejad - Bahá'ís of Ireland

Mona Mahmoudnejad was born in Yemen on September 10th, 1965. The family moved back to Iran when Mona was four. She had one sister, Taraneh, who was older and who she adored. When she was growing up Mona’s life was like the life of most young girls. School, family - the usual. She liked school because she liked to learn and she also loved singing and dancing and being with her friends.

After the Revolution in 1979 many children were expelled from school because they were Baha’is - and for other reasons too - and Mona helped to teach them. They had some ordinary lessons and also Baha’i children’s classes - which are moral education classes like Sunday School. Mona really loved those children and she absolutely loved teaching them.

Mona was doing her homework - preparing for an English exam - on the evening of 23 October, 1982, when the Revolutionary Guard burst into the Mahmoudnejad home. They stomped around, shouting and breaking everything up. Mona tried to ignore them and just continue with her work but then they said that they had come to arrest her as well as her father.

Mona’s mother begged with the guards not to take Mona as she was only a child. They ignored her. Mona tried to comfort her mother by telling her that they had done nothing wrong so everything would be alright. A few weeks later they arrested Mona’s mother too and she was with her daughter in prison for a while.

While Mona and her parents were in prison Taraneh visited them whenever she was allowed. When she came she always kissed her hand and put it to the glass that separated her from Mona. Mona would, in turn, kiss her own hand put it on the glass partition against her sister’s hand. This ritual gave them both some comfort.

In prison everyone was interrogated over and over and over again and often whipped. They mostly accused the Baha’is of the ‘crime’ of being Baha’is, pressurising them to renounce their beliefs. Apart from the charge of being a Baha’i, as she was too young to be involved in the administration the main charge against Mona was that she taught children’s classes. Mona was whipped on the soles of her feet in an attempt to force her to renounce her beliefs.

Sometimes when they were interrogating her they would also shout at her about an essay she’d written at school. It was an assignment to write about freedom and Mona wrote that many people in Iran, like Baha’is, were deprived of freedom. She also said in her essay that in all societies there have always been powerful and unjust individuals who, for the sake of their own interests, have resorted to all kinds of oppression and tyranny.

Five months after they had been arrested Mona’s father was executed. It wasn’t a surprise by then, everybody had been expecting to hear such news.

Three months later, on June 18th, Mona herself was hanged with 9 other Baha’i women.

Mona was 17 years old.

*Wherever there is a hyperlink on Mona's name (hover over her name to find it) you can connect with art work produced for the #OurStoryIsOne campaign.

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