c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) A human rights group says disputed reports that Iran will force non-Muslims to wear color-coded badges will make it harder to investigate legitimate religious persecution and other abuses by Tehran’s hard-line Islamic regime.

The author of the disputed report, Iranian-born writer Amir Taheri, is sticking by his story, which first appeared in Canada’s conservative National Post newspaper last week. Iranian officials, meanwhile, dismissed the report.

The report evoked images of Nazi Germany when Jews were forced to wear yellow Stars of David in public. The story also sparked international alarm, especially after a string of anti-Semitic statements made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including denials that the Holocaust ever happened.

Hadi Ghaemi, the Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch in New York, said he believes the report is false, and worried that it would hurt human rights advocacy in Iran “tremendously.”

“There’s no shortage of legitimate human rights concerns to be highlighted,” Ghaemi said. “There was no need to do this, and now people will suffer as a result.”

Taheri’s editorial appeared May 19 in The National Post. Taheri is affiliated with Benador Associates, a Washington, D.C., public relations firm representing conservative luminaries such as Richard Perle and James Woolsey.

Religious minorities in Iran, Taheri wrote, will be forced to “wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faiths.” Iran’s Jews would wear yellow, Christians red and Zoroastrians blue, Taheri wrote, adding that any legislation would have to receive final approval from Iran’s “Supreme Guide,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Post ran an accompanying news story on its front page on Friday, but by Saturday the newspaper was reporting on its Web site that “several experts” were “casting doubt” about the law.

The Associated Press, after reviewing a copy of the legislation, reported Sunday that the bill moving through Iran’s parliament encourages Muslims to wear “Islamic clothing” but makes no mention of special attire for religious minorities.

The Iranian government and its lone Jewish parliamentarian, Maurice Motammed, quickly denounced the report. In Saturday’s National Post story, Iran’s embassy in Ottawa denied the allegation as a “smear campaign.”

“We representatives for religious minorities are active in the parliament, and there has never been any mention of such a thing,” Motammed told the Financial Times newspaper on Sunday.

As of Monday, the news story was no longer available on the National Post’s Web site, although Taheri’s column was.

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Eleana Benador, whose Washington public relations firm represents Taheri, said the news story _ not Taheri’s column _ were to blame for the confusion.

The National Post reporter responsible for the paper’s front page piece “wrote the article as if Mr. Taheri’s article was a fact,” Benador said. “If you go and look at his (Taheri’s) article, he’s reporting about something that’s being discussed, not something that is already a law.”

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Taheri responded to doubts about his piece with a statement on Monday. “I stand by it,” he wrote, citing sources in Tehran, including three members of parliament who tried to block the bill. He added that the colored badges were only under discussion, but could be incorporated into the dress code bill.

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On several Muslim and liberal Web sites and listservs, posters said Taheri’s report was neoconservative propaganda meant to instigate an attack on Iran the same way that reports of Iraqi soldiers ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators were used to justify the U.S.-led Gulf War in 1991.

“Such lies are frequently used by neo-cons to further their aims,” wrote a poster on one moderate Muslim listserv. Another poster asked why so little attention was being paid to a recently passed Israeli law that forbids Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza Strip married to Israeli Arabs from moving in with their spouses.

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Ghaemi, the Human Rights Watch researcher, said the stories will only help Iran’s government downplay human rights abuses.

“This kind of story is really a propaganda victory for the government,” said Ghaemi. “They are going to use this to discredit human rights concerns that are raised at the international level.”

The Baha’i faith, founded in the 19th century in Tehran, is under most duress in Iran, Ghaemi said, and is “systematically persecuted on many fronts.” Ghaemi said there are isolated attacks on Baha’i homes while conservative media outlets routinely accuse Baha’i followers of spying for foreign powers and undermining the country’s Islamic government.

Earlier this year, the Iranian regime asked military forces to start compiling data on Baha’is, raising concerns that the persecution will get worse, Ghaemi said.

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More recently, the country’s Sufi Muslims have come under pressure. Earlier this year, Ghaemi said, police used tear gas and beat Sufi worshippers in the city of Qum where they had come to celebrate the opening of a mosque. Some 1,000 people were detained, another 200 were injured and more than 50 were arrested and faced sentences that ranged from lashing to lengthy prison terms, Ghaemi said.

Some mullahs view Sufis as a hertical sect, but others have come to their defense.

KRE/JL END SACIRBEY