In the United States of America, the home of the champion-builders of a fast-evolving Order, an official invitation was extended to the Bahá’í Community by the San Francisco Council of Churches to send representatives to attend a Service of Prayer for Peace and Divine Guidance to the United Nations, an invitation to which the Community warmly responded. At this inter-religious gathering, held in the Cow Palace in San Francisco, the birthplace of the Charter of the United Nations, which united nearly sixteen thousand people in worship and silent prayers, and at which government leaders, among them the United States Secretary of State, were present, the voice of the Bahá’í representative was the first to be raised, reciting a prayer revealed by Bahá’u’lláh, after whom a prayer was read by each of the representatives of the Christian, the Muslim, the Jewish, the Hindu, and the Buddhist Faiths, all of whom were similarly invited to participate in that immense and historic gathering. A prayer revealed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for America was presented by the elected national representatives of the United States Bahá’í Community to President Eisenhower, who acknowledged its receipt in warm terms and above his own signature.
OTHER VICTORIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Nor should mention be omitted in this brief survey of Bahá’í victories and achievements in the course of the closing year of the second phase of the Ten-Year Plan of the establishment of a Bahá’í Publishing Trust in India; of the establishment of over thirty new centers and fifteen Assemblies in India, Pákistán and Burma; of the purchase of some of the holy sites blessed by the footsteps of Bahá’u’lláh in Adrianople, the Land of Mystery and the scene of the proclamation of His Message; of the holding of the first Bahá’í Summer School in Central Africa, in Kobuka, Uganda, attended by about one hundred African and white believers and representatives of no less than twenty-eight Bahá’í local Assemblies; of the convocation of the first historic All-France Teaching Conference, the first fruit of the combined labors of the believers of about thirty centers already established throughout the length and breadth of that country; of the setting apart of a plot to serve as a burial-ground for the members of the Bahá’í community in Tripoli, Libya and in the capital of Tanganyika; of the purchase of land for the establishment of a Bahá’í Summer School in ‘Iráq; of the extension to the Bahá’í women in Egypt of the right to be elected to the Egyptian Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly as well as to participate as delegates in the National Bahá’í Convention; of the purchase, in an island near Muara Siberut, Mentawei Islands, of a plot supplementing the Bahá’í endowment established in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital; of the pushing of the northern outpost of the Faith in Alaska to Point Barrow beyond the Arctic Circle; of the initiation of auxiliary plans for the promotion of the Faith in the Seychelles Islands and in the Sudan; and of the arrival of a pioneer in Praslin Island forming a part of the Seychelles group.
APPEAL TO UNITED NATIONS
Nor can I in this survey allow to pass unnoticed the energetic and commendable efforts exerted by Bahá’í communities the world over for the support, protection and relief of the persecuted members of the Persian Bahá’í Community subjected to one of the severest ordeals experienced in recent years by the steadfast followers of the Faith in the land of its birth. Following this barbarous recrudescence of religious persecution and the transmission of over one thousand messages by Bahá’í communities, some in writing and others telegraphically, to His Majesty the Sháh, the Government, the Majlis and the Senate, and reinforcing the wide publicity given in the world’s leading newspapers and the numerous protests voiced by scholars, statesmen, government envoys and people of eminence such as Pandit Nehru, Eleanor Roosevelt, Professor Gilbert Murray and Professor A. Toynbee, a written communication accompanied by a memorandum listing the atrocities perpetrated throughout the Persian provinces, was submitted in Geneva to the Secretary General of the United Nations, who appointed a commission of United Nations officers, headed by the High Commissioner for Refugees, instructing its members to contact the Persian Foreign Minister and urge him to obtain from his government in Ṭihrán a formal assurance that the rights of the Bahá’í minority in that land would be protected. Copies of this communication addressed to the United Nations were delivered to the representatives of the member nations of the Social and Economic Council, to the Director of the Human Rights Division, and to certain specialized agencies of non-governmental organizations with consultative status. Furthermore, the American President was appealed to by the national representatives of the American Bahá’í Communities as well as by all local Assemblies and groups in the United States. A courteous and reassuring letter was subsequently received by the American Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly from the State Department in Washington, acknowledging the receipt of the appeal, while the Director of the Division of Human Rights addressed in his turn a communication to the Secretary of the American National Spiritual Assembly, informing him that summaries of both the letter and petition forwarded to him would be furnished to the Commission of Human Rights, and copies sent to the Persian Government. Assurance was moreover given that summaries would also be sent to the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. As a further measure to obtain redress a forty-thousand dollar publicity campaign was initiated by the American Bahá’í Community designed to lend an impetus to the proclamation of the fundamental verities of the Faith, the aims and purposes of its followers, and of the disabilities suffered by the overwhelming majority of its adherents in the land of its birth.