e Zeitung_,
enjoying international readership, gave wide coverage to the persecution,
and television networks in Australia, Canada, the United States and a
number of European countries produced in-depth, magazine-format
presentations. The abuses were denounced in often strong editorial
comment. Apart from the support thus lent to the efforts to secure
effective intervention at the Human Rights Commission, such publicity had
the effect of introducing, usually for the first time and to an audience
of tens of millions of people, accurate and appreciative information about
Baha'i teachings and belief. Both the publicity and the campaign being
carried on through the United Nations' system provided influential
officials around the world with a sustained opportunity to judge for
themselves both the teachings of the Cause and the character of the Baha'i
community.

A problem arising out of the persecution was that faced by several
thousand Iranian Baha'is who found themselves either stranded without
valid passports in countries where they were serving as pioneers, or
forced to flee from Iran because they or their families had been singled
out as targets of the pogrom. In 1983, an International Baha'i Refugee
Office was established in Canada,(139) where the government had been
particularly responsive to the representations made by the National
Spiritual Assembly of that country. Over the next few years, with the
assistance of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, a series of
other countries likewise opened their doors to more than ten thousand
Iranian Baha'is, many of whom filled pioneer goals in their new places of
residence.

* * * * *

Not only the Baha'i community but the United Nations' human rights system
itself benefited from this long struggle. Initially, after the Islamic
revolution, the community of believers in Iran had faced a threat to its
very survival. In time, the United Nations Human Rights Commission,
however slow and relatively cumbersome its operations may appear to some
outside observers, succeeded in compelling the Iranian regime to bring the
worst of the persecution to a halt. In this way, the "case of Iran's
Baha'is" marked a significant victory for the Commission and the Baha'i
Faith alike. It served as a startling demonstration of the power of the
community of nations, acting through the machinery created for the
purpose, to bring under control patterns of o