• YouTube.
• Message from the Universal House of Justice dated 14 April 2022. iiiii

Achievements

• Gathering in the Holy Land November 2021 for the Centenary of the Ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
• Programs of growth under way in over 6,000 clusters and close to 5,000 of those will have passed the 2nd milestone and that in 1300 have advanced further.
• Construction continued on the Houses of Worship around the world and on the Shrine of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. [Ridván 2022]

In a letter dated 25 November 2020 the Universal House of Justice announced a Nine Year Plan to begin at Ridván 2022.

Objectives:

• establish programs of growth in all cluster in the world (22,000) 14,000 at some level and 11,000 intensive, with 5,000 past the third milestone.
• establish at least on Milestone Three cluster in every country and every region of the world. This “constitutes on of the Plan’s chief objectives”
• deployment of teams of international and homefront pioneers.
• enrollments “wide open” involvement of families and households as larger groups embrace the pattern of Bahá'í life.
• expanding nucleus
• coordination of large numbers as more communities enter the 3rd milestone
• maturation of Bahá’í institutions
• in areas where activities reach high degree of prevalence the inhabitants now possess a substantially increased capacity to steer the course of their own development, and the institutions and agencies of the Faith there now have an expanded vision of their responsibilities.
• more efforts to support social and economic development
• participation in the discourses of society as a means of releasing what the Guardian described as “the society-building power” of the Faith.
• It will be heralded by the convocation of a series of conferences held over a span of months across the globe. [25 November 2020]
• This goal has been achieved. About 10,000 conferences were held worldwide. [ BWNS1601; BWNS1593; BWNS1592; BSNS1590]

See the conference recommendations and actions.

The Bahá'í International Community released a statement, One Planet, One Habitation: A Bahá’í Perspective on Recasting Humanity’s Relationship with the Natural World. The statement underlines the gap between intention and action as one of the central challenges facing humanity and states that the essential principle of humanity's oneness as the only foundation on which sustainable societies can be raised. [BWNS1599]

The statement is available on the BIC statements page and at Bahá'í Library.

• See his obituary on the site of the Bahá'ís of the United States.
• See YouTube.
• See Wikipedia for their career trajectory and disography.
• This chart, courtesy of Steven Kolins, shows the internet traffic generated by the announcement of his passing.

Travel bans and orders to report daily to a provincial intelligence office were also issued. A number of the Baha’is also received in addition a combined total of 24 years of internal exile—with the individual banishments set for two years.

Many of the 26 sentenced to prison are couples with young children. [BIC News 23 June 2022]

No date was set for the the conclusion of the project but it was recognized that the accident will cause a substantial delay. No increase in donations to the project will be required. [4 July 2022]

Established in 2000 the BWNS has been made available on mobile applications for both Android and iOS, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. In addition there is a podcast and one can subscribe here and not miss any news releases. [BWNS1612]

According to Amini's cousin, she was tortured and insulted in the van, as witnessed by her co-detainees. After she arrived at the police station, she began to lose vision and fainted. It took 30 minutes for the ambulance to arrive, and an hour and a half for her to get to Kasra hospital.

For two days, Amini was in a coma in Kasra Hospital in Tehran. On 16 September, a journalist broke the story of her coma, posting to Twitter a photo of Amini's father and grandmother crying and embracing in the hospital hallway. Amini died in the intensive care unit later that day. [Wikipedia]

A movement, "Woman, Life, Freedom" sprang up in the wake of Amini's death seeking the end of Iran's imposition of a headscarf on all women and an end to the Muslim cleric-led government in Tehran.

The progress on the construction work can be see in the gallery of pictures on the BWNS website. [BWNS1617]

• He recorded his first album, “Love Songs of the Lakota” in 1982 with Indian House Records and went on to record 13 albums. At the Native American Music Awards, Locke’s music won “Best Traditional Recording” for “The First Flute" in 1999 and “Album of the Year” for “Earth Gift” in 2009. [Albums; Wikipedia]
• In 2018, Kevin founded the Patricia Locke Foundation to provide cultural programming for communities. The foundation is named after Kevin’s late mother, who was one of the authors of the American Indian Freedom of Religion Act (1978), and an advocate for education and tribal colleges. [Native News Online]
• He was he the author of children's book with an Indigenous content. [Strong Nations website]
• His autobiography titled Arising, written with Kim Douglas and Aleah Douglas-Khavari, was published by the Bahá'í Publishing Trust in 2018. Throughout the pages of Arising, Kevin brings his international travels to life in colourful detail; reflects on the significance of the Bahá’í Faith, the religion with the world-embracing vision that he embraced early in his adult life; recounts his experiences with and lessons learned from his mother, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award; and shares his understanding of Lakota belief and culture. The result is a beautiful book full of engaging stories and a deep spirituality that will touch the hearts of many readers.
• See his website and his FaceBook page.

The letter starts with the statement, "Your country is blessed with remarkable ethnic and cultural diversity." (para 2). Indeed, there are about 250 ethnic groups in the DRC and 240 identified languages, four of which have been chosen as official regional languages with French being the common language of Instruction, business, national administration and external relations. More than half the population live in a rural setting and just less than half of the population is under the age of 15 years. [Britannica]

More information about the Faith in the Democratic Republic of the Congo can be found in Bahaipedia and Bahá'í Media.

They had been arrested on the 31st of July at the start of yet another crackdown against the Iranian Bahá'ís. Thirteen Bahá'ís were arrested in the raid including Afif Naeimi. Sabet, Kamalabadi and Naeimi were members of a group of people known as the “Yaran,” or “Friends” of Iran, which until 2008 served as an informal leadership of the Iranian Bahá'í community. All seven of its members were arrested in 2007 and 2008 and jailed for a decade. [BWNS1631; BIC News 1AUF22; Iran Press Watch 14DEC22]

• More than 320 Bahá'ís have been affected by individual acts of persecution since the 31 July arrest of Mahvash and Fariba. Dozens were arrested at various points in Shiraz, across Mazandaran province, and elsewhere throughout the country. [BIC New 18 Nov22]
• Homes owned by Bahá'ís in the village of Roshankouh were demolished. [BIC News]
• Government plans to tar the Bahá'ís through hate speech and propaganda were also exposed. [BIC News; BIC News]
• At this time at least 90 Bahá'ís were in prison awaiting court proceedings or were subject to degrading ankle-band monitoring. [BWNS1631]

Members of the Bahá'í community had requested that the Alexandria administrative authorities allocate a piece of land to be used as a burial site for its members because, at that time, only a single cemetery space in Cairo’s Basatin neighbourhood was available to the thousands of Egyptians of the Bahá'í Faith. This resulted in the depletion of the cemetery’s capacity and forced families of deceased Bahá'ís to transport their loved ones’ remains to Cairo from all across Egypt.

The legal representative of the Bahá'í community argued before the Alexandria Administrative Court that local administrative authorities had previously approved the allocation of burial sites for individuals who are not affiliated with the three officially recognized religions in Egypt — Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. He noted that the Cairo Governorate had leased land to the Indian Embassy to cremate the bodies of deceased Hindus in 1964. The Cairo authorities had also granted Bahá'ís the right to bury members of their community in a separate piece of land in 1965. He added that the Governorates of Ismailia and Port Said had approved the allocation of burial sites to the Bahá'í community in 1944 and 1949. Therefore, on the grounds that local governments had previously allocated burial sites to individuals not affiliated with the three recognized religions, the Governorate of Alexandria had no right to reject the Baha’i community’s request that a new burial site be allocated for its members.

The reason given for not allowing the appeal by the court was that the Egyptian state recognizes only Islam, Judaism, and Christianity as religions. This was based on the opinionof the Islamic Research Academy affiliated with the Al-Azhar, the main Islamic institution of Egypt. The Islamic Research Academy claimed in a report submitted to the court that providing a burial site for the Bahá'í community would “lead to discrimination, further division, fragmentation, and rupture of the fabric of one society.”

In another decision issued on December 20, 2022, the Administrative Court of the Governorate of Port Said rejected a petition submitted by members of the Bahá'í community to allocate a piece of land to be used as a new burial site by the community. In this case they had asked that a burial site should be located on a piece of land that had been confiscated in the 1970's for which no compensation was forthcoming. This request was also disallowed. [EIN Newswire]

• The cost of construction the Shrine itself is expected to be about $75 million.
• It will stretch across 3,000 square meters (32,300 square feet) and will be surrounded by flowering gardens on an area of approximately 58,000 square metres (14.33 acres)
• About 1.2 million people visited the Bahá'í Holy Sites in 2019 including about 5,000 Bahá'í pilgrims.
• More than 700 Bahá'í volunteers from 80 countries were currently servicing the sites in Israel, about 20% of whom were gardeners.
• Some 8.5 million Bahá'ís lived in 190 countries, as of that date, including 2 million in India, which has the largest Bahá'í community.