‘My brother found him … in the morgue’ – 25 years since Tateos Michaelian’s murder 28 June 2019 Features Mariet Michaelian gave birth to her firstborn, Anna, on the day it was confirmed her father had been murdered. Tateos Michaelian, who led an Armenian evangelical church in Tehran and had been an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime’s mistreatment of Christians, had gone missing four days earlier, and Mariet feared the worst. “It was six months after Haik [Hovsepian]’s death, and we were terrified, reflects Mariet on the 25th anniversary of her father’s death. “We knew something is not right. He had received lots of threats, so we were waiting for that day. But you know, when the day comes, you don’t want to believe it.” It was Mariet’s mother, Juliet, who first broke the news that her father was missing. “My mum called me at night – it was Wednesday night, 10 o’clock,” Mariet recalls. “She called us and told us, ‘Dad didn’t come back.’ And it was so unusual because wherever he used to go, he used to let us know: ‘I’m going to this place; I will be back at this time.’ But on that day, when Mum was at our house, he left the house without any notice, and he didn’t come back.” Over the next few days, the family searched everywhere for Tateos. They went to all the hospitals in the area, and even took a photo of him to the local police station. But it was Mariet’s brother, Galo, who eventually found him – in a morgue. “They [the Iranian regime] were not expecting us to find his body,” Mariet says. “They didn’t return Haik’s body for several days, and they even buried him, but with my father, my brother found him in the morgue. So they had no other choice but letting us know that, ‘Yeah, we found him; he was killed.’” But if the discovery of Tateos’ body was not part of the plan, there was surgical precision in the regime’s handling of the events of the following days. “They told my brother not to let anyone know; they wanted to bring the news,” Mariet recalls. “So they came on Sunday and gave the news to my mum and the church. “… And when it was his funeral, there were lots of secret-service people and police. They were checking every move. They didn’t let us open the casket; they were afraid of things happening. But there were lots of people there. It was packed. People from everywhere were there, because he was known as one of the heads of the Church in Iran.” After the funeral, Mariet’s brother and a few of her father’s colleagues from the church were called to the Ministry of Intelligence, where they were told that the police had identified three women – members of the opposition MKO – as the killers. Mariet, her mother and sister were then called to act as witnesses in the prosecution of the three ladies, though none of them believed they were the perpetrators. “They called us one by one: ‘Do you accept that these people killed him? And do you want us to sentence them?’” Mariet recalls. “But, we knew that they didn’t do it. I knew that they were themselves victims, because back in those days they used to have these mujahideens cooperate with them, promising them that they would have a lesser sentence. “So I told them that I know that God is the best judge, so I give everything to Him; let him judge the one who killed my dad.” Tateos Michaelian translated over 60 Christian books into Persian Tateos Michaelian, who was 62 when he died, was not only a pastor; he had also translated over 60 Christian books into Persian, had taken over from Haik as the acting chairman of the Council of Protestant Ministers in Iran, and previously served as both executive secretary of the country’s Presbyterian Synod and general secretary of the Bible Society before it was forcibly closed in 1990. But it was not only his church activities that had brought him to the attention of the authorities; Mariet reels off a list of examples of times her father spoke out on behalf of Iran’s Christians. “He was so outspoken,” she says. “His last trip, to Cyprus, in one meeting he talked about all the details [of persecution]. It was after Haik’s assassination, and he even told, ‘Now they have started killing our clergy’. When he came back, the person who went with him told him, ‘I’m 100 per cent sure that they will kill you… If they forget everything else you have done, just for this last thing you did.’ And it happened a few months later.” Mariet says the first few days after her father went missing were “like hell, because I didn’t know he had been killed: I was thinking they are torturing him. So I was just praying that God will send him back, safe and sound, but it didn’t happen”. But she says that in those “dark days”, what kept the family going was the support of fellow Christians, who she says were encamped in the family home for “maybe one month”. Mariet also speaks of the “hundreds, maybe thousands” of letters and cards the family received from Christians around the world. “You know, in those days you feel you are helpless; they [the regime] can do whatever they want with you; you don’t have anyone protecting you… Because they want to make you feel that you are a minority: ‘this is the end of Christianity; we are the majority; we are the best religion, and now this is your end’. But receiving those cards and letters just gave us a different perspective. It reframed our way of thinking. It helped us see that ‘no, God is in control’.” “It was getting harder and harder for me, having had that experience,” Mariet says. “Every time my husband used to leave the house I was really worried … because back then we didn’t even have cellphones, so I had to just wait and cry until he comes back. Mariet and her husband, Hendrik, served in her father’s church for several years after his death, but in the end she says the pain was just too strong, and in 2007 they relocated to the United States, where her husband pastors a church in California. “It was really hard for me. Every call late at night used to make me really terrified – I still don’t like the calls late at night because I still have that trauma inside me. “It was a hard decision; I was thinking, ‘I’m betraying the church my father used to serve’, but now, when I look back, I think it was a good decision.” Mariet says that her father’s church, St. John’s, is still going strong – under the leadership of a couple her father mentored – despite ongoing challenges such as being forced to halt Persian-language services and ordered to hold services only on Sundays, a working day in Iran. In 2014, Mariet’s mother, Juliet, was presented with a copy of a newly translated Persian Bible, the “New Millennium Version”, a collaborative effort known as the Michaelian Project in her father’s honour. “He was truly a scholar,” Mariet says. “All he did was writing, reading, preaching. Till his last day, he was reading books of philosophy, thinking: ‘what will the next trend be in philosophy?’ “… When you feel that people still appreciate what he did, and remember him, of course you feel supported, you feel encouraged. My mother felt really supported and encouraged, because sometimes, after all these years, she thinks everybody has forgotten him, and her.”
25 years since murder of church leader and Bible translator Tateos Michaelian 28 June 2019 News Tomorrow will be the 25th anniversary of the forced disappearance of Tateos Michaelian, an outspoken Iranian Armenian church leader and Bible translator who was found dead three days after going missing. His son identified his body, which according to one report was riddled with bullets, on 2 July, 1994. Tateos was 62. The Iranian regime claimed an opposition group had been behind the killing, but there was little doubt among the Christian community that Tateos had been killed because of his evangelical activities and public criticism of the regime. He had received several anonymous death threats. Haik Hovsepian disappeared on 19 January 1994. His family was notified of his death 11 days later. He was found with multiple stab wounds to his chest. Tateos’ murder came just five months after that of fellow Iranian Armenian church leader Haik Hovsepian, himself an outspoken critic of the government. Indeed, some believed that Tateos laid the foundations for his own death when he told a foreign journalist at Haik’s funeral that he believed the Iranian regime had been behind the killing. Tateos was even more outspoken at a Christian conference in Cyprus a month before his murder, when he said Iranian Christians were treated like second-class citizens and “unclean”; “encouraged and even indirectly forced to become Muslim”; not allowed to build churches or publish Scriptures; and that their leaders were killed. He also compared the “religious dictatorship” in Iran to the Middle Ages, and called on the World Council of Churches and United Nations to put pressure on the Iranian regime to ensure there was religious freedom in Iran. When he sat down, a colleague reportedly told him he had signed his own death sentence. Tateos Michaelian refused to agree to stop evangelising to Muslims and preventing them from attending his St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Tehran, which held services in Persian. Previously, in the 1980s, he had complained to the Ministry of Islamic Guidance after a Muslim cleric said on TV that Christians, like pigs and dogs, were “najess” – unclean. He had also criticised restrictions on Christians in an interview with a French magazine, after which he was summoned by the authorities and accused of “counter-revolutionary activities”, which he denied. And he refused to agree to stop evangelising to Muslims and preventing them from attending his St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Tehran, which held services in Persian. Tateos was a brilliant scholar, responsible for the translation of over 60 Christian books into Persian, as well as the Good News version of the New Testament. He was acting chairman of the Council of Protestant Ministers in Iran, and had also served as Executive Secretary of the country’s Presbyterian Synod and General Secretary of the Bible Society before it was forcibly closed in 1990 – something else he protested about.
25 years since extrajudicial killing of ‘apostate’ Mehdi Dibaj 24 June 2019 News Today marks the 25th anniversary of the forced disappearance of Mehdi Dibaj, a Christian convert who had been released from nine years in prison just five months earlier. Mehdi’s body was found days later in a park in a suburb of Tehran, with multiple stab wounds to his chest. Before his release from prison in January 1994, Mehdi was facing the death sentence for apostasy. However, he was released when news of his sentencing garnered international attention, thanks to the efforts of his fellow pastor Haik Hovsepian. Haik was killed just three days after Mehdi’s release, prompting Mehdi to say at his funeral: “I should have died, not Brother Haik.” Mehdi became a Christian in 1953 at the age of just 14. When his parents found out, he was forced to leave home and moved to Tehran, where he worked at a Christian bookshop and became involved with the Assemblies of God (AoG) denomination. He undertook theological training in India, Lebanon and Switzerland, and moved to Afghanistan as a missionary, translating the Gospel of Mark into Dari. When he was refused re-entry to Afghanistan, he settled in the conservative Iranian city of Babol, near the Caspian Sea, where he taught English at the university and worked with an evangelical radio station. But in 1983 he was arrested and detained for 68 days after being accused of slandering the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, in a letter. He was eventually released after submitting title deeds to a plot of land belonging to the AoG in the nearby city of Sari. But when a year later he returned to ask for the title deeds to be returned, Mehdi was detained, then held for the next nine years. During his detention he was beaten, subjected to mock executions, and spent two years in solitary confinement in a tiny cell. The letter he was alleged to have written was eventually proved a forgery, but the authorities by this stage had changed their focus to his conversion to Christianity, and in December 1993 he was sentenced to death for apostasy. Mehdi responded by smuggling out of prison the court’s judgment against him, alongside his final letter to the judge and a moving written testimony. These documents arrived at the door of Haik Hovsepian, who passed them on to friends abroad, where they were translated into English. A translation of his testimony was published in full by the UK’s Times newspaper. The publication of these documents led to an international outcry, and when the new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, told the Vatican’s Ambassador to Iran that the rumours were false, only to be presented with a translation of the court document, he had no choice but to order Mehdi’s release, claiming a local judge had made a mistake. But three days later Haik disappeared and his body was later found with 27 stab wounds. Five months on, his friend Mehdi was on his way to his youngest daughter’s 17th birthday party, when he too disappeared. His body was later found in a park. He had been stabbed repeatedly in the heart.
Rouhani’s legal adviser questions legality of Tabriz church closure and minority teacher ban 17 June 2019 News Aliakbar Gorji Azandaryani (http://www.lvp.ir/) A senior legal adviser to the Iranian president has publicly questioned the legality of the recent closure of a church and banning of religious-minority teachers from nursery schools. Aliakbar Gorji Azandaryani’s comments were published in two separate articles on a government website over the past two days. Firstly, yesterday, he asked the governor of East Azerbaijan Province to look into why the Assyrian church in Tabriz was forcibly closed last month and its cross removed from the church’s high tower. And today he also questioned the legality of the move by Iran’s Social Welfare Organisation, also last month, to ban religious-minority teachers from working in nursery schools. Of the Tabriz church closure, Mr Azandaryani said he had “serious doubts about the legality”, referring to Articles 9, 19, 20, 26, 36 and particularly 13 of Iran’s constitution, which states that religious minorities are recognised and free to perform their religious ceremonies. “Therefore such an order is a clear violation of the constitution and the rights of the recognised religious minority,” he said. He added that the move also went against several of the provisions of Iran’s Charter of Citizens’ Rights, which President Rouhani launched in 2016, and called upon the governor of West Azerbaijan Province to “do all he can to find out about the details of this case, including the background reasons for the seizure of the church and the authority that issued the order” – in this case EIKO (Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order), presided over by the Supreme Leader himself. Mr Azandaryani gave the minority-teacher ban similarly short shrift, also referencing several articles of both the Iranian Constitution and Charter of Citizens’ Rights in saying he considered it illegal. He particularly made note of the constitution providing all citizens with the right to have “employment of their own choice, without prejudice or discrimination”. Therefore, he said “it is expected that the statement will be withdrawn and the public made aware of actions taken” against those responsible. Article18’s Advocacy Director, Mansour Borji, welcomed the statements but noted that they “don’t carry much weight unless backed by the president himself”, and that, in the case of the Tabriz church, “the ruling has been made by the revolutionary court in favour of EIKO, which is overseen by the Supreme Leader, so even the president may not be able to do much”. But Borji said that it was still “important that a senior legal adviser has recognised the illegality of these actions”. “Now, officials from both legislative and executive bodies have raised serious objections to the recent moves against the rights of religious minorities,” he noted.
‘Systemic and institutionalised’ persecution of Christians in Iran 6 June 2019 News Iran’s continued violations of religious freedom are highlighted in the UK Foreign Office’s latest global Human Rights and Democracy report, published yesterday. The comprehensive annual report lists Iran among 29 “human rights priority countries”, referencing the “systemic and institutional” persecution of Christians and “economic persecution” of Baha’is. “Despite notionally benefiting from constitutional recognition and protection, Christians continued to be persecuted in a systemic and institutionalised manner [in 2018],” it states, highlighting the sentencing of four converts to ten years in prison and the arrest of 114 Christians in just one month. “The authorities continued to pursue the economic persecution of Baha’i, including through shop closures, and by the denial of mainstream education,” the report adds. It says the UK will “continue to hold Iran to account for its human rights record” in 2019, by supporting human rights resolutions on Iran at the UN Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly, and the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran. In the preface to the report, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, says he was “deeply disturbed to learn that 215 millions Christians faced persecution [worldwide] in 2018”, according to a study by Christian charity Open Doors. In December, Mr Hunt called for an independent review of the Foreign Office’s efforts to help persecuted Christians worldwide, the preliminary findings of which were published last month. That report noted that in Iran the situation for Christians and other minorities had “reached an alarming stage” and that “though most cases involve converts, indigenous Christians such as Pastor Victor [Bet-Tamraz], an Assyrian Christian, with his wife Shamiram Issavi and their son, [Ramiel], have also been targeted and imprisoned”. Article18’s inaugural annual report, released in January, noted that at least 14 Christians remained in prison at the end of 2018, detained on spurious charges related to their faith or religious activity.
Religious minority teachers banned from working in nursery schools 4 June 2019 News (IRNA) The Iranian government has banned members of religious minorities from teaching in nursery schools, except in special schools where all children already belong to that minority. The directive, passed by Iran’s Social Welfare Organisation on 27 May, is the latest in a long line of discriminatory and restrictive practices against religious minorities, explains Article18’s Kiaa Aalipour. “This is a shame, really a shame, and another example of the Iranian regime putting pressure on religious minorities inside the country,” he says. “The regime continues to violate international law on freedom of religion or belief, and despite the Iranian government’s assertions, religious minorities in Iran face systematic state persecution. A document obtained by IHRDC indicates that Iran's State Welfare Organization has banned the employment of religious minorities in most child care centers. Read more here https://t.co/DzcMIXgR90— Iranhrdc.org (@IHRDC) June 2, 2019 “And this is far from the first example of something like this. There are lots of legalised discriminations in the civil code of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and religious minorities are facing these things daily – for example: employment restrictions, marriage restrictions, unequal treatment by the courts, and the inability to inherit property from a Muslim… Even discrimination in child adoption.” The move has drawn criticism from many people, including the Zoroastrian representative to the parliament, who said it went against the constitution. In response to the mounting criticism, an Iranian official clarified that members of religious minorities are able to take some classes, such as music or gymnastics – but they are not allowed to be class teachers. It was already effectively impossible for members of religious minorities to teach older children in Iran, explains Aalipour, because “to become a teacher there are specific criteria to meet, including belief in Islam and the office of the Supreme Leader”. Even in the special schools for children of religious minorities, Aalipour notes that “in recent years, in many of those schools, the heads have been replaced by Muslims, appointed by the Iranian regime”.