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‘We’re too quiet,’ say Iranian Christian survivors of persecution

Left to right: Dabrina Bet-Tamraz, Marziyeh Amirizadeh and Maryam Rostampour.

Three Christian women survivors of persecution in Iran have called upon the international community to make more noise on behalf of persecuted Christians in Iran.

“My fear is that we’re too quiet,” said Dabrina Bet-Tamraz, whose brother, Ramiel, is currently in prison in Tehran because of his Christian evangelism, and whose father, Victor, and mother, Shamiram, will appear in court later this month to appeal against their own convictions on similar charges.

Dabrina highlighted the case of Fatemeh (Mary) Mohammadi, a 21-year-old Christian convert who was reported arrested over three weeks ago and has not been heard from since.

“She’s a young girl and nobody has any idea where she is right now,” Dabrina said. “She’s been taken away for over three weeks now. We’ve called on every organisation to raise awareness and ask the [Iranian] government… [to] make them accountable, responsible for what they’ve done.”

Dabrina said she feared that if not enough noise was made about the situation of people like Fatemeh, someone like her may “go missing, and die, and nobody will ever talk about it”.

Dabrina was speaking yesterday at a live-streamed discussion about the situation of Christians in Iran, hosted by the US-based Family Research Council.

She shared the stage with fellow survivors Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh, who spent nearly nine months in the same prison where Dabrina’s brother is now incarcerated: Evin Prison in Tehran.

Marziyeh said Christians in Iran today need the support of the international “more than [at] anytime”, to shine a light on the abuses they face and sanction the individuals responsible.

Marziyeh shared how, when she and Maryam were in prison, pressure from international actors including Pope Benedict led to them being treated more humanely in prison and, eventually, released.

She said this proved that advocacy worked and called upon international organisations to do more to bring awareness to the human rights violations Iranian Christians are experiencing.

“Publicising the cases can at least protect prisoners from being physically tortured and coerced to [make] false confessions,” she said.

Marziyeh also called on the US to relax its controls on asylum-seekers – at least in “severe cases” – and to “encourage” its allies in Europe and at the UN to “hold the Iranian regime accountable for violations of human rights and ignoring the rights of religious minority”.

‘Raise awareness, speak about it’

Fatemeh Mohammadi has been missing for over three weeks.

The three women also called on Christians around the world to help raise awareness about the persecution of Christians in Iran and elsewhere.

“We would like to encourage each one of you to give more attention to the Iranian human rights situation and the issues of religious persecution,” Marziyeh said. “We hope for a day when all Iranian people from any religion or ethnicity can live together in peace, without having the fear of getting harassed.”

Dabrina added: “Raise awareness, speak about it. You are the voice of persecuted brothers and sisters today in prison in Iran and all across the world.”

Maryam and Marziyeh spoke about how encouraged they were when they found out that they had been sent hundreds of letters in prison, even if the guards never let them read them.

Maryam encouraged Christians to “just write hundreds and thousands of letters, send them to prison, because that makes them [the authorities] angry”.

Maryam added that Christians in the West must not forget that their freedom is a “precious gift”.

“As people who came from a country where you cannot even sing for God with a loud voice, you have to be cautious about everything… This freedom that you have in this country is a precious gift. But we also believe that you have to use this freedom. You can’t just leave your freedom and enjoy this freedom. We have to be a voice for those people who do not have this freedom.

“One day persecution may come to the free countries and we might need help from that part of the world. So please stand up for your brothers and sisters and be their voice.”

All three women talked about how the trauma of their experiences remain with them.

Dabrina said that after years of being followed by government agents, it took her eight years after leaving Iran before she stopped “looking in the mirror to see if there was a car following me or not”.

Maryam added: “Today, after 10 years, it is still hard for us to forget the tortures and execution of our best friend, and many other injustices we witnessed inside Evin Prison.”

Iranian Christians granted early release from prison

Asghar Salehi (left) and Mohammad Reza Rezaei (Middle East Concern)

Three Iranian Christian converts have been granted early release from prison, reports Middle East Concern.

Asghar Salehi was released from Eqlid Prison yesterday after serving two months of his six-month sentence.

Mohammad Reza Rezaei and a third convert known only as “A.T.” are due to be released on Saturday.

Article18’s Advocacy Director, Mansour Borji, notes that the men will only have been granted conditional release on the proviso that they don’t repeat their “offences”.

The three men were convicted in September 2019 of “propaganda against the system through promoting Zionist Christianity”.

They were taken to prison in December, having failed with their appeals.

Background

The three Christians were first arrested, alongside four others, during raids on their homes in September 2018.

Following their arrests, Asghar was interrogated for three days, during which he was kept blindfolded for most of the time, then taken to Eqlid Prison for a further eight days. He was then released on bail after providing his business license as a guarantee.

The men were then brought before Branch 101 of Eqlid Criminal Court in April 2019 and charged under Article 500 of the penal code, which provides for up to a year’s imprisonment for anyone found guilty of “propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran or support of opposition groups and associations”.

Asghar was refused permission to speak during the hearing, warned that he was being monitored and told not to engage in any further Christian activities. He was also reported to be suffering from “potentially serious health issues”.

First he was forced out of his city, then his country

Sohrab was forced to leave Tehran after being fired from his job – because he was a Christian. Two years later, he fled the country.

An Iranian convert to Christianity and his wife have been in Turkey for nearly five years now, and they are still waiting for their interview with the UN’s refugee agency.

The couple, who we’ll refer to as Sohrab and Fereshteh, fled their home in western Iran in early 2015 and haven’t been home since.

The reason? For two years, Sohrab had been leading an underground house-church, and this caught the attention of the authorities.

At first Sohrab was threatened. Just six months after starting the meetings, Sohrab received a call from a private number, and a man “invited” him to meet him at his office the next morning at 10am.

The man then proceeded to tell Sohrab that it would be better for him if he accepted the invitation as, if he didn’t, “we will have to come and get you, and that’s not going to look good in front of your neighbours or friends”.

Sohrab was told to write down the address of the office, and when he arrived the next morning he saw that it belonged to the intelligence branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Sohrab was led inside the building and relieved of his watch, phone, car keys, belt and even the laces to his shoes, then shown into a pitch-black room, where he was left alone for the next hour.

Eventually, two men entered the room, put a hood over Sohrab’s head and took him outside, then drove him to an unknown location around an hour’s drive away.

During the drive, Sohrab says he feared he was being taken away to a jail he had heard others talk about on the outskirts of his city: “I was thinking, ‘What’s going to happen to me? Are they going to put me in jail without any court hearing, without any judge?’”

Once the car stopped, Sohrab was led inside another building, where he was placed in another room and left alone for several hours.

During that time, Sohrab said he heard what sounded like screams from another detainee, and then laughter. He said at one point the air conditioning came on and he became very cold; then the next moment it was unbearably hot.

“I didn’t know whether it was torture, or they just wanted to scare me,” he said.

Eventually, Sohrab heard two people enter the room and what sounded like the thud of a briefcase landing on a desk.

“I thought maybe they are reading my story,” Sohrab said. “And then one of them said: ‘OK, Sohrab, are you a member of an Assemblies of God Church in Tehran?’ I said, ‘Yes’. And they said, ‘So what are you doing here?”

Sohrab explained to his interrogators that he had been forced to leave Tehran after being fired from his job – because he was a Christian.

“OK, but why have you started to gather Christians here?” they asked.

When Sohrab attempted to skirt around the issue, he was told: “I’ve asked you politely. Answer me truthfully or you’ll see my other side!”

Sohrab was told that his new city wasn’t like Tehran, Shiraz or Isfahan, where news may be distributed about someone being arrested.

“Here it’s silent, it’s not on the news,” they said. “And you came here to cause us trouble. Stop what you are doing or you are responsible for what will happen to you, to your family or the members of your group.”

Terrified, Sohrab agreed to stop the meetings, and for six months after his release he did as he promised. But Sohrab says he was regularly asked by his members why the meetings had stopped, and he feared that without his support the other converts would lose heart and faith, so at Christmas 2013 he decided to start again.

Just two weeks later, he received another call.

It was the same man who’d called before. “Sohrab, you didn’t heed our advice,” the man said. “If something happens to you, we told you that that is your responsibility. So if in the evening or at night when you are asleep, if something happens to you or to your wife, we wash our hands of it.”

Sohrab says the fear he felt following that call was worse than if he’d been imprisoned. “At least then you’d know you will be in jail and you cannot go outside, but there is no fear that something will happen to you or your family, because they’ve already punished you. But at that time, believing every day, especially in the evenings, after sunset, when everywhere is dark, maybe someone will attack you from behind and put a knife in you and you will die and no-one will understand who killed you … Every day I was scared. I knew something will happen to me, but when? Is it today, it is tomorrow, or is it tonight while we are asleep?”

Sohrab says he is still traumatised, and finds that even now he will wake up at night and check whether the windows and doors are locked.

For the next year, Sohrab was in this agitated state of knowing he would be targeted, but not where or when.

And then on a Friday morning in early 2015, he called a meeting in a park where he knew many others would have gathered, so it shouldn’t draw too much attention.

But after singing just one song together, Sohrab recalls that “around ten motorcycles, each carrying two passengers, drove around us and then came at us with these electroshock weapons and small knives”.

The group dispersed in different directions, and Sohrab fled in his car, which had had its windows and lights smashed in.

When he got home, Sohrab recalls his wife screaming and asking him what happened. But before he could answer, the telephone rang.

It was Sohrab’s brother-in-law, who worked at the mayor’s office.

“He asked my wife, ‘Where is Sohrab?’ And she answered, ‘He arrived right now,’ Sohrab recalls. “Then he told my wife, ‘You have to leave your house quickly.’ My wife asked why, but he said, ‘You don’t have time, I cannot explain, just leave, come to my house and then I’ll tell you what happened.’”

Sohrab says he didn’t even have time to wash his face or change out of his bloodied clothes, and that when they arrived at his brother-in-law’s house, he was told: “Sohrab, you have to leave.”

“I said, ‘Where should I go?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, you just have to leave.’”

So that night, Sohrab and his wife drove back to Tehran, and the very next day they flew to Turkey.

Nearly five years on, it is there they remain, and while Sohrab says he is grateful for the community he has found at their new church, where around 200 Iranian Christians gather freely, his heart remains in Iran.

Sohrab is one of the leaders at the church and helps new refugees when they arrive, if, like him, their assets are frozen in Iran. But it is to the future that he looks.

“I’m sure God has a plan for Iran,” he says. “At the Assemblies of God Church I went to in Tehran, there were 500 members. Now they closed that church, all the members are living in different cities or countries. Some moved to the United States, Canada, Australia, or Europe. I’m here in Turkey. Sometimes I think God wanted to equip us to be ready for when, one day, Iran becomes free and all of us go back and start to serve there. We should be ready for that time.”

Iran’s ID-card policy turns unrecognised religious minorities into ghosts

By Fred Petrossian

The Islamic Republic’s decision to remove the “other religions” option from the national ID-card application form looks set to deny millions of Iranians their citizenship.

Under the new regulations from the National Census Bureau, ID-card applicants must choose only from the short list of recognised religions: Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity.

Members of unrecognised religious minorities, such as Baha’is, Yarsan, Mandaeans, and Christian converts – whose conversions are not recognised – will either have to deny their beliefs or live as ghosts, devoid of citizenship rights.

Human rights defender and Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi has written a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to protest against the new policy.

Said Mahmoudi, professor of international law at Stockholm University, told Article18 the policy is a “violation of a basic obligation of international law” and a “flagrant breach” of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which Iran has signed.

According to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

At the same time, Article 19 of Iran’s own constitution states: “All people of Iran, whatever the ethnic group or tribe to which they belong, enjoy equal rights; and colour, race, language, and the like, do not bestow any privilege.”

But in spite of these pledges, European researcher Behnaz Hosseini, who has published numerous articles and books on religious minorities, told Article 18: “The Shiite state wants to keep minorities marginalised in order to hold onto power itself. The regime intensifies the pressure on minorities to make them immigrate, or, in the case of the Yarsan, to rob them of their own identity by Islamising them.”

Fear-based obedience

The Islamic Republic’s efforts to “identify” minorities have increased in recent months.

In September, the Minister of Education said children who profess an unrecognised religious faith at school were engaging in “propaganda” and should be banned.

In other words, from the outset, the government of religious apartheid seeks to institutionalise fear-based obedience in the children of religious minorities.

The persecution of religious minorities began in the early days of the revolution, with the arrest and execution of Baha’is and extrajudicial killings of Christian converts and those who stood up for them.

Persons belonging to even the recognised minorities, including Sunni Muslims, became at best second- or even third-degree citizens.

But this new policy marks a new chapter in Iran’s marginalisation of religious minorities, creating a new minority of unseen ghosts within the Islamic Republic, who exist outside of the system – ghosts whose only crime is their refusal to deny their religious beliefs.

In converting a group of citizens into ungodly ghosts, Iran is following in the footsteps of other inhumane political systems, such as apartheid South Africa, which marginalised blacks, or Nazi Germany, where Jews were rounded up and killed.

By denying its citizens the right to receive a national identification card only because of differences in religious belief, the Islamic Republic has shown once again that it is serious about repressing religious minorities, in spite of persistent international condemnation.

Iranian Christian prisoner sends condolences to plane victims

An Iranian Christian serving a ten-year prison sentence for his membership of a house-church has shared his condolences with the families of those who lost loved ones during the recent downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane.

Article18 obtained a copy of the handwritten letter that Nasser Navard Gol-Tapeh sent from his cell in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.

In the letter, dated 14 January, he expressed his “warmest and deepest condolences to the families of the victims” whom he said had been brought to “eternal silence”.

Below is a translation of the letter, which was written in Persian:

In his letter, Nasser expresses his ‘warmest and deepest condolences to the families of the victims’.

.

“In the name of God,
“Now six days have passed since the eternal silence of 176 human beings.
“Those noble and blessed souls who surrendered their lives to the Creator of life.
“What can we say except condolences to the mourners, except empathy and compassion for the bereaved?
“I express my warmest and deepest condolences to the families of the victims of the incident involving the Ukrainian plane.”

Christian prisoner, Nasser Navard Gol-Tapeh, Evin
14 January 2020

Nasser has written several letters from prison, querying the charges against him and his heavy sentence.

In October, Nasser asked how involvement in house-churches could be considered an “action against national security”.

He added that he could not understand why he had been given such a long prison sentence, noting that Christians are one of Iran’s “recognised” religious minorities.

Previously, in a letter in August 2018, Nasser posed three questions:

“Would it be even possible for a committed Christian – who was born and raised in Iran and whose forefathers lived in this land for thousands of years, and who is a servant to the God who has called him to a ministry of reconciliation – to act against the national security of his own country?

“Is the fellowship of a few Christian brothers and sisters in someone’s home, singing worship songs, reading the Bible and worshiping God acting against national security?

“Isn’t it in fact a clear violation of civil and human rights, and an absolute injustice, to receive a ten-year prison sentence just for organising ‘house churches’, which are a sanctuary sanctified as a place to praise and worship God due to closure of churches in Iran?”

Nasser is one of at least 19 Iranian Christians currently incarcerated on national security-related charges, stemming from the peaceful practice of their faith.

Article18’s latest annual report, released yesterday, provides details of these prisoners and of the myriad ways in which Christians’ rights continued to be violated in Iran in 2019.

Christian convert, 65, sentenced to three years in prison

Esmaeil Maghrebinezhad, a 65-year-old convert to Christianity, has been sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting Islamic sacred beliefs”.

He was sentenced under Article 513 of the Islamic Penal Code, which provides for a punishment of between one and five years in prison.

His sentencing, on 11 January, followed a court hearing on 8 January at Branch 105 of the Civil Court in Shiraz.

He has 20 days to appeal.

Esmaeil, who was arrested at his home in January 2019, is still facing two other charges: “propaganda against the the Islamic Republic”, “membership of a group hostile to the regime”.

A fourth charge, of apostasy, for which he could have faced the death sentence, was dropped at a court hearing in November.

At that same November court hearing, the judge ruled that the case against him regarding “propaganda against the Islamic Republic” was “applicable”, because he had created a Telegram channel in which he had “promoted evangelical Christianity”.

‘Disproportionate’

The 8 January hearing focused solely on the charge of “insulting Islamic sacred beliefs in cyberspace”, for which Esmaeil was found guilty because he had reacted with a smiley-face emoji to a message that had been sent to his phone, which poked fun at the ruling Iranian clerics.

Article18’s Advocacy Director, Mansour Borji, said the sentence was a “disproportionate reaction to something so ordinary.

“The other charges that Esmaeil is facing, as well as the now-quashed charge of apostasy, related to his conversion to Christianity. This may reveal the real reason why he’s been charged for something that most ordinary Iranians do on a daily basis.”

Esmaeil’s defence team had pointed out that he was not even the originator of the joke.

Esmaeil’s family were initially hopeful of better news, after the charges of apostasy, for which he could have faced the death sentence, were dropped.

In October, Esmaeil’s bail was increased tenfold after he responded to a question from the judge about whether he had insulted Islam and was an apostate by saying that he had never insulted Islam and that different ayatollahs had different opinions over the question of apostasy.

Harassment

Esmaeil converted to Christianity nearly 40 years ago and has since been regularly harassed by Iran’s security forces, despite Iran’s own constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Iran ratified in 1975, both guaranteeing freedom of religion, including the right to hold a religion of one’s choosing and to propagate that religion.

Esmaeil’s daughter, Mahsa, told Article18 last year she believed her father was being harassed in part because she and her husband, Nathan, who now live in America, continue to pastor Christians in Iran through the Internet.

Article18’s latest annual report, released yesterday, highlighted the harassment faced by Mahsa’s father and also Nathan’s parents, who received several visits from intelligence agents in 2019, with the agenda of putting pressure on them and damaging their reputation in the community.

Background

Around ten years after Esmaeil’s conversion, an attempt was made on his life, which he only narrowly survived.

Esmaeil’s late wife, Mahvash, also converted to Christianity, in 1999, but when she died, in 2013, Esmaeil was prevented from burying her in a Christian cemetery, despite a letter from the head of the Anglican Church in Iran, Bishop Azad Marshall, stating that she was a “committed member of the Anglican Church in Iran, who had been baptised and confirmed”.

Instead, her body was taken to a Muslim cemetery, where she was buried following a Muslim ceremony in the presence of security guards, with only five family members allowed to attend.

Mahvash had also been interrogated on numerous occasions during the first years after her husband’s conversion and was fired from her job.

Exile and pressure on family members as violations of Christians’ rights continued in 2019

Iranian Christians continued to suffer multiple violations of their right to freedom of religion of belief in 2019, Article18’s latest annual report reveals.

The report, a collaboration with Open Doors International, CSW and Middle East Concern, names 25 Christians arrested in 2019 and 13 Christians who received sentences of between four months and five years in prison for alleged “actions against national security”.

Criminal cases against many other Christians went unreported, either because no-one raised awareness – arresting authorities frequently issue threats to prevent publicity – or because those involved requested confidentiality.

At least 17 Christians were imprisoned at the end of 2019, all serving sentences based on national security-related charges.

The sentences of 16 other Christians were upheld, while many others continued to wait, indefinitely, for their court summons or result of their appeal.

Six Christians were released from prison during 2019, having completed their sentences, although one, Ebrahim Firouzi, was sent straight into “internal exile” for two more years in a remote city 1,000 miles from his home – the first time an Iranian Christian has endured such a punishment.

Unprecedented

Article18’s report notes that 2019 was the year in which Iranian intelligence agents began to harass family members of Iranian Christian converts who had fled the country, even though they may not be Christians themselves.

The report highlights the case of Vahid (Nathan) Roufegarbashi and his wife Mahsa, who now live in America. The parents of both were harassed by Iranian intelligence agents in 2019, and Mahsa’s father, Esmaeil Maghrebinezhad, was arrested and charged with “propaganda against the state and insulting the sacred Iranian establishment”. He has just been sentenced to three years in prison.

2019 was also a year in which Christians were denied education. Christian convert Yousef Nadarkhani, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence in Tehran’s Evin Prison, went on a three-week hunger strike in September to protest against the denial of education to his two children, Danial, 17, and Youeil, 15.

Youeil was barred from school because he refused to take Islamic classes, while Danial was only readmitted to his school as a “guest”.

And in December fellow Christian convert Fatemeh Mohammadi, 21, was kicked out of university, without explanation, on the eve of her exams.

Just a few weeks later she was arrested, and at the time of writing her family have no knowledge of her whereabouts and remain very concerned for her safety.

Hate speech against Christians was another trend that continued in 2019, as religious and political leaders in Iran continued to speak out against Christianity and assert that Christian converts, as apostates from Islam, should be put to death.

Persian-speaking churches remained closed, while Christians continued to face challenges in obtaining Bibles and Christian literature. Bibles and related literature were consistently confiscated in searches by Iranian security agents, and it was reported that a bookseller, Mostafa Rahimi, was arrested in Bukan and sentenced to three months plus one day in prison for selling Bibles.

All the while, the battle between appearance and reality continued, as Iranian leaders repeatedly claimed that Christians, as a recognised religious minority, enjoyed full religious freedom.

Meanwhile, Christian converts, who are not recognised as Christians, were being rounded up in raids across the country, while even the “recognised” Christians of Assyrian and Armenian descent continued to be treated as second-class citizens.

This pressure on Christians – both recognised and unrecognised – continued to lead hundreds of Christians to flee the country.

The treatment of Christian prisoners also caused concern. In December, Zaman (Saheb) Fadaie, another Christian serving a 10-year sentence in Evin Prison, was suffering from a severe fever, but after initially being given medication he was denied further treatment despite the continuation of his symptoms.

2019 ended with the discovery that the grave of Rev Hossein Soodmand, the only Christian to have been officially executed for “apostasy”, had been desecrated.

His family told Article18 the discovery “wounded our hearts yet again”.

And 2020 has begun in much the same vein, with the incarceration of Ramiel Bet-Tamraz, the son of an Iranian-Assyrian pastor, the arrest of Christian convert Fatemeh Mohammadi, and the sentencing of Esmaeil Maghrebinezhad.

Recommendations

Article18’s report calls on Iran, as a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to:

immediately and unconditionally release all Christians detained on spurious charges related to their faith or religious activities.

uphold the right to freedom of religion or belief for every citizen, regardless of their ethnic or linguistic background, including converts from other religions.

return confiscated churches, properties, and material belongings confiscated from Christians and other religious minorities.

cease to use provisions such as Articles 220, 498, 499 and 500 of the Penal Code and Article 167 of the Iranian Constitution to unjustly detain minority-faith adherents.

guarantee the right to counsel to all individuals charged with national security-related crimes, as well as the right to be represented by a lawyer of their choice.

Article18 also calls on members of the international community to hold Iran accountable for upholding its obligation to ensure and facilitate freedom of religion or belief for all of its citizens by highlighting this issue during political and/or economic discussions with, or concerning, Iran.

Article18 thanks the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran for highlighting Iran’s mistreatment of Christians, especially converts, and asks for the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief to conduct his own investigation.

You can download the full report here:

Annual report – 2019 Violations Against Christians in Iran Download

Violations against Christians in Iran in 2019