Format: Default

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

The UN General Assembly yesterday voted to adopt 22 August as the annual UN International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief.

The proposal, tabled by Poland, was adopted by consensus. The day will recognise the victims of “all acts of violence against persons on the basis of their religion or belief, as well as any such acts directed against their homes, businesses, properties, schools, cultural centres or places of worship, as well as all attacks on and in religious places, sites and shrines that are in violation of international law”.

The Chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Tenzin Dorjee, welcomed the move, but added: “We must not stop at condemnation. Like-minded governments must also increasingly work together to hold perpetrators accountable, whether they are state or non-state actors responsible for the abuses.” 

In Iran, religiously motivated violence tends to be state-led. Since the revolution 40 years ago, this has included the murder of several Christian leaders, the violent arrest and interrogation of many others, and the forced confiscation and closure of several churches and other Christian properties.

Just last week, Article18 reported that a church in Tabriz was forcibly closed on 9 May and the cross torn down from the church tower.

Last year, a Christian retreat centre in Karaj was finally ordered to close following years of threats and uncertainty. Article18’s Advocacy Director, Mansour Borji, said it was “not only a takeover of a property by corrupt judiciary and Intelligence officials, but yet another move in an ongoing and systematic campaign by the Iranian state to uproot Protestant Christianity”.

In the 1990s, several Christian leaders, such as Haik Hovsepian, Mehdi Dibaj, and Tateos Michaelian, were brutally murdered, and another, Hossain Soodmand, was hanged for converting to Christianity. Previously, just eight days after the revolution, an Anglican pastor, Arastoo Sayyah, was killed in his church office.

Iran is 9th on the Open Doors World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.

Last year, Iranian Christians faced an unprecedented wave of arrests, including 114 Christians in one week alone in early December, following a series of raids in ten cities across the country. Dozens more were arrested over the course of the year – with some of them subjected to violent physical assaults and one woman reporting that during her interrogation she was sexually harassed.

Those arrests have continued this year, including the arrest of nine converts from one church in Rasht, and the violent arrest of a convert in Isfahan. Another convert, arrested in Shiraz, was held in solitary confinement, interrogated for 14 hours a day, repeatedly ordered to revert to Islam, and asked why he had evangelised.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) Tony Perkins says it’s “absurd” that Christians in Iran “who practise their faith peacefully” face charges of acting against national security.

The commissioner was speaking at an International Christian Concern event, “Religious Freedom and Human Rights in Iran”, in Washington DC last week. 

“It is absurd that Christians in Iran who practise their faith peacefully are charged with acting against national security. Iran’s own constitution provides for Christians’ protected status,” Perkins said.

“In the 20 years of USCIRF’s existence, the Iranian government, in particular, stands out as one of the most consistently egregious violators of religious freedom. The Iranian regime treats centuries of religious diversity as a threat. The motivations for the regime’s behaviour are simple: cowardice and fear.” 

Other speakers at the event included Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh, Iranian converts to Christianity who were detained for 259 days because they were active in evangelism.

“The Iranian government arrested and imprisoned us because of our evangelical Christian faith,” Rostampour said. “We were threatened and indicted with execution by hanging for charges of apostasy, blasphemy, and promoting Christianity in Iran.

“We spent 259 days in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, where we learned why Iran is classified among the countries where followers of Christ face the most extreme persecution.” 

Amirizadeh added: “We are hoping that one day people in Iran will be free from persecution and suffering.

“Many house churches were attacked by Revolutionary Guards … and the majority of the house churches today have been closed.”

The US Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, told the audience: “Religious persecution is not a theoretical problem. It is a real problem affecting real people all over the world.

“[Christians] have experienced persecution, they’ve been put in jail for their ministry work. And it’s terrible. It’s something that should never be happening today.”

Some other quotes from the event:

Dr Mike Ansari, Heart4Iran: “The authorities detain [Christians] and threaten their families. A lot of church leaders have no choice but to leave Iran for the sake of their family and loved ones.” 

Dr Hormoz Shariat, Iran Alive Ministries: “The first month or two, there is torture to get all the information they can from the prisoner. If the prisoner dies under torture, they claim that he committed suicide.

“They are using a few to bring fear into the hearts of the masses.” 

Isaac Six, ICC: “There are about 800,000 Christians in Iran, the majority of [whom] are converts from a Muslim background … There are protections in place for Christians, but the majority in place do not apply to those from a Muslim background.”

Ted Cruz, US Senator: “The Iranian regime continues to hunt and oppose anyone who they think is a threat to the regime.

“Why is it that tyrants fear? Because telling stories shining light on their atrocities strengthens others being oppressed. It is our responsibility to not let them suffer in silence.”

Only 48 hours after Article18 published news of the forced closure of a church in the northwestern city of Tabriz, the Assyrian representative to the Iranian parliament wrote an open letter to the President on Saturday, calling for it to be reopened.

“Mr Rouhani, is this action befitting the dignity of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to treat the sacred places of Christians in such a way?” wrote Yonathan Betkolia.

Two days previously, Article18 had revealed that on 9 May agents from the Ministry of Intelligence and EIKO, an organisation under the direct control of the Supreme Leader, had stormed the church, changing the locks, tearing down the cross from the church tower and ordering the church warden to leave.

Betkolia’s letter urged the President “to urgently take the necessary steps to reopen the church and to repatriate and reinstall the Holy Cross, in order to console the [Christian] and other religious authorities of the country, as well as their followers”.

The letter appears to have come in direct response to the publication of this news, given that the church had already been closed for two weeks before Article18’s report.

The Assyrian representative, who has been criticised in the past for failing to speak out against abuses of religious freedom, is reliant upon the support of Assyrian Christians in northwestern provinces, including Tabriz.

Betkolia’s letter mysteriously refers to an unspecified “group” as the enactors of the church seizure, implying that this may have been an isolated and out of the ordinary incident. 

The Assyrian representative has also been implicated in the closure of other Assyrian churches in the past. Dr Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, noted in his 2018 report that “multiple sources” had reported that Betkolia was “instrumental” in the 2009 closure of the Shahrara Assyrian Protestant Church in Tehran, due to its provision of Persian-language services.

Christians from Iran’s historic Assyrian and Armenian communities are a recognised minority, who are usually able to freely practise their faith, providing they don’t open their doors to Muslim-born Iranians by holding services in Persian.

The church, belonging to The Assyrian Presbytery, was officially “confiscated” by Revolutionary Court order back in 2011, but church members had until now been able to continue using the building for services in the Assyrian language.

A member of Iran’s Expediency Council of religious leaders appointed in an advisory capacity by the Supreme Leader has implied that Muslims who convert to Christianity are stupid, poor and easily manipulated.

Seyed-Hashem Bathaee, in an interview with Shabestan news agency, blames the government for being unable to eradicate poverty, saying that as a result people are poorer and vulnerable to “religious corruption”.

He adds that anyone found guilty of apostasy deserves the death penalty – whether “man or woman, boy or girl”.

“Those who go towards Christianity – they don’t hate the Muslim prophet, but they are being influenced by the promotion of corruption in society,” he says.

Article18’s Advocacy Director, Mansour Borji, notes that Bathaee “doesn’t specify whose corruption, but we know from many recent admission by Iranian clergy and politicians that it is mostly due to the authorities themselves”.

Iran is among the most corrupt countries in the world, according to Transparency International.

The cleric adds: “We should know that today’s Christianity in many aspects is corrupt. Even the Bible is corrupted.”

His comments are the latest example of public denigration of Christianity in Iran and amount to an incitement to religious hatred, says Borji.  

“He is basically accusing anyone who has converted of being a brainless person who’s been easily manipulated and deceived to convert,” Borji explains.

“And then, as a religious authority and member of the Expediency Council, he claims that the punishment for people who convert, regardless of their gender or marital status, is death.”

The cleric’s comments come just a few weeks after Iran’s Minister of Intelligence for the first time publicly admitted to collaborating with Shia religious seminaries to combat the perceived threat of mass conversions to Christianity across the country.

Mahmoud Alavi, addressing a gathering of Shia clerics in Qom on 4 May, admitted to summoning converts to Christianity for questioning “to ask them why they were converting”, as it was “happening right before our eyes”.

“Some [of the converts] said they were looking for a religion that gives them peace,” Alavi said. “We told them that ‘Islam is the religion of brotherhood and peace’. They responded by saying that: ‘We see Muslim clerics and those who preach from the pulpit talk against each other all the time. If Islam is the religion of peace, then before anything else, there must be cordiality and peace among the clerics themselves.”

In his speech, Alavi also admitted that “these converts are ordinary people, whose jobs are selling sandwiches or similar things”.

This represented a “huge shift away from Iran’s usual rhetoric that converts are agents of the West who have undergone significant training to undermine national security,” according to Borji.

“It is also especially alarming for the Iranian regime to acknowledge that ‘ordinary Iranians’ are converting, as it is they who have formed the regime’s hardcore support for the past 40 years – support the regime is now losing in huge numbers.”