Criminalising Christianity

As we were preparing this issue of Response we heard that Pastor Nadarkhani was detained in 22 July following a violent police raid on his home in Rasht.

Our sources report that police smashed down the front door and used electrical batons on the pastor and his teenage son Daniel, despite the fact that they were offering no resistance. The pastor’s wife and other children were at the house at the time. This comes after years of official harassment of Pastor Nadarkhani including multiple arrests.

Many of you have been praying fervently for years for Christians in Iran, and we’ve seen extraordinary answers to your prayers. Yet throughout the country religious minorities still face systematic government oppression in every walk of life, including education, employment and normal church activities.

Over the last few years we’ve seen a pattern of religious minorities being arrested on national security charges, and judges notorious for miscarriages of justice being appointed to preside over their cases. Excessive sentences are handed down, and the defendant’s family is intimidated and harassed by government agents, in an official campaign of harassment targeting religious minorities.

And it’s not just adults who experience this oppression: recent government actions have targeted schoolchildren too.

“The message is clear: Convert or leave”

Iran’s constitution allows Christian children to receive religious instruction designed by Christians and approved by the Ministry of Education. However, last year second generation Christian children from the Church of Iran in Rasht and Shiraz were told that they must take Quranic studies or repeat the school year. Until then, families were able to present a signed letter from their denomination that exempted their children from studying Quranic studies, but the authorities were rejecting this letter on the grounds that the denomination, which is one of several house church networks, was an ‘illegal organisation’. Sources in the Church of Iran told us, ‘The message is clear: Convert or leave.’

The new policy, which appears to be a proxy punishment for parents who have converted, violates Iran’s commitments under international law. Iran is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), both of which recognise the right of parents to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in line with their own convictions. The country has also ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which commits signatories to ensuring access to primary, secondary and tertiary education.

An entire family accused

One family belonging to the Assyrian Pentecostal Church in Iran has been the target of multiple charges. Reverend Victor Bet-Tamraz is awaiting the outcome of his appeal against a ten-year sentence for ‘conducting evangelism’”and ‘illegal house church activities’ after a number of Christians were arrested at a Christmas celebration at his home in 2014. His wife, Shamiram Issavi, received a five-year sentence in January 2018 for ‘acting against national security’, and during an appeal hearing in May the presiding judge reportedly accused her entire family of committing crimes against the regime. In July their son Ramil was sentenced to four years in prison on charges related to his father’s church activities.

“I ask the Lord to bless you for what you did for me”

Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was first arrested in 2009 after going to his children’s school to question the Muslim monopoly on children’s education in Iran, which he felt was unconstitutional. He was charged with apostasy (abandoning a religion: in this case, Islam) and sentenced to death. During court hearings he was repeatedly asked to renounce his faith in order to avoid the death penalty, but he refused.

He remained in prison under constant threat of death until his eventual acquittal and release on 8 September 2012, following a huge outpouring of international support and media attention. “My prayer is I ask the Lord to bless you for what you did for me as a small member of the body of Christ.,” he said. He was sentenced to three years for evangelism and released on time served, on bail. However, in a highly irregular move, he was returned to jail on Christmas Day and released again in January 2013.

Stories such as those of Pastor Nadarkhani, the Bet-Tamraz family, and the Christian children of Rasht and Shiraz, remind us to keep lifting Iran to God in prayer.