Prisoner release puts Iran's human rights abuses, persecution in spotlight

Although Iran freed Pastor Saeed Abedini and three other Americans in a recent prisoner swap, Christians and religious minorities in the Islamic republic remain under threat, surveillance, or imprisonment.

Iran ranked ninth on the World Watch List of countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. The country “continues to engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, including prolonged detention, torture, and executions based primarily or entirely upon the religion of the accused,” according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The Iranian government often raids churches and arrests and detains Christians on “trumped-up charges” relating to national security or spreading propaganda, according to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). The ACLJ estimated Iran currently had at least 92 Christians detained at the end of November. More were arrested around Christmas.

Iranian authorities will re-try four previously convicted Christians in February for “spreading Christianity,” BosNewsLife reported on Jan. 24. Secret police originally questioned and detained them in 2014.

Converts from Islam face the worst treatment, because Sharia law prohibits conversion, although the country does not have an explicit “apostasy law.” The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center says such conversions are punishable by death, but long imprisonment is more likely, BosNewsLife reported. Officials arrested Christian convert Meysam Hojati in Isfahan just before Christmas, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

“They took him away handcuffed and blindfolded,” said Mansour Borji, speaking for an alliance of Iranian churches. “The agents even took the Christmas tree. That’s really strange. Why would they care about a Christmas tree?”

Hojati’s family does not know where he is being detained. According to Borji, Christmas arrests are now common.

“By making these arrests around this time the government hopes to intimidate converts by threatening them with heavy punishments … so that they would either leave the country or stop their [religious] activities,” Borji said.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran criticized President Hassan Rouhani for failing to enact campaign promises that “all ethnicities, all religions, even religious minorities, must feel justice.”

Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., a former ambassador to Iran, also argued the U.S. needs to focus on Iran’s violations of “international [human] rights and standards.”

“Rouhani's lack of attention to civil and political reforms is clearly documented … These include restrictions on the media, criminalizing expression, limiting access to information, the arrest of civic and political dissidents, and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities Green wrote for The Hill .

Markus Rode of Open Doors in Germany told Deutsche Welle that Iran’s traditional churches are being “strangled.” He said many have been forced “underground.”

But even with Iran’s nuclear deal with the international community, Rode remained skeptical the situation will improve quickly.

“Iran is focused on economic interests. It needs weapons, which is why it signed the nuclear deal with ‘the big Satan,’ the U.S. That has nothing to do with strangling the Christian faith within the country,” Rode said.