Iran’s so called revolutionary court imposed harsh prison sentences last week on 18 Christian converts for charges including evangelism, propaganda against the regime, and creating house churches to practice their faith, Fox News cited sources with knowledge of the Iranian regime secretive judicial system.
The sentences totaled just shy of 24 years. The lack of transparency in Iran’s tightly censored and controlled judicial system did not allow for a breakdown of individual sentences. The defendants were also barred from organizing church home meetings and given a two-year ban from leaving Iran.
The Christians, many of whom were arrested in 2013, were sentenced in accordance with Article 500 of the clerical regime Penal Code, a vague law used as a catch-all criminal statute to penalize threats to Iran’s clerical rulers. According to the law, “Anyone who engages in any type of propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran or in support of opposition groups and associations shall be sentenced to three months to one year of imprisonment.”
An Iranian convert to Christianity who fled the Islamic Republic in 2006, told Fox News that some of the Iranian Christians faced charges for their home church activities.
Two independent 2015 reports —the United State Commission on International Religious Freedom and a UN study on human rights—documented intense persecution of Muslim converts to Christianity.
“Over the past year, there were numerous incidents of Iranian authorities raiding church services, threatening church members, and arresting and imprisoning worshipers and church leaders, particularly Evangelical Christian converts,' read the commission report. 'Since 2010, authorities arbitrarily arrested and detained more than 500 Christians throughout the country.”
The number of Christians in Iran is estimated at between 200,000 and 500,000, out of an overall population of nearly 78 million. Although the Islamic Republic’s constitution guarantees on paper that Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism are protected religions, the application of Sharia Law relegates the members of the minority religions to second class citizens. The historical term for a subjugated non-Muslim religious minority member living in an Islamic society is dhimmi.
“The Iranian regime’s systematic persecution of Christians, as well as Baha’is, Sunni Muslims, dissenting Shi’a Muslims, and other religious minorities, is getting worse not better,' said U.S. Senator Mark Kirt (R-Ill.) in a statement. 'This is a direct consequence of President Obama’s decision to de-link demands for improvements in religious freedom and human rights in Iran from the nuclear negotiations.”
In response to multiple Fox News media queries about the convicted Iranian Christians, Hamid Babaei, head of the press office in the Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations in New York, declined to comment.
The sentences totaled just shy of 24 years. The lack of transparency in Iran’s tightly censored and controlled judicial system did not allow for a breakdown of individual sentences. The defendants were also barred from organizing church home meetings and given a two-year ban from leaving Iran.
The Christians, many of whom were arrested in 2013, were sentenced in accordance with Article 500 of the clerical regime Penal Code, a vague law used as a catch-all criminal statute to penalize threats to Iran’s clerical rulers. According to the law, “Anyone who engages in any type of propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran or in support of opposition groups and associations shall be sentenced to three months to one year of imprisonment.”
An Iranian convert to Christianity who fled the Islamic Republic in 2006, told Fox News that some of the Iranian Christians faced charges for their home church activities.
Two independent 2015 reports —the United State Commission on International Religious Freedom and a UN study on human rights—documented intense persecution of Muslim converts to Christianity.
“Over the past year, there were numerous incidents of Iranian authorities raiding church services, threatening church members, and arresting and imprisoning worshipers and church leaders, particularly Evangelical Christian converts,' read the commission report. 'Since 2010, authorities arbitrarily arrested and detained more than 500 Christians throughout the country.”
The number of Christians in Iran is estimated at between 200,000 and 500,000, out of an overall population of nearly 78 million. Although the Islamic Republic’s constitution guarantees on paper that Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism are protected religions, the application of Sharia Law relegates the members of the minority religions to second class citizens. The historical term for a subjugated non-Muslim religious minority member living in an Islamic society is dhimmi.
“The Iranian regime’s systematic persecution of Christians, as well as Baha’is, Sunni Muslims, dissenting Shi’a Muslims, and other religious minorities, is getting worse not better,' said U.S. Senator Mark Kirt (R-Ill.) in a statement. 'This is a direct consequence of President Obama’s decision to de-link demands for improvements in religious freedom and human rights in Iran from the nuclear negotiations.”
In response to multiple Fox News media queries about the convicted Iranian Christians, Hamid Babaei, head of the press office in the Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations in New York, declined to comment.
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