CV NEWS FEED // The number of Christians in Iran facing unprovoked arrests and other violations of religious freedom continues to rise according to latest reports, which claim that most victims of the Islamic Republic’s persecution remain “faceless.”
According to an annual report, titled “Faceless Victims: Rights Violations Against Christians in Iran,” Christians who actively practice their faith, especially converts, are more frequently subject to persecution at the hands of the state.
The report was carried out by Article18, an advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring Iran’s compliance with national and international standards for religious freedom as defined by Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
The report claims that although the rise in the number of publicly reported arrests of Christians appears small, “amounting to 166 in 2023 compared to 134 in 2022,” the actual number is likely much larger.
“Very few of those arrested agreed to make their cases public,” the report stated, “leading to an increasing number of faceless victims.”
The report continued:
By the end of 2023, at least 17 of the Christians arrested during the summer had received prison sentences of between three months and five years or non-custodial punishments such as fines, floggings and, in one case, the obligation to dig graves.
Two Christians who were arrested in the summer of 2023, Hakop Gochumyan and his wife Elisa Shahverdian were identified as Armenians. They were among dozens of others who were arrested over a seven-week period in June and July, and forced to sign “commitments to refrain from further Christian activities or were ordered to attend Islamic re-education sessions.”
“The arbitrary nature of these arrests is illustrated by the fact that arrestees who were eventually coerced into signing commitments to refrain from Christian activities no longer faced further legal action,” the report stated.
As AsiaNews noted in its report, the February 19 release date of the report coincides with the murder of Rev Arastoo Sayyah, who was killed in his office eight days into the 1979 Islamic Revolution. That day was “the first in a long series of bloody events against Christians, particularly converts, that continues to this day,” the news outlet wrote.
