HOPES that Iran’s new reformist President will improve lives of Christians and other minorities are misplaced, the charity Open Doors has warned.
The election of the cardiac surgeon Masoud Pezeshkian as the new President, after the death in May of President Ebrahim Raisi (News, 24 May, Comment 31 May), has led some to suggest that life will improve for women and other groups, after he vowed to ease headscarf laws for women and ease relations with the West. President Pezeshkian was born to an Azeri father and a Kurdish mother, has studied in the United States, and is from a region in Iran in which many people from minority communities live.
Open Doors, which supports persecuted Christians, said, however, that the rule of previous moderate Presidents had not led to increased freedom of religion and belief for minority faiths. It said that there was little indication of change after President Pezeshkian’s election, because final state decisions were made by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni. The Ayatollah criticised some of President Pezeshkian’s rhetoric during the election campaign, although he has endorsed his election.
A persecution analyst with Open Doors’ World Watch Research Unit, Michael Bosch, said: “His election won’t bring any radical change, simply because the power is in unelected hands, not the elected ones. We will see a continuation of the arrests and heavy prison sentences, especially since the regime knows it doesn’t have much support and therefore has to crack down hard on all dissent. This affects Christians as well as other minority groups.”
A member of the board of Release International, the Revd Robert Karami, said: “The result highlights a superficial change in leadership. It does not matter who holds the presidential office as long as the Supreme Leader remains in power.”
Last month, eight Christians received prison sentences. One of these was Yasin Mousavi, who reportedly received the highest sentence of 15 years in prison for “membership in a group intent on disrupting national security” and “propaganda against the regime”.
Iran is ranked ninth on the Open Doors World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most persecution for their faith.
While the country’s constitution guarantees religious freedom for ethnic Christian minorities such as Armenians, Iranian converts to Christianity face high levels of pressure involving social and legal discrimination, including prison sentences.
In Iraq, the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Adiabene, Nizar Semaan, has spoken of the resilience of the Christian population, who have returned to some areas after they were threatened to extinction by the extremist organisation Islamic State (IS).
At an online conference organised by the charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), he said: “ISIS [Islamic State] tried to eradicate us but they failed. The people here are like olive trees. You can cut them, burn them, but, after ten or 20 years, they will continue to give fruit. They tried everything, but we remain, and as a Church we do everything to give a sign of hope.”
By funding reconstruction projects, ACN has helped members of the original Christian population of the Nineveh Plains, who had been forced to flee when Islamic State invaded ten years ago, return to the region.
The executive president of ACN International, Regina Lynch, said: “Over the following years, we helped first to secure the basic needs of the displaced, then housing, and finally, the rebuilding of their homes, so that those who wished to return to their towns and villages could do so, once ISIS had been pushed back.”
In towns such as Qaraqosh, nearly half of the pre-IS Christian population has now returned.
IS continues to be present in Iraq, but at a lower threat level.