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By Ruchelle Shifman
IN A SERMON marking the International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church
November 8, Dan Gifford preached on the persecution of Christians in Iran.
Speaking at St. John’s (Shaughnessy) Anglican Church in Vancouver, Gifford focused on Marzieh
Amirizadeh and Maryam Rustampoor, two young Iranian women who are being held in
Evin jail, Tehran, for converting from Islam to Christianity. When they were in
court in August, despite pressure from the prosecutor, the two refused to deny
Jesus. Like Stephen in Acts 6-7, they have been empowered with boldness through
the Holy Spirit, Gifford said.
The pair were released from prison November 18. However, the Open Doors ministry
– which instigated an email campaign for the women months ago – issued a news release cautioning that “their release does not automatically mean they will be living in complete
freedom now.”
To encourage St. John’s members to pray for Iran, 50 copies of Iran 30 (iran30.org), a booklet about Iranian Christians’ prayer needs, have been distributed to the congregation.
Escaped from Iran
This is not the first time St. John’s has focused on Iran. Mahnaz and Ebrahim Imani (not their real names) are a
Christian couple who escaped from Iran and have now found a home at St. John’s.
An art student at Tehran’s Open University, Mahnaz was just 18 when she was first taken to the notorious
Evin prison in Tehran. “We weren’t protesting about having to wear scarves” Mahnaz says. “We wanted basic freedoms such as freedom of thought, expression and religion.”
Over the next six years, Mahnaz was imprisoned many times, for periods of
between 10 days and four months. The last time Mahnaz was arrested, she was
found to be wearing a cross hidden under her clothes, while Ebrahim was
carrying a Bible. Once the Islamic police found evidence that the Imanis were
Christians, they conducted a full search of their home and found Christian
literature and a computer containing more evidence.
Christian prisoners receive particularly harsh treatment in Iranian prisons,
Mahnaz says. “The Iranian regime considers apostasy, conversion to another faith from Islam,
to be the worst of all crimes. They say Islam permits the execution and rape of
apostates, but they also rape political prisoners, men, women, girls and boys.”
Girls due to be executed are raped systematically because Islam forbids the
execution of virgins.
The Imanis’ final prison term lasted four months, during which they had no news of each
other. They were blindfolded, then taken up and down staircases and along
corridors – a means of dehumanizing and confusing prisoners.
The Imanis were finally released under strict orders to not take part in any
further political activity. They went underground for six years before being
forced to escape over harsh mountain terrain into Turkey.
This brought little relief, as the Imanis had no passports and were imprisoned
as illegal immigrants. Conditions in the Turkish prison “were even worse than those in Iranian prisons,” says Mahnaz. She was put in a crowded cell while Ebrahim had to sleep on a cold
tiled floor with no bedding. He still suffers from kidney pains as a result of
the cold.
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The couple finally came to the attention of the United Nations High Commission
for Refugees and were given refugee status. After 11 months, they were allowed
to leave prison, but they had to wait two more years in Turkey for a host
country to accept them. They received no financial help and had to work in the
black market economy to survive. They burned cardboard containers and fruit
boxes for heat.
It was at this point that Nazanin Afshin-Jam, an Iranian Christian and former
Miss Canada, became involved with the Imanis and campaigned to get them
admitted to Canada. Afshin-Jam is co-founder of the human rights group Stop
Child Executions. As a result, the Imanis were able to obtain Canadian
immigration visas and arrived in Vancouver in April 2009. The couple connected
up with St. John’s.
“Our church community has become sensitized to the plight of those fleeing
religious persecution in Iran,” says Sandy Harmel, a member of St. John’s and a friend of the Imanis.
“In the Canadian church, we have no inside knowledge of ‘persecution unto death’ for our faith . . . We have much to learn from these persecuted ones. As our
Rector, Rev. David Short, said recently, we need these folks as part of our
community, more than they need us!”
Sandy says that having refugees in the congregation gives them a taste of what
heaven will be like because Jesus’ redeemed church “will come from every tribe and language and people and nation.” (Revelation 5:9)
St. John’s church has been “unbelievably generous” in settling the Imanis in Vancouver,” says Alan Sheen, a senior volunteer staff member in Nazanin’s office. “We do not know how the Imanis could have managed to settle in comfortably
without their help.”
Talking from her Vancouver home, Mahnaz says she loves Canada but cannot forget
those people still in prison in Iran.
“I keep thinking that someone is being interrogated in an Iranian prison right
now, someone is being raped . . . When I told people in my church about what we
had been through, they sat down and cried. Then they said that they would pray
for Iran every Sunday. The empathy of Canadian Christians was very precious for
me because, when you are in prison, you feel that no one is hearing your voice.”
December 2009
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