Memo to leaders in the West on rampant Christian persecution in the Islamic world: Ignoring it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
BERLIN — Iran’s stepped up its crackdown on the country struggling Christian community by closing a church in Tehran, prompting an Iranian human rights group and religious freedom experts to slam the regime.
“The ability to join a church or mosque or temple is one of the most fundamental religious freedoms,” Hadi Ghaemi, a spokesman for the group International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said last week.
“This drive to close churches is an assault on free religious practice, in violation of Iran’s international commitments, and a sign of growing religious intolerance within the Iranian government.”
According to the human rights group, Iranian Christians are in a dire situation because the regime assigned the Revolutionary Guard Corps to handle the “oversight of Christian churches in Iran, which were previously overseen by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.”
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran noted, “At the end of May 2012, Iranian authorities forced the Assembly of God Church in the western Tehran neighborhood of Jannat Abad to close its doors and discontinue services, a local source with knowledge of the Iranian Protestant community told the campaign.”
A source told quoted the Iran’s authorities as saying, “You must close the church, and if you don’t do this and we have to formally close the church, then there is no hope of you even keeping the building afterwards to sell.”