As Christians around the world gather to celebrate the birth of Christ, some Christians in Iran are spending the holiday in jail.
The terrorist-sponsoring, radical Muslim dictatorship ruling Iran is an egregious abuser of civil rights, which is why both 2022 and 2023 saw mass anti-regime protests in the country. The Iranian authorities arrested thousands of protesters, and tortured and raped an unknown number. But there are also religious prisoners in Iran, as the government is aggressively anti-Christian.
Persecution.org (International Christian Concern or ICC) released its 2023 report on the world’s worst persecutors of Christians, and Iran made the list for the harshness of its anti-Christian persecution and policies. Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime has no tolerance for any but those who practice their own specific bloody, vicious brand of Islam.
Asia News reported on Dec. 23:
In Iran, Christmas for some Christians is a dark cell, in one of the country’s most notorious prisons, held without charges, aware that they were locked away only for their faith with no prospect for indictment that would enable them to defend themselves, deprived of rights even more than their liberty.
This is the case of an Armenian man, one of a hundred Christians arrested last summer and held in Evin prison, north of Tehran, who, after four months, is still unaware of his fate, with the only certainty of spending the holiday away from his family.
Hakop Gochumyan, who has dual citizenship in Iran and Armenia, was reportedly arrested with his wife while lunching at a friend’s. The Ministry of Intelligence plainclothes agents seized the Christian books and other personal possessions of the couple, who have two young children.
“Since then, the couple have been held in solitary confinement in the infamous Ward 209, subjected to intense psychological torture and repeated interrogations, each lasting between two and five hours,” according to Asia News. This despite the fact that no formal charges have reportedly been made against the Christian couple, in violation of the Iran-ratified International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Hakop’s wife was reportedly released on $40,000 bail but he is still jailed.
While I cannot personally verify the details of the story, it is certainly undeniable that Iranian authorities practice gross abuses of their prisoners and citizens, and violently hate non-Muslims (and Muslims not conforming to their brand of sharia). Hakop Gochumyan‘s story is tragic, but not shocking.
Article 18 spoke to Hakop’s wife this month:
Speaking to Article18, Elissa said the intelligence agents had accused her of engaging in “illegal Christian activities”, but she said she didn’t know where the accusation stemmed from and that she and her husband had done nothing illegal, nor even engaged in any Christian activities during their visit to Iran.
Elissa’s late father, the outlet explained, was a well-known Iranian-Armenian pastor.
Right now, life in America can be difficult for everybody but the elites, especially Christians. But Christmas might be a good time to stop and reflect on how much we still have to be grateful for. In Iran, simply being Christian is enough to send a person to jail and torture. As we gather with our friends and family this Christmas, let us remember all those Christians in countries like Iran who are locked in dark cells, all because they believe that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem to be the Savior of the world.
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