Persecution of Christians (Middle East)

Mark Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who called for a public voice on this issue. She has been the instigator of that public voice this morning, and we are grateful to her for securing this opportunity.

Like other hon. Members, I want to talk about Iran. According to Open Doors, a charity that supports Christians living under some of the most repressive regimes in the world, Iran is ranked eighth on the world watch list, and there are 450,000 Christians there. I hope that that figure is wrong, and that what the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said is true—that the figure is growing, despite the huge challenges of living in a country in which Christians are routinely detained for no reason other than the fact that they hold different beliefs from those of the country’s leaders. Christians are not allowed to express their faith openly, whether through the written or spoken word. Indeed, it is illegal to publish the Bible in Farsi, which means that Christians are forbidden from worshipping in their own language.

A couple of weeks ago, my church celebrated Bible Sunday; in Wales, we were celebrating the translation of the Bible into Welsh. I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to have to practise religion in a foreign language. That brings home the Bible verse in which the apostle Peter calls on his readers to

“live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.”

That is particularly apposite. Christian men and women in Iran are treated as foreigners in their own land, particularly converts from Islam, who are considered more than simply foreigners or second-class citizens; they are considered traitors and are routinely sentenced to death or face trumped-up charges for converting. It is no small wonder that so many have been forced to flee Iran. One of the greatest exoduses of people across the modern world has been people fleeing Iran.

The Iranian regime has long sought viciously to repress anyone who espouses views different from its own, whether those views come from political opponents or the Baha’i community, which has been ferociously persecuted. Mr Ataollah Rezvani was shot in the back of the head, and his body was abandoned by a railway near Bandar Abbas, in August simply for being a member of the Baha’i community. Such persecution has led our Government to condemn Iran’s human rights reputation as “appalling” and to note that Iran’s treatment of religious minorities is “shocking.” We have heard that 80% of acts of religious discrimination across the world are directed at Christians. This has been a thorough debate, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Congleton for securing it.

Finally, I dedicate my brief remarks to Maryam Zargaran, who was arrested on 15 July and is still languishing in Evin prison for activities and propaganda against the Iranian regime, for creating unrest and for establishing church houses.