An Iranian female inmate peers from behind a wall inside the infamous Evin Prison, north of Tehran, on June 13, 2006. (Uncredited, AFP, via alarabiya.net)
Three Iranian Christians currently detained inside Iran’s infamous Evin Prison managed to disseminate an open letter accusing the Iranian regime of a litany of abuse and injustices against fellow believers, in “gross violation” of Article 13 of the Iranian Republic’s 1979 Constitution, which ostensibly guarantees Iranian Christians the right to gather for worship.
Two of the prisoners were arrested in 2019 and later sentenced to five years in prison for “acting against the security of the country by forming a house church and propagating evangelical and Zionist Christianity.” The third prisoner was jailed in 2016 on similar charges of “Zionist Christianity” and later received additional sentencing for “propaganda” crimes against the Iranian regime.
Published online in Farsi, the letter details the Islamic Republic’s systematic dispossession of established, state-recognized Persian church property, as well as the arrest and torture of underground church gatherings, pointing out that “a quick glance at the cases and charges against detained Christians reveals that over the past forty years, the reasons for detention have almost always been related to their right to a place of collective worship, in the Persian language. Those who gathered and worshiped in their homes in pursuit of this were pinned with ‘security’ labels by the government."
We invite the Maranatha family to join us in continued intercession for Muslim-background Christians inside Iran, as they continue to steward the fastest-growing disciple-making movement in the world, as as they continue to suffer for the Name of Jesus. We pray that the Lord would blind the eyes of the Iranian authorities and allow restrain the enemy’s malice. More than this, we pray that those believers who endure imprisonment and torture would be strengthened, comforted, and anointed by the Spirit as light and salt to both their captors and fellow captives. After the imprisonment of two female Christians in 2009, a disciple-making movement broke out in Evin Prison that eventually reached hundreds of female inmates and even prison guards with the gospel before the women were released less than a year later.
Maranatha.
