Amnesty International launched an Urgent Action in the summer calling for the release of four Iranians sentenced to a combined total of 45 years in prison ‘solely for practising their Christian faith’.
The report calls for urgent action from the Iranian Government to ‘quash the convictions and sentences of [the four who] were targeted solely for the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedoms of religion and belief, expression, and association, through their Christian faith.’
All four are currently free on bail, awaiting the outcome of their appeals.
Amnesty urged supporters to write to the government asking it to ‘stop harassment, arbitrary arrest and detention, and imprisonment of Christians, including converts, in Iran’. It also includes a call to ‘respect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to have or to adopt or change a religion or belief of one’s choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest one’s religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching, as guaranteed under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a state party’.
Assyrian pastor Victor Bet-Tamraz and wife Shamiram Isavi were both jailed for church-related activities.
He was found guilty of ‘conducting evangelism’ and ‘illegal house-church activities’. His wife was sentenced for ‘acting against national security and against the regime by organising small groups, attending a seminary abroad and training church leaders and pastors to act as spies’.
