Iran: weekly questioning ‘became normal’ and I was threatened often

Dabrina Bet-Tamraz, a Christian Iranian- Assyrian rights activist, was born in Iran in 1985. In this interview with en’s Iain Taylor she reflects on recent events there and tells her story. She is no longer in Iran.

en: Can you describe your experiences with the Iranian Morality Police?

DB-T: The first time I encountered the Morality Police, I was only seven years old. The police stopped my mum and me on the street and told her that I should be wearing a proper hijab. Despite my mother’s argument that I was only seven, the man insisted that I looked older and would bring other men into temptation if I didn’t wear a scarf.

I was about 16 years old when I was arrested for wearing bright nail polish (mind you, it was brown). I am not a Muslim so wearing nail varnish doesn’t inhibit me from worshipping my God. This was an assault on my freedom as a woman, but it was also a way of making me behave in accordance with religious perspectives which are not my own. I tried explaining to the authorities that, as a Christian, wearing nail polish is not a problem in my faith, but my perspective was dismissed.

One morning a friend of mine came to school with cuts all over her lips. In tears, she told us that she was forced to wipe away her lipstick with cotton filled with razor blades. Another schoolmate was forced to put her feet in a bucket filled with cockroaches for almost an hour. We grew up doing everything we could to avoid getting caught by the Morality Police, even if we were properly dressed.

The authorities have responded violently to the demonstrations where Iranians are calling for ‘women, life, freedom’. They have been beating and shooting people on the streets – it is their signature. Arresting and imprisoning protesters, conducting court hearings without giving defendants access to a lawyer, and issuing harsh sentences, including, in some cases, the death sentence. The executions have already begun.

My parents were Assyrian Christian leaders who planted churches in Iran. My father has spent his life being interrogated. When I was growing up, my family lived in fear that my brother or I might be abducted from school by government forces. Like me, my parents were eventually forced to flee Iran, facing a combined 15 years in prison simply for continuing to minister to converts, as should be their right under the international covenants that Iran has signed. Instead, they were arrested and charged with “acting against national security”.

It became normal for my father to be arrested, interrogated, and terrorised. It became normal for him not to show up during a Sunday service. It became normal for the Ministry of Intelligence (MoI) officers to follow us wherever we went or to occasionally break into our home. It became normal for my family to change our door keys on a regular basis.

I was in car accidents twice, after which the MoI officers would call me and kindly remind me that the next accident would not be as harmless as the previous one.

Being called into their offices and questioned on a weekly basis started to become normal. I got used to being contacted every Sunday and taken every Tuesday for interrogations. I was threatened with torture, imprisonment, and even execution. As a woman I was also threatened with rape.

en: Are evangelical Christians particular targets of the government? If so, why? Is any particular treatment meeted out to them because of that?

DB-T: Over 130 Christians were arrested last year, more than half were detained, and many of them were officially charged with baseless accusations and sentenced to up to ten years in prison.

And while such oppression and inhuman treatment have become standard in Iran, we must never let the regime paint this as acceptable.

en: What does the future look like for the church in Iran, especially evangelical believers?

DB-T: I urge the UK Government to help us by demanding a response from the Iranian authorities to the question of where Persian-speaking Christians can worship, free from fear or arrest and imprisonment.