FARSINET - Key Persons
2011 - December - Alireza Seyyedian - Alireza a Follower of Jesus since 2006, was arrested and sentenced to six years in December 2011. He is kept in the section 350 of Evin Prison where political prisoners are held.
HAIK HOVSEPIAN MEHR was the boldest of the Christian church leaders in defending Christian rights in Iran. He disappeared in Tehran on 19 January just days after one of his church members, Mehdi Dibaj, was freed from prison. Dibaj had been sentenced to death on charges of 'apostasy' (converting from Islam to Christianity) and Hovsepian Mehr had been instrumental in bringing Dibaj's plight to the attention of the world. Hovsepian Mehr apparently died the day after his disappearance, and his body was identified from photographs shown to his family on Sunday. Iranian police denied that he had been detained by the country's security forces, but international human-rights groups are treating the death with suspicion and have demanded an inquiry.
Hovsepian Mehr was born into a middle-class Armenian family in Tehran in 1945. He became a pastor of a church in Majidieh, a suburb of Tehran, while in his late teens. After military service and marriage he moved to Gorgan to pastor the church he had founded during his military service in the area. It was there that he was ordained. A car crash in 1969 severely injured Hovsepian Mehr and his wife, and killed their first child. Despite intermittent harassment from local Muslims who, on one occasion, planned to burn down the church, Hovsepian Mehr ran the Gorgan church for 14 years. He was there during the 1979 Islamic revolution, when his church was saved from destruction only through the intervention of a local Muslim cleric.
In 1981 Hovsepian Mehr moved to Tehran to take up the post of Superintendent of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God churches, of which there were seven in Iran. During his ministry, and despite the difficulties for Christian churches in Islamic Iran, a further five were founded. In 1986 the Protestant churches joined together in a unified Council of Protestant Churches, of which Hovsepian Mehr was elected president. The job put him in the limelight. Unlike the Armenian and Syriac Churches, which cater specifically to ethnic and religious minorities, the Assemblies of God mainly serve Farsi-speaking Christians, most of whom are of Muslim background. It was because of this that they were singled out for attack by the government and Islamic bodies. Publication of Christian literature was banned by the authorities and some churches were closed down, including five Assemblies of God churches. Another Assemblies of God pastor was executed in 1990.
Hovsepian Mehr was courageous in resisting government restrictions. Last year he was one of only two church leaders to refuse to sign a declaration stating that they would not allow Muslims or Muslim converts into their churches. He also refused to sign a statement that Christians enjoyed full rights in Iran. He compiled a detailed report on violations of religious freedom and invited Professor Reynaldo Pohl, the United Nations Special Representative to Iran, to visit the country and meet Protestant ministers and government officials to discuss these violations. He also met the Ministry of Islamic Guidance for Minorities to call for the government to respect the rights of religious minorities set out in the 1979 Constitution.
Bishop Haik disappeared from the streets of Tehran on January 19, 1994. The authorities reported his death to his family on January 30. Haik was a man of God who believed in the God-given right of a person to believe according to his conscience. He loved the people of Iran whether Christian or Muslim. For their religious freedom, he gave his life.
Bishop Haik Hovsepian-Mehr did not believe in succumbing to government pressure and chose instead to "tell the world" about the plight of Iranian Christians. He said: "If we go to jail or die for our faith, we want the whole Christian world to know what is happening to their brothers and sisters."
Job Titles:
- Professor of Missiometrics at Regent University
Job Titles:
- Immigration and Refugee Lawyer - Canada ( Contact Us )
2010 - December 26 - Farshid Fathi - was arrested on Dec. 26, 2010 in a wave of arrests of believers in Tehran and other areas. He was sentenced to six years of imprisonment on March 5, 2012. Farshid's appeal against the charges was rejected in June 2012. He is due to serve the rest of his sentence in Evin Prison.
CSW.s Chief Executive Mervyn Thomas said, .CSW is deeply concerned about the arrests of Mrs Bahmani and Mr Rezaie, which appear to be part of a renewed wave of arrests of house church members in Shiraz. We are particularly concerned for Mrs. Bahmani.s health and for Pastor Irani, whose condition continues to deteriorate. The harassment and arrest of religious minorities solely on account of their faith contravenes international covenants to which Iran is a signatory, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantees the right to freedom of religion.
Mohammad Reza Lotfi is recognized thoughout Iran, Europe and the United States as a brilliant composer and interpreter of traditional Persian music. Born in Gorgan in northern Iran, he graduated from the College of Fine Arts at Tehran University, where he later taught and served as dean. He studied tar and setar under such great masters as Shahnazi, Boroumand, Davami, and Salehi.
In the 1970s he was the director of the Center for the Preservation and Propogation of Traditional Iranian Music in Tehran and Chavoosh Conservatory. He contributed for many years to Iranian National Radio and Television and founded the group Sheyda, which was instrumental in the revival of Iranian traditional music. After an extensive concert tour of Europe, he moved to the United States in 1987. In addition to performing widely throughout this country, he established the Shayda Cultural and Artistic Center in Washington D.C. to continue his teaching and scholarly activies.
Pastor Yusefi is survived by his wife, Akhtar, who also is from a Muslim background, his 7-year-old son Stephen, and his 9-year-old daughter Ramsina. He had also raised the two sons of Rev. Mehdi Dibaj while he was in prison for 9 years, because he too had refused to deny his faith in Christ and return to Islam. Three months after Mehdi Dibaj was released from prison in June 1994, Mehdi was abducted and later found dead.
Pastor Yusefi is the fifth Christian leader in recent years to have been martyred in Iran. In addition to Mehdi Dibaj, also murdered in 1994 were Rev. Tateos Mikaelian and Rev. Haik Hovsepian-Mehr. In 1990, Rev. Hossein Soodmand was martyred. The persecution of evangelical Christians in Iran is wide-spread. Converts to Christianity are especially targeted and are arrested and tortured because of their faithfulness to Christ.
Rev. Mehdi Dibaj who was born into a Muslim family became a Christian 45 Years ago. On December 21, 1993 an Islamic court in the city of Sari condemned him to die. The conviction was based on the charge of apostasy, i.e. that Rev. Dibaj had abandoned Islam and embraced Christianity. Once the news of Rev. Dibaj's death sentence reached the rest of the world, the reaction was one of disbelief followed by prayer and action. One of the persons who worked very hard to overturn Rev. Dibaj's sentence was Bishop Haik Hovsepian-Mehr. Bishop Haik, an Armenian pastor, shared the news of Rev. Dibaj's death sentence as well as other violations of religious freedom of Christians in Iran with the world. Due to the world's reaction, Rev. Dibaj was released on January 16, 1994.
Five months after the release from prison, Rev. Mehdi Dibadj was abducted mysteriously and suffered martyrdom in June, 1994.
Mehdi Dibaj was one of those people. He had been born into a mega-rich Muslim family in Iran. As a teenager, he asked Christ to be his Savior after reading a tract. Later he attended seminary and became a missionary in Iran.
In 1979 he was put in jail for 68 days because of his beliefs. In 1984 he was arrested again. While in jail he experienced stuff like solitary confinement (for 2 solid years!), mock executions, and regular beatings.
What's more, in 1988 his wife divorced him and went back to being a Muslim after being threatened with death by stoning. Church and family members took custody of his four children.
Yet, a few years later while still in prison, Mehdi wrote these words to his son: "What a privilege to live for our Lord and to die for Him as well."
In 1994, he finally gained release from prison. For the next 6 months he traveled around Iran encouraging fellow believers. Then he was murdered.
He died for Christ. Life was not as important as the love and hope he had found for eternity.
The apostle Paul said that we should be firm in our faith and boldly proclaim Christ "without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you" (Philippians 1:28). He knew that people can harm us physically, but they can never take away our salvation.
| Testimony and life of Rev. Dibaj in his own voice: (Entire Testimony) or (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)
Iranian authorities have posed U.S. Pastor Saeed Abedini with an ultimatum to deny Christ, or spend more time in prison.
"Deny your faith in Jesus Christ and return to Islam or else you will not be released from prison. We will make sure you are kept here even after your 8 year sentence is finished," the authorities said, according to a letter by Abedini that was recently obtained by the American Center for Law and Justice.
The pastor, who was sentenced to eight years in January in what the law group says was a "sham trial" that targeted him for his Christian faith, had earlier shared of some of the abuse he faced in prison in a letter to his wife, Naghmeh Abedini, and their two children. He has stated that he will not abandon Christ in the face of such persecution. But the newly released letter reveals the specific threats the authorities have made against him in Evin Prison in Tehran.
"My response to them is Romans 8:35-39. The reality of Christian living is that difficulties or problems do arise in our lives. Persecution and difficulties are not new occurrences, but are seen often in the Christian life. It is through the suffering and tribulations that we are to enter the Kingdom of God," the U.S. citizen said in his letter.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan called her "a lifetime champion of the cause of human dignity and democracy."
Iranian writer Shirin Ebadi, a female human rights and democracy activist, will be awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her focus on human rights, in particular on the struggle for rights of women and children.
Shirin Ebadi is the first Muslim woman and the 11th woman overall to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize since its inception in 1901. The Norwegian Nobel Committee honored Ebadi for her work on behalf of democracy and human rights, which have specifically concentrated on the rights of women and children. The 56-year-old Ebadi received her law degree from the University of Tehran. For four years, she served as president of the city court of Tehran. One of Iran.s first female judges, Ebadi was forced to step down after the Islamic Revolution. She is the founder and leader of the Association for Support of Children.s Rights in Iran. She is also the author of a number of books on human rights. She is currently practicing law and teaching at the University of Tehran.