Among
those deported from the United States to Panama for eventual return to
their home countries are several converts to Christianity facing severe
persecution in their home countries, according to widespread media reports in a story published by The New York Times.
“Only
a miracle can save us,” one deportee said. A persecuted minority who
converted to Christianity in a banned underground church, her life — and
those of many around her — hang in the balance as they await their fate
at the hands of Panamanian authorities.
Ten Iranian Converts
At
least 10 of those being held in Panama en route to their home countries
are Iranian converts from Islam. If returned to Iran, they will face
the death penalty for apostasy — a severe crime under Sharia law.
Iranian Christians have been heavily persecuted for decades, despite a long history in the country.
While
the government allows some degree of freedom for historically
non-Muslim communities, converts from Islam to Christianity are
viciously persecuted and are treated as a national security threat.
One
of the world’s few theocracies, the Iranian system is built on extreme
devotion to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. After the
overthrow of the secular but authoritarian monarchy in 1979, Iran swung
hard toward Islamist extremism and has continued on that path ever
since, with a growing security apparatus designed to suppress religious
and political dissent in every corner of society.
Iran’s
constitution, finalized soon after the 1979 revolution, is a religious
manifesto that quotes the Quran extensively and mandates the military to
fulfill “the ideological mission of jihad in Allah’s way; that is,
extending the sovereignty of Allah’s law throughout the world.”
For
religious minorities in Iran, there is no escape from the extremist
policies of a government fueled by an extremist interpretation of Shia
Islam that leaves no room even for Sunni Islam, much less religious
minorities like Christianity.
A Lone Chinese Christian
The Iranian refugees are not the only persecuted minority being sent back to their home country.
One
man in his 50s who had recently fled China held up a Chinese-language
Bible and explained to a reporter for The New York Times that he had
come to the United States seeking freedom. International Christian
Concern (ICC) has worked to support Chinese Christians in the past,
including by providing them with secret Bibles.
The
Chinese man, identified only by his surname Wang, faces the threat of
forced return to a country that has waged a decades-long war against
Christianity and aggressively works to extradite and punish religious
refugees who have fled the country seeking religious freedom.
China
is known to have forced abortions on its citizens, sterilized women
without their consent, and murdered religious minorities to sell their
organs on the black market. Christian home churches are an attempt to
escape government scrutiny, but even they are often raided and their
members arrested on charges of working against the interests of the
state.
China
operates a concentrated campaign of persecution against its
Muslim-majority Uyghur population. Donald Trump, at the end of his first
term, declared the Chinese government’s actions against the Uyghurs a
genocide after detailed research by government and civil society
organizations around the world documenting a vast network of
concentration camps throughout the Xinjiang region.
China
has even reached beyond its borders to suppress religion and silence
opposition. Chinese spy rings have been discovered around the world,
from Kabul to New York City. The Afghan spy ring worked with the Haqqani
network, a Taliban-affiliated terrorist group, to hunt down Uyghurs and
bring them back to China. China has also stepped up its efforts to
capture escaping religious minorities through the more traditional route
of formal extradition requests.
Non-Refoulement
In
Wang’s case, though, it does not appear that China has filed an
extradition request or engaged actively to seek his return. While the
United States has long maintained programs providing paths for refugees
fleeing religious persecution, these programs appear to have been
disrupted in recent weeks, halting the admission of already-vetted
persecuted minorities and making it difficult or impossible for new
arrivals to make their case.
According
to reports, those recently deported to Panama include persons from
Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, and Uzbekistan — a list that
includes many of the countries that are most hostile to Christianity.
Refoulement,
or the forced return of refugees and asylum seekers to countries where
they are likely to face persecution, is prohibited in numerous
international treaty bodies, including the Convention against Torture
and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from
Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED). The United States is party to the
Convention against Torture but has refused to sign the ICPPED.
According
to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, adherence
to non-refoulement is “an implicit guarantee flowing from the
obligations to respect, protect and fulfill human rights.”
Justifying
its decision to deport these Christians and others, a Department of
Homeland Security spokeswoman claimed that “Not a single one of these
aliens asserted fear of returning to their home country at any point
during processing or custody.”
While
the veracity of her claim is impossible to verify, the principle of
non-refoulement applies to “all migrants at all times, irrespective of
migration status,” according to the U.N. Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights.
To read more news stories, visit the ICC Newsroom. For interviews, please email press@persecution.org.
