Article
Change
War & peace
2 min read

Letter from Odesa

It’s fatiguing living close to the front line. Peter Robertson reports on how aid is supporting those suffering in Ukraine.

Peter Robertson is Christian Aid's senior humanitarian journalist.

An aid worker and a local resident consult a list as they stand outside in a battle-affected town.
Aid worker Anna, helping residents near the front line.

In the biting chill of a winter’s day in Odesa, you can find one of the bravest women working on Ukraine’s frontline. Every week Anna puts on her body armour and, with her colleagues, fills up a large van with humanitarian supplies.   

They work for local charity Heritage Ukraine with funding from Christian Aid and Scottish charity partner Blythswood. Weaving between bomb craters along muddy tracks, they head for liberated villages within shelling range.    

Every trip is dangerous, but she has no hesitation in helping the villagers who are staying in their homes. Some because they want to, others because they can’t move due to poverty, old age or infirmity.   

There are near misses, such as on January 25th when a Russian drone spotted the villagers crowding into an open space waiting for their delivery. Russian artillery opened fire on their three vehicles, but the team and the villagers escaped unharmed.   

When we think about humanitarian aid, we picture it being a long way from the frontline. It’s about warehouses, soup kitchens and emergency shelters for displaced people.   

But Christian Aid and Blythswood don’t stop there. Thanks to the money raised by the DEC we are working with local community groups to ensure our winter response is close to where it’s most needed - in villages near Russian-occupied territory close to Mykolaiv and Kherson.   

Like funding Anna’s team to help those Ukrainians who can’t move to survive the harsh winter by supplying and fitting wood-burning stoves, solar lights and small generators that can also pump water from village wells.   

They co-ordinate with the local and military authorities to alert villages when they’re coming and sometimes have only 15-minutes to unload before retreating to safety. Over January and February, they have delivered vital supplies to 85 settlements.  

The scale of the trauma suffered by the villagers is shocking – many have experienced atrocious conditions with no power, heat, or water along with violence and abuse at the hands of Russian troops when they were under occupation. Their homes have been damaged if not destroyed - making them more vulnerable to sub-zero temperatures.   

There is a collective fatigue and constant stress as the villagers grapple with the separation of families, power shortages, an economy in steep decline and the threat of bombardment. Come spring, they will face another challenge as farming communities when planting their fields: many have been mined.   

Despite all the dangers, Heritage Ukraine says when they offer places to evacuate their children to Europe, they refuse:  

“We are not refugees, we are citizens of Ukraine.”   

Many have found strength in their faith but the help given by Anna and her Heritage Ukraine colleagues, while putting their own lives at risk, also shows an unbreakable human spirit and continuing generosity towards others. It’s this hope that is an example to us all in the face of adversity. 

Interview
Change
Freedom
Freedom of Belief
Middle East
5 min read

Freedom of belief: The harsh scars of lived experience in Iran

Belle Tindal meets Dabrina, an Iranian contemporary, and compares their experience of living – from cars to believing.
A somewat beaten white car parked on the side of a street.
An Iranian street scene.
Foroozan Faraji on Unsplash.

‘Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, 
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me…’ 

Those are Jesus’ words. You may well recognise them, they’re among his most famous. Probably because they’re so darn bewildering, fairly uncomfortable too. At least, they are to me.  

You see, I’ve only ever read these words. I’ve never actually lived them.  

I read them on Wednesday morning, in fact. And there was nothing inspired, intentional or special about that. Nearly all of my days begin the exact same way - tucked up in bed with a cup of tea and an allocated chunk of Bible to read through – and, on Wednesday, it just so happened to be this chunk. It was a fairly mundane affair, business as usual. Except, on this particular Wednesday, which incidentally started with these particular words, I met someone for whom these words have been lived, not merely read.   

Someone for whom these words hold memories and scars, for whom they are as precious in their truth as they are painful.  

Someone who does not have the privilege of regarding these words as bewildering or uncomfortable, as I do.  

On Wednesday, I met Dabrina.  

I was fending off deadlines and 9am lectures. Dabrina was fending off sexual threats from the guards and physical assault at the hands of the interrogators. 

Dabrina is from Iran, the ninth most dangerous country to be a Christian in the world. And on a bitterly cold January evening, she stood behind a podium in the Houses of Parliament, a place which has Bible verses etched into its very walls, and told us of her country, a place where belief in those very same verses is a punishable offense. With Christianity regarded as a conspiracy to undermine the Iranian government and Islamic law, much of the Christian way of life is illegal.  

Gathering in large groups, illegal. House churches, illegal. Evangelism (or, more accurately, anything that is perceived to be evangelism), illegal. Teaching children, illegal. Translating the Bible into their own languages, illegal.  

And not only that, but Christians are considered inherently ‘unclean’, second-class citizens in almost every way. A Christian in Iran could never be a doctor, a teacher, or a lawyer. They are also not allowed to touch food, meaning that they cannot work in retail or hospitality either. There are restrictions on what schools and universities they can attend, where they can go, and who they can socialise with. In short, they are persecuted. Christians in Iran are in danger, constantly.  

I learnt all of this from Dabrina’s speech that day; a speech that left me wondering how on earth we can have so much, and yet so little, in common.  

You see, both Dabrina and I believe that Jesus existed, and more than that, that he was and still is everything that he claimed to be - Son of God, light of the world, saviour to all – the whole thing. And we both try to live our lives accordingly. We have the same answers to the same questions, the same worldviews, the same God.  

But the parallels get more specific than that. 

Both of our parents led our local churches throughout our childhoods. But there’s a key difference; Dabrina grew up used to her father frequently disappearing with no explanation. Again and again, he would vanish, and she would be forced to anxiously await his return. I have never had to lay awake wondering if my dad was dead or alive.  

I spent my teenage years working in a local coffee shop, relishing the first hints of what an independent life might feel like. Dabrina tried to get a job as a waitress too, but it was illegal for her to touch food, so she was turned away.  

I spent my early twenties doing a theology degree and soaking up every moment of what I was told would be the most care-free years of my life. Dabrina spent her early twenties in an all-male prison.  

I had friends who would (good-naturedly) roll their eyes at my Christian faith, wondering why I would willingly choose to wake up so early on a Sunday morning. Dabrina had friends who were spying on her and reporting the details of her life to the government.  

I was fending off deadlines and 9am lectures. Dabrina was fending off sexual threats from the guards and physical assault at the hands of the interrogators.  

I remember buying my first car, Dabrina remembers hers being tampered with by the authorities – on three occasions.  

I live in the country I was born in. Dabrina has had to flee hers.  

So, you see – While I read Jesus’ words about persecution, Dabrina lives them. Dabrina, and 365 million others around the world.  

Talking to Dabrina was humbling, and astounding, and challenging - and a million other things too. The details of the trauma that she has gone through will undoubtedly continue to humble me for a long time yet, and I’m glad about that. But her answer to my final, and arguably ever-so-western, question left me utterly stunned. I asked why, after everything that she has been through and with every danger that it poses, is she still defiantly living a Jesus-shaped life. And her answer,  

‘When you encounter God, when you encounter Jesus, when you are healed, when you witness signs and wonders, when you encounter the love of God as your father, as your saviour, as your provider – how can you walk away from that? 

… When you’re in that much danger, you will cry out to God and he will meet you there.’ 

Here was a woman, for whom belief in Jesus has her caused physical harm, calling him a healer. A woman, whose faith in God has taken away her home and everything that she had built within it, calling him provider. A woman, whose Christian conviction has landed her in endless danger, calling God a saviour. A woman who told me that the Jesus I have got to know in comfort, she has seen show up in peril. A woman who told me stories of the underground church, which just so happens to be the fasting growing church in the world.  

 And in that moment, I thought about how much, and yet how little, I had in common with this incredible person before me.

And I thought about how mystifying it is that these 365 million people are hidden in plain sight, suffering under a blanket of silence, and how that surely cannot go on? And I pondered how so many people are being denied their freedom of belief, a basic human right, and yet we barely speak about it? And I felt indignant in a way that must infuriate those who have spent more than an evening engaging with this issue.  

And then I thought back to that bewildering sentence from Jesus – where he puts the words persecution and blessed together - and realised that it is a sentence that I shall likely spend my life pondering, while Dabrina knows it to be totally and concretely true.  

 

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