Interview
Creed
Freedom of Belief
Middle East
S&U interviews
10 min read

‘They constantly follow us…’

Iran’s spies infiltrated my friends and family. Dabrina reports the grim consequences.
A woman wearing a headscarf sits, looking pensive, amid a grid of concrete seats.
An Iranian women sits in a park.
Kambiz Alaei on Unsplash.

Dabrina is a Christian, she’s also Iranian, and the intersection of those two identities mean that she is in danger. After hearing her speech at an Open Doors event in Parliament, Belle Tindall caught up with her and learnt more about what it’s like to be a Christian in a country that regards it as a threat.  

So, to start things off - could you paint a picture of what it's like to be a Christian in Iran? 

Sure. Being a Christian today is not easy. Christians are the group, the minority, who are being most persecuted in the whole world - more than any other minority. In fact, we are experiencing the worst persecution of Christians in history, 365 million Christians are being persecuted, one in every seven. And in you’re right, we don't talk about it. Most people don't know about it. 

I'm from Iran, which is ninth on the World Watch List [a ranking of ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution]. I've grown up in an Islamic country, where just being a Christian - you're second-class citizen. You'll face discrimination. You have certain things that you are not allowed to do, just because you're of a different faith. 

What are some of those things? Are there certain professions that you'll know you can never get into? 

Yes, so for example, I was talking to an old colleague of mine who wants to start a bakery, but he's a Christian. And as a Christian, you're not allowed to touch food. You're not allowed to sell food that you've touched because you are an unclean person. So, you can't have a restaurant. You can't have a bakery. We were thinking, how can he start a cafe? How can he have a business? 

I can't be a lawyer. 

I can’t be a teacher.  

You can't have public jobs. 

You can't be a in a hospital, you can’t be a doctor.  

So, every public job that I applied to be back then (I was very young, very studious), they said no because I’m a Christian. It also means that I can't serve people because I’m an unclean person.  

So, I'm talking about me as a recognised Christian. I was born into a Christian family and my parents were pastors. I am Assyrian Protestant and they are recognized. For us it’s difficult, but if you convert, then everything becomes ten times harder. You’re in real danger if they figure out you are Christian. If you’re in the military and you’re found out, if they find out you're Christian at work, within your family even, you are in immediate danger. 

In your speech, you mentioned home raids - could you tell me a little bit about those? And explain to me the way that surveillance is a part of your life?  

Normally they have cars follow you, I’ve had cars following me and taking my picture. I had a boyfriend and the government would take my picture on the streets and then send it to my dad. You have no privacy. Also going to my friend's houses, those who were known Christians, I would be photographed there too. And then during the interrogations, they would put my pictures in front of me and say ‘look - you went to this house, you went to that place. Explain what were you doing?’ 

They constantly follow us. 

There were always cars in front of the church too. We actually got to know a few of them, we would sometimes take them out tea and snacks. I mean, they were there for hours, pretending they're reading a newspaper or something. They were always there, so of course, we got to know some of them. They had a camera installed in front of the church, a camera installed in front of our house, a camera installed at the end of our street. They were not hiding it. 

And so there was open surveillance. And there was also monitoring through spies. We constantly had spies in the church, in our homes, with our friends. We had to be very careful. Some of my best friends were spies. My brother's best friend was a spy and he eventually admitted it, he told my brother – ‘I'm sorry, I'm the spy. This is their plan: They're gonna raid your church… they’re gonna do this, they’re gonna do that’. 

My dad was in prison, he was arrested after they raided our home because one of our small group was a spy. My brother went to prison because his friend was the spy and he could tell the government where the church were about to meet.  

I understand you went to prison for a while. What was that for? In particular, what kind of charges did they put against you? 

There was nothing. There was no charge. What they were trying to do was to put so much pressure on me that I would sign papers, agreeing that we had conducted illegal gatherings. Admitting that we were training people against the Islamic regime. 

They were trying to get me a sign papers with the names of people in ministry, people who were ex-Muslims working in the church, saying that they've been baptized, things like that. 

I didn't do any of that, so they kept me in prison.  

Now, when I went to prison, when I was first arrested, it was 2009. Most charges against Christians came in two years later. Back then, you didn't have these official charges - You didn't have sentences like that. It was technically legal. It was made illegal in 2011. So, my church was the first Church they legally closed down. They shut it down, and then I think they didn't know what they were doing. They tried to figure out, OK, what's the next step? It took them a few years to figure it out. 

My father's charges were ‘acting against national security’ by organising small groups and illegal gatherings. My mum's charges, they were for ‘training spies and organising terrorism’. She was a teacher. And my brother was also charged with organising illegal gatherings. 

So we all have been in prison.  

Are any of your family in prison right now? 

No, my brother was the last one. He just came out. He came out during Corona because prisons were crowded, and he only had a few months left to do.  

Can you tell me a little bit, only as much as you're comfortable with, about your experience in prison? 
 
I was 23, so I was very young and naive, and it was terrifying. 

I wasn't sure what that what they were telling me was true, because they told me I would be in prison for five years, and we didn't have experience. My parents didn't know what was happening. Even lawyers didn't know – they didn’t know how to deal with it. 

Because the charges they were putting against you didn't exist yet? 

That’s right, And everything was very new. So even lawyers didn't know. 

I don't talk a lot about it. 

They would take videos of me and then they would threaten to destroy my reputation. They would do that often. Once I was released, I also had a car accident multiple times, and then the day after my car accidents, they would either call me or come visit me or come to the university and I say ‘oh, how's your car? Did you get it to the garage? We hope nothing bad happened’ and once they said, ‘hey, next time it's gonna be on the driver’s side, so just be careful.’ 

I saw people being tortured, I heard a lot of screams. Usually when they brought in new prisoners, they had blindfolds on until they would go to their rooms - the reason was just mental games, because you hear the torture. 

Where I was staying - it was one huge room with 15 men and I had one small side room for myself, so that was OK. I would hear a lot. They didn't torture me. They, they, hit me a few times but there was no torture. 

So just hours and hours of interrogations.  

How long were you in prison for? 

One year.  

You've mentioned that being a woman being particularly dangerous. Obviously, that is something that has brought Iran to people's attention recently - how dangerous it can be to be a woman there. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Does the fact that you're a woman and a Christian change your experience of being a Christian in Iran? Does it make it more dangerous, or a different kind of danger? 

It’s definitely a different kind of danger. I mean, we think that the sexual abuse is only happening to the women - and in fact, most men are being sexually abused. I think that the sexual intimidation for men is actually worse. And all men that I've heard from have fought through that experience. I think they do it just to break them down, break down all the pride that they have. 

It's horrible for everyone. 

But it's not that Christian women have it worse than men, it's just different. Interestingly, Iran has more women coming to Christian faith than men. Women are more vulnerable: A father can kill his daughter or a husband can kill his wife and claim she was a Christian and get away with it Or, you can divorce your wife if you find out that she’s a Christian, and not have to pay her. So, women are more vulnerable than men are. They can lose all of their support. Very fast, faster than men. 

I think one of the first questions that hearers of your story would ask is: what is it about your faith that makes you willing to be in such danger? 

Absolutely, I understand that. 

It’s like – why would you even believe in this religion if you know it can have such consequences, you could lose everything, why pay such a high price? 
My answer would be, when you encounter God, when you encounter Christ, when you are healed, when you witness signs and wonders, supernaturally, when you encounter the love of God as a father, as your saviour, as your provider.  

How? How can you walk away? When you live in a country that make you desperate, when you have no hope. There is no reason for life. There is no purpose of living. You're suffering. Maybe you're sick and you don't have insurance and can't pay - You turn to God. I read recently an interesting statement that says ‘I've never met an atheist on a lifeboat.’  

When you need to be rescued, you will shout out to God. 
When you're in that position you will cry out to God, and you know what? God is there to meet you, to encounter you and to love you, to help you, to provide for you, to support you. That's all. 

God is faithful and these people are all on the lifeboat and whether they believe in religion or not, they need God. 
 
When you say that God meets you, have you got stories of how? In what ways has God met you when you've needed him most desperately? 

Me personally? 

Yes. Or stories of others that you know of? 

We've had people come to the church and saying – my cancer's gone. I’m healed. I saw Jesus in prison. I saw Jesus in hospital. I saw Jesus on the streets. There's a saying among Muslims and ex Muslims when they meet each other, they ask each other - Have you seen the man in white? And so they’ll talk about the time when ‘the man in white’ came, or ‘the white man’ was there. Many, many Muslim converts have seen ‘the white man’. They’re encountering him like that all the time. 

That's incredible to hear. I'll make this my final question. I'm just really curious about what is your hope for the future of the church? What is your hope for your home, your country, your family, your church in Iran? 

I hope is that we will see freedom in my country, we will see churches free. 

But then, on the other hand, persecution has also brought church growth. 

Persecution has brought a lot of Muslims to Christ. So another hope, I would say, is that even in in the midst of persecution, in the mess of what is going on now, God will encounter more people. That Iran will turn into a Christian country. 

That millions and millions of people know him and worship him. 

Yeah, I think that's my biggest hope for now. 

 

Read Belle's further thoughts and reflections on her meeting with Dabrina.

Explainer
Culture
Freedom of Belief
Migration
7 min read

From Nigeria’s killing fields to Europe’s shores, the data behind the domino effect

While Nigeria thrives, some left-behind are desperate to escape.

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development. 

A data map shows circles of varying size across a map of Nigeria
Fatal attacks map.
ORFA.

Just as every coin has two sides, every soul contains the equal capacity for good and evil. Just like affairs of the soul, migration has the ability to strengthen or weaken societies.  

Nigeria, the Giant of Africa, has one of the world’s largest and most professionally distinguished diasporas. Over 17 million Nigerians live in other countries. The most famous members of the Nigerian diaspora, figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Anthony Joshua, John Boyega, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Wally Adeyemo, have achieved stardom thanks to talents that impact or entertain millions of people globally.  

However, these famous figures merely represent the glorious one percent of the Nigerian diaspora. Their success can easily distract observers from the grim reality of why so many Nigerians desperately seek to leave a country known for producing world changers.  

Seeking data on violence 

In October 2019, researchers at the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa started a project exploring the nature and impacts of of religious violence in Nigeria. The project spanned four years and generated many significant findings. Terror groups in Nigeria killed 31,000 civilians in 7,000 attacks in just four years, the Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) accounting for 39 per cent of these killings (a figure dwarfing the killings perpetrated by ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates),  So called “land-based community attacks,” a concept referring to instances when actors like FEM invade small Christian farming settlements to kill, rape, and abduct Christians and burn their homes, accounted for 82 per cent of civilian killings in the study, Christian death tolls far exceeding Muslim death tolls (2.7 Christians killed for every 1 Muslim killed) in the reporting period, and 6.5 times as many Christian murders compared to Muslim murders relative to average state populations.  

The methodology of the study set out to find data on all the people, regardless of their religion, negatively affected by terrorist violence. However, with every new batch of data collected, disturbing patterns emerged. Since the 2009 birth of the infamous Boko Haram insurgency, global media coverage of the terrorist violence has consistently argued Muslims rather than Christians disproportionately bear the brunt of this Islamist extremist violence. The findings of the study suggest otherwise.  

ORFA data map of fatal attacks across Nigeria.

A data map shows circles of varying size across a map of Nigeria
Source: ORFA.

Shouldn’t the government do something? 

Historically, Nigerian governments have been reticent, even reluctant, to condemn violence in the north associated with the Fulani ethnic group. Former presidents like Muhammadu Buhari, a member of the Fulani, have even gone as far as to dismiss the issue of Fulani ethnic violence as just “cattle rustling.” However, in Nigeria, mere “cattle rustling” to some is a seriously grave situation for others.  

Findings by the Observatory researchers suggest Nigerian security operatives, most of whom belong to the Fulani and Hausa ethnic groups, have a suspiciously selective way of engaging with terrorist violence in northern Nigeria, often leaving Christians distinctively vulnerable. Roman Catholics in Nigeria have even accused Nigeria's military of being a jihadist force. Churches in northern Nigeria live in a constant state of terror and acutely distressing fear.  

In Nigeria, the federal government alone, led by the president, has the final say on matters concerning security and the army. Incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has notably appointed far more Christians to senior government offices than his predecessor, Buhari. The Nigerian government is famously opaque. Despite its nominally democratic visage, family dynasties and networks continue to dominate political life and business affairs.  

Understanding the religious geography and reaction 

Religion in Nigeria is divided along geographical lines. The northern half is dominated by conservative Islam. Catholicism and Anglicanism reign supreme in the southeast. The southwest functions as a geographical melting pot of Islam (albeit a more secular variety compared to the north) and Christianity (especially Pentecostalism).  The north contains a surprisingly large number of Pentecostals. Many Pentecostal pastors and choirs in the north have been kidnapped by the mercilessly violent Islamist extremists.  

The overwhelming majority of Christians in Nigeria live in the southern half of the country. However, in a Nigeria which has suffered from one oppressive government after another for decades (most of these led by conservative Islamic military and civilian presidents), most Christians struggle to survive and lack the energy to speak up for their northern kin. Despite their weariness, the Southern Nigerian Church (the collective population of Christians living in the south) has a sacred responsibility to awaken and demand greater protections from the federal government and the military for Christians living in the north.   

Local causes, global effect 

Over the last two decades, commentators have routinely pointed to climate change as the primary factor facilitating violent encounters between Muslims and Christians. Fulani cattle herders, guided by the desire for better grazing lands for their livestock, have often encroached on land owned by Christian farmers in the north and middle regions. The findings by researchers at the Observatory suggest significantly more is going on to facilitate these violent clashes than just climate change. Ascribing the challenge of religious violence in Nigeria to just climate change provides a get-out-of-jail free card to the men of violence linked to the orchestrated killings of Christians. 

Ethno-religious violence has quietly become commonplace in northern Nigerian life. The single solution capable of curbing this violence is unprecedented, cross-party, interethnic, and interreligious security reform. Strength of security affects every person in Nigeria. From the richest to the poorest, no one is immune from a sudden kidnapping, suicide bomb, or violent act of banditry negatively changing their life forever.  

Nigeria's neighbours in Europe cannot afford to continue slumbering and must wake up. Readers in Europe feeling insulated from the violence the data records are just as susceptible to the shockwaves that a collapse of the Nigerian state as other West African neighbours. Such an event would imperil the security of citizens in countries like Italy, Spain, and Greece just as much as it would people living in Mali, Chad, and Cameroon.  

Nigeria has never been nearer to a civil war or state collapse since the Biafra War of the late 1960s. Ethno-religious violence disproportionately targeting northern Christians is one of the greatest and most overlooked factors contributing to Nigeria's dysfunctionality. In an unprecedentedly connected world, such a collapse would, in turn, trigger further collapses.  The European Union (EU) does not grasp the severity of how such a collapse would affect its own security and stability. At a time when every day brings news of small boats carrying migrants to European shores, Nigeria's collapse would trigger one of the greatest avalanches of mass migration in modern African history.  

A modern Middle Passage 

Nigeria has a population of over 235 million, the largest in Africa and sixth largest globally. If just 10 per cent of the population attempted to flee in the event of another civil war or a destabilising political event, that is 23 million Nigerians desperately fleeing into any country they reason might welcome them. Many of these millions would gamble by voyaging on the tempestuous Atlantic Ocean in small boats with the goal of beginning new lives in European countries. Some would inevitably perish in what might evolve into this century's Middle Passage. Nigeria’s collapse would destroy the EU by overwhelming its borders and social services. The average population of an EU country is just under 17 million, or the size of Nigeria's diaspora. The unprecedented connectedness of our world means catastrophic destabilisation in one country can have significant consequences for the stability of other countries globally. The EU has a geopolitical responsibility to invest in improving Nigeria's security situation. Abductions, killings, and displacements in Nigeria might trigger instability in Europe and beyond. 

However, the collapse of Nigeria would not only destabilise the EU. ISIS affiliates like ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) have a strategic interest in Nigeria's collapse, because it would open the door for them to expand their control throughout West Africa.  

A team of researchers guided by the goal of better understanding terrorist violence in Nigeria simply followed the breadcrumbs of organically emergent data to show why the broader world should take seriously violence against Christians in the Giant of Africa. Living in an unprecedentedly connected world comes with new privileges and new responsibilities. To simply indulge in these new privileges without standing strong and shouldering these new responsibilities would be foolish, selfish, and nearsighted.  

English poet John Donne once famously wrote,

No man is an island,  
Entire of itself,  of the continent,  
A part of the main.  
If a clod be washed away by the sea,  
Europe is the less. 
Every man is a piece.

The “old self” understanding of global connectedness, ruled by selfishness and ignorance, must give way to the “new self” model of prosperity and security via proactive collaboration. For every one Okonjo-Iweala, Boyega, or Antetokounmpo, millions of Nigerians suffering from the effects of a rapidly destabilising state dream of emigrating abroad. Global Christianity and global security stakeholders each have an interest in a stable Nigeria. A stable Nigeria functions as a wellspring of human capital for the benefit of the entire world.  

Donne, in the same poem, wrote,  

Each man's death diminishes me, 
For I am involved in mankind. 
Therefore, send not to know 
For whom the bell tolls, 
It tolls for thee. 

The world is involved in Nigeria and Nigeria is involved in the world. The death of Nigeria would pave the way for the death of the EU. The bell tolls for the EU community to awaken from decades of neglectfully overlooking its interests in a stable and secure Nigeria.  

 

Further resources 

  • ORFA report summary.
  • ORFA full report.
  • 'No Road Home', a data study on those living in displaced persons camps. Download the study (PDF).