Less than a year after failing to deport the "Iranian five" (who it had unconscionably detained without trial, in some cases for almost four years), Immigration is at it again, trying to deport another Iranian Christian back to persecution. Bahareh Moradi is a 25-year old Iranian woman who has fled Iran and converted to Christianity. She has been denied refugee status and is facing deportation within the next two weeks.
As with Ali Panah and the other Iranian converts, the RSAA has declined Bahareh's appeals for refugee status by questioning the genuineness of her conversion. But she's convinced her local church officials, who you'd think would be in a position to know. And there's no question that Christian converts face significant persecution in Iran: according to the US State Department's 2006 International Religious Freedom Country Report for Iran, Iran has the death penalty for apostasy, and converts are subject to arrest, torture, and extrajudicial murder. Last year, a Christian convert was given 34 lashes after religious police found a copy of the Bible in his car. If she is sent back, Bahareh will risk the same fate. That is not something we should allow to happen.
We all like to feel superior to the Australians on immigration and refugee issues, but Australia would not deport this woman, and neither should we. As long as religious minorities and those exercising their freedom of religion face persecution under Iran's theocracy, we should provide them with sanctuary. Anything less makes us complicit in their persecution.
(Meanwhile, in the UK, they're deporting gays back to the theocrats, all in the name of pandering to the BNP vote. So much for any suggestion that UK Labour is a progressive party which cares about human rights).