Five families, 17 people in total, were arrested and sent to detention centers for repatriation. Turkish authorities resort to psychological violence to force refugees to return to their country of origin. They divide families, parents can see their families once a week for 15 minutes. Complaint videos published on social networks.
Istanbul () – Detained, deported to repatriation centers, victims of threats, violence and violations of fundamental human rights. That was the ordeal of five Iranian Christian families – 17 people in total – who fled an Islamic Republic devastated by the economic crisis and street protests over the murder of the Kurdish girl Mahsa Amini, 22, at the hands of the moral police. . They fell into the net of the Turkish authorities who, as denounced by numerous international NGOs, systematically mistreat and abuse refugees. And not only Syrians and Afghans, because now they are also merciless with the Iranians, in a climate of growing intolerance that could worsen in view of the presidential elections in May.
Christian refugees, some of whom have been locked up for three months, speak of the abysmal sanitary conditions in the detention centers, where there is a lack of food, water and medicine. According to the dissident site Article18, the men are separated from the women and children and can only meet once a week for a maximum of 15 minutes and in the presence of the guards. With the exception of one, an Assyrian Christian, all are converts from Islam that Tehran does not recognize and often persecutes for their faith and for the crime of apostasy.
Most of them live in Isparta, in southwestern Turkey, and are confined to centers in the coastal city of Antalya, a two-hour drive away. However, in the past six months there have been arrests of Iranian Christians in several cities, including Izmir and Adyn in the west, Van in the east, and Kayseri and Kirikkale in the center of the country. In some cases the refugees themselves They recorded videos to denounce the abuses who suffered and then shared them on social media, and all those who contributed to the dissemination of the videos subsequently received serious threats from the Turkish police.
One of the Christians detained in Antalya, Kamran Topa Ebrahimi, reported on a hunger strike by some refugees to protest conditions in the centers. “They have separated me from my wife Mona and my two children,” denounces the man. “They carry out – he adds – a psychological war against us” threatening with indefinite detention if we do not return to our country. The wife herself talks about the lack of water in the centers and the use of a garbage can as an improvised means for personal hygiene. “How can Turkey – he accuses – deport us because we are Christians? Are they pretending not to know what is happening? This is a psychological war against us to force us to sign the deportation forms.” “The circumstances are so difficult that we prefer to return to Iran and be killed – he adds – rather than stay here.”
Faranak Reziei, a Christian refugee of Kurdish origin, explains that she was detained by the Turkish authorities when she changed her status on her WhatsApp profile, at the end of the 40 days of mourning for the death of Mahsa Amini: “I don’t know who, but someone leaked my story to the Turkish police and said that I am working with the Turkish Kurds [del PKK]says Faranak, a single mother who was detained for 30 days with her four-year-old daughter.
Reza Pouti, pastor of the Iranian Freedom Church in Isparta, told Article18 that he had personally met one of the deported Christians along with his wife and children before he could sell the properties in Turkey. “It’s a prison,” denounces the religious leader. Not only in the fields, but also outside, people live in fear” even of “opening the door” or “going out”. “From time to time -he continues- they transfer asylum seekers to the camps by trickery. I fear such a situation myself.” Indeed, three weeks after sending the message, Reza himself, along with his wife Roshanak and his youngest son Mohammadreza, were arrested and sent to a center.
