By Aidan Clay
Special to ASSIST News Service

NEW DELHI,
INDIA – (ANS)- The following urgent message from Obaid S. Christ,
an Afghan Christian living in New Delhi, arrived in my inbox two weeks ago:

“I just received a warning call
from a person who introduced himself as an [official at the Afghan embassy]. If
I don’t go to the embassy in two hours to meet him, he will arrest [me] and
present me to the embassy through the Indian police. Please pray and be in
contact, and if in case something happens, my wife will contact you. He was
claiming that I convert people from Islam to Christianity.”

The calls continued throughout the
day. “They were very angry and saying that they will hit me by knife and
kill me,” the exile, who changed his name after fleeing Afghanistan in
2007 when an Islamic court issued an arrest warrant for his conversion, told me
in reference to the third call he received late that night.

Threats against Afghan converts to
Christianity should not be taken lightly. Conversion is viewed as a serious
crime in Afghanistan and Christians are frequently targeted by both the
government and extremists. Earlier this year, a video was released of the
beheading of an Afghan man, Abdul Latif, by four Islamist militants near Herat.
The militants, who claim to be the Taliban, read a passage from the Hadiths
before executing the victim: “Mohammad (peace be upon him) says, ‘Whoever
changes his religion should be executed.’”

Neither are Afghan Christians safe
outside their homeland. In September, an Afghan convert was scalded with
boiling water and acid at a refugee processing center in Norway. “If you
do not return to Islam, we will kill you,” his attackers reportedly told
him.

For Obaid, the menacing calls were
not the first time he felt threatened since arriving in India. “Our
community is a persecuted and rejected community,” he told me last April.
“We left behind all our belongings in Afghanistan just to save our lives
by leaving Afghanistan. Here in India, we are receiving no legal and physical
protection from the UNHCR Office or Indian government. We are harassed,
attacked, insulted and persecuted by Indian Muslims and Afghan Muslim refugees
in this city.”

The persecution of Afghan Christian
refugees is sometimes ignored by the very agencies that are mandated to protect
them. Aman Ali and his family fled Afghanistan in June 2010 following a
television broadcast showing footage of Afghans being baptized. Though Aman’s
conversion was already known in his community, the broadcast stirred animosity
towards Christians which led to nationwide protests and the arrests of several
converts.

“Someone had reported my
activities to the secret police of Afghanistan and they were looking for
evidence to arrest me, but I was so careful and had to stop my work,” Aman
told ICC. “After the television showed pictures from a baptism ceremony,
the Afghan government started arresting believers from different parts of
Kabul. Most Afghan believers were scared. and left the country. So did me and
my family.”

Aman immediately applied for refugee
status with the United Nations High Commission of Refugees (UNHCR) upon arrival
in New Delhi, but was rejected and told that he failed to meet the criteria set
forth in Article 6B of the UNHCR Statute which states that in order to receive
refugee status, one must have a “well-founded fear of persecution by
reason of his race, religion, nationality or political opinion.” It was
clear to Aman that the UNHCR did not consider his conversion as a legitimate
threat to his life.

Ratimullah from Mazar-i-Sharif fled
at the same time as Aman and for the same reasons. Like Aman, Ratimullah’s
application for refugee status was also rejected along with seven other
applicants. The applicants have spent months in hiding, fearful that if caught
by the Indian police they will be deported back to Afghanistan. “I cannot
return to my country because I will be arrested and executed by the Afghan
government,” Ratimullah wrote in an appeal to the UNHCR. “A definite
death is waiting for me in my homeland.”

Afghan Christian refugees in India
are not alone. Similar requests have been denied by the UNHCR in other
countries as well, including Britain. The Guardian reported an Afghan Christian
asylum seeker, Ahmed Faizi, as saying, “If the Taliban don’t execute me
for being a Christian, my family will,” just before his deportation last
April.

“They will kill me for being
Christian,” Ali Hussani, another deportee, said. “There are only
Muslims there.”

Their predictions are ringing true
amidst renewed threats by the Taliban to purge Christians – both foreign and
national – from the country. A statement posted on an official website on
October 18 warned that “special plans” have been made to
“destroy all (Christian) centers one by one.” A translation of the
notice declares:

“Under the name of this shameful and corrupt democracy, there are all
kinds of pagans entering into our country. Thousands of Christian missionaries
have also entered our country under the name and cover of aid societies and
NGOs (organizations). They are busy with their activities (evangelizing) and
have the support of foreign and Afghan forces, claiming that they are giving
humanitarian and social help to people.

“According to our reports,
these Christian evangelists and social organizations are directly inviting
Afghans to Christianity. These infidels, enemies of Islam under the name of
corrupt democracy and their lords, need to know that the Afghan Islamic Emirate
is seriously taking your activities into consideration. The Afghan Islamic
Emirate will take practical measures and has already made special plans to
destroy all [their] centers one by one; the centers where plans are made that
destroy the holy religion of Islam and Afghan culture.”

The warning should not be ignored,
Obaid told me. “The centers’ activities are being observed, Afghan
converts are identified, and it is planned to destroy the centers. This is
serious!” Some foreigners in the country, however, have heard similar
declarations in the past and view the threat as merely Taliban propaganda.

Hundreds of Afghan Christians, like
Obaid, remain on the run from religious-based persecution that targets them at
home and abroad. “In the modern world, where we have NATO, the UN, human
rights commissions, and governments which claim they fight for democracy and
give protection for those who are persecuted, I cannot find a place in this
world where I am protected,” Obaid lamented.

About The Author –

Aidan Clay is the Middle East
Regional Manager for International Christian Concern (ICC), a Washington,
DC-based human rights organization that exists to support persecuted Christians
worldwide by providing awareness, advocacy, and assistance (www.persecution.org).
Aidan is a graduate from Biola University. Prior to joining ICC, Aidan worked
with Samaritan’s Purse in South Sudan and has traveled extensively throughout
the Middle East, Africa and Europe. He and his wife currently live in Nairobi,
Kenya.

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