{"id":100694,"date":"2021-12-27T07:01:21","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T12:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=100694"},"modified":"2021-12-27T07:01:21","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T12:01:21","slug":"iran-christian-prisoners-get-rare-10-day-holiday-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2021\/12\/27\/iran-christian-prisoners-get-rare-10-day-holiday-leave\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Christian Prisoners Get Rare 10-day Holiday Leave"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA \u2014 TEHRAN, IRAN \u2014 <\/span>The head of Iran’s judiciary on Sunday granted Christian prisoners 10 days’ liberty to spend the holidays with families, in a rare move toward the minority community.<\/p>\n

Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei instructed authorities across the country to issue the dispensation, according to the judiciary’s Mizan Online website.<\/p>\n

“The decision is to mark the New Year 2022 and the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ,” the website said.<\/p>\n

Mizan Online did not say how many Christian prisoners will benefit from the furlough, or when the 10-day period starts.<\/p>\n

It said, however, that inmates convicted for undermining security, organized crime, abductions, armed robberies and those sentenced to death would be exempted.<\/p>\n

According to local media, Christians represent just 1% of Iran’s total population of 83 million, the majority of whom are Shiite Muslims.<\/p>\n

Most Christians in Iran are Armenians, who celebrate Christmas on January 6, the day of the Epiphany.<\/p>\n

Around that time of year, some shops in Tehran and major cities put up decorations, including Christmas trees, while people dressed up as Santa Claus stand outside stores.<\/p>\n

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, often grants amnesty to prisoners or reduces their sentences to mark Muslim holidays.<\/p>\n

But it is rare for Iranian authorities to announce such measures concerning members of the Islamic republic’s Christian minority.<\/p>\n

This year Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visited the Tehran home of the family of a Christian Armenian “martyr” who died in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war on Christmas Eve, the official IRNA news agency reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 TEHRAN, IRAN \u2014 The head of Iran’s judiciary on Sunday granted Christian prisoners 10 days’ liberty to spend the holidays with families, in a rare move toward the minority community. Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei instructed authorities across the country to issue the dispensation, according to the judiciary’s Mizan Online website. “The decision is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100694"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100697,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100694\/revisions\/100697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}