Berlin pastor blasts immigration bureau for rejecting Christian asylum seekers

Many Afghan and Iranian converts to Christianity have seen their application for asylum rejected by Germany's Ministry for Immigration and Refugees (BAMF) following "kangaroo court"-style hearings, according to a Berlin pastor.

In a letter to supporters of his ministry, Rev. Gottfried Martens noted that the translators in the hearings were "almost exclusively" Muslims. He accused them of falsely translating the responses of the Christian converts in order to jeopardize their asylum applications.

Martens, the pastor of Lutheran Dreieinigkeits Gemeinde (Trinity Community), also criticized the methods used by officials in their investigations to ascertain whether a conversion was genuine.

"Questions are put such as the names of the two sons in the parable of the Prodigal Son, or what Martin Luther died of, or the occasion of Queen Margarethe of Denmark's recent visit to Wittenberg," said Martens.

"Many hearings are more like kangaroo courts in which our congregational members and candidates for baptism have absolutely no chance of presenting what is important to them," the pastor added, noting that some of the asylum seekers were repeatedly mocked in some of the hearings when they talk about the importance of Christ's death on the cross.

Martens contended that many German Ministry officials "are manifestly clueless about the situation of Christians in Iran and Afghanistan, and, worse yet, they are utterly clueless concerning questions relating to the Christian faith."

He also criticized the Catholic Church and the Protestant EKD Church for opposing efforts to house Christians and Muslims separately because doing so might suggest that different faiths cannot coexist peacefully.

Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, Chairman of the Council of Protestant Churches, said that he would meet with politicians in order to voice out his concerns regarding the treatment of Afghan and Iranian converts, according to World Watch Monitor.

A lawyer from the city of Nuremberg has vowed to hold workshops in different German cities for volunteers who help converts seeking asylum, to enable them to respond properly to the questioning by the authorities.

Similar criticisms have been directed at the U.K. Home Office for the questioning faced by Christian asylum seekers. It was reported in June that officials are testing the converts on their ability to recite the Ten Commandments. World Watch Monitor noted that the Home Office has since changed the evaluation method from asking general knowledge questions to inquiring about the asylum seeker's conversion experience.