Sec. 2. United States policy on human rights violations by the Government of Iran
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/bill/115/hr/4744/eh/section-2·A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Congress finds the following: Iran is a member of the United Nations, voted for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, among other international human rights treaties. In violation of these and other international obligations, Iranian regime officials continue to violate the fundamental human rights of the Iranian people. The Iranian regime persecutes ethnic and religious minority groups, such as the Baha’is, Christians, Sufi, Sunni, and dissenting Shi’a Muslims (such as imprisoned Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi), through harassment, arrests, and imprisonment, during which detainees have routinely been beaten, tortured, and killed.
Following voting irregularities that resulted in the 2009 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian regime brutally suppressed peaceful political dissent from wide segments of civil society during the Green Revolution in a cynical attempt to retain its undemocratic grip on power. Since February 2011 the leaders of Iran’s Green Movement, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, his wife Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, and former Speaker of the Majles (parliament) Mehdi Karroubi, have lived under strict house arrest, ordered by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
In 1999 the Iranian regime brutally suppressed a student revolt that was one of the largest mass uprisings up until that point in the country since 1979. Over a 4-month period in 1988, the Iranian regime carried out the barbaric mass executions of thousands of political prisoners by hanging and firing squad for refusing to renounce their political affiliations and in some cases for possessing political reading material, including prisoners of conscience, teenagers, and pregnant women.
In a recently disclosed audiotape, the late Hussein Ali Montazeri, a grand ayatollah who served as former Supreme leader Khomeini’s chief deputy, said that the 1988 mass killings were the greatest crime committed during the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us . Senior governmental, military, and public security officials in Iran have continued ordering, controlling, and committing egregious human rights violations that, in many cases, represent official policies of the Iranian regime.
It is the sense of the Congress that the United States should— deny the Government of Iran the ability to continue to oppress the people of Iran and to use violence and executions to silence pro-democracy protestors; work with international partners to investigate human rights violations by senior officials of the Government of Iran, regardless of where or when such violations took place; support efforts made by the people of Iran to promote the establishment of basic freedoms that build the foundation for the emergence of a freely elected, open, non-corrupt and democratic political system; condemn Iranian human rights abuses against dissidents, including the massacre in 1988 and the suppression of political demonstrations in 1999, 2009, and 2017, and pressure the Government of Iran to provide family members detailed information that they were denied about the final resting places of any missing victims of such abuses; and help the people of Iran produce, access, and share information freely and safely via the internet and other media.
It shall be the policy of the United States to stand with the people of Iran who seek the opportunity to freely elect a government of their choosing, and increase the utilization of all available authorities to impose sanctions on officials of the Government of Iran and other individuals responsible for serious human rights abuses.