Sec. 201. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: According to Freedom House, none of the elections held in Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979 have been regarded as free or fair. According to the October 2015 report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iran continues to execute more individuals per capita than any other country in the world. Executions have been rising at an exponential rate since 2005 and peaked in 2015, when human rights groups reported a shocking 830 executions between January and November 2015, and as many as 1,084 executions during the entire year.
According to an October 2015 United Nations report on human rights in Iran, Some 150 Sunni Muslims are in prison on charges related to their beliefs and religion activities. More than 30 are on death row after having been convicted of . enmity against God in unfair judicial proceedings. In 2015, Iran was rated as not free in a report on the freedom of the press by Freedom House for a lack of flow of independent information and the inability of news outlets, whether through print, broadcast, or the Internet, to operate freely and without fear of repercussions.
Journalists, social media activists, writers, and human rights activists are routinely arrested and interrogated by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Ministry of Intelligence, and cyber-policing units. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists— from the 2015 prison census, Iran is one of the leading jailers of journalists, with 19 behind bars; Iran ranks as first among countries from which journalists have fled into exile between 2009 and 2015; and in 2015, Iran ranked number 7 among the top 10 most censored countries in the world.
According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, as of January 2014, there were 895 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience unjustly detained in Iran. On February 22, 2016, 80-year-old Baquer Namazi, a United States citizen and the father of imprisoned dual United States-Iran citizen Siamak Namazi, was arrested while visiting family in Tehran and taken to Evin Prison without charge. Baquer Namazi suffers from a serious heart condition that requires special medical attention.
On January 12, 2016, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps unjustly detained 10 United States sailors whose vessel had misnavigated into Iranian territorial waters but had a right to innocent passage under international law. While the United States sailors were released after 16 hours, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps released humiliating videos of the capture of the sailors at gunpoint and their detention for propagandistic purposes. On October 15, 2015, Siamak Namazi was arrested while visiting Tehran and detained in Evin Prison, where he remains held by Iranian officials without charge.
In July 2014, Jason Rezaian, a reporter from the United States working for the Washington Post, was unjustly arrested and held in Iran while his health deteriorated until his release on January 16, 2016. On January 27, 2013, Saeed Abedini, a pastor from the United States, was sentenced to an 8-year prison term in Iran based on charges relating to his Christian faith and had been unjustly incarcerated since September 26, 2012, despite serious health issues until his release on January 16, 2016.
In August 2011, Amir Hekmati, a veteran of the Armed Forces of the United States, was unjustly detained while visiting his family in Iran and remained in a prison in Iran on false espionage charges until his release on January 16, 2016. In March 2007, Robert Levinson, a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, disappeared in Iran during a business trip and Iran has refused to cooperate in the investigation into his disappearance. Mr. Levinson is the longest unjustly held United States citizens in history.
The principal leaders of the Green Revolution in Iran, Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have been under house arrest since February 2011. The United States has designated Iran as a country of particular concern for religious freedom pursuant to section 402(b)(1) of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 ( 22 U.S.C. 6442(b)(1) ) for severe violations of religious freedom in every year from 1999 through 2015. In 2015, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom found in its annual report that the Government of Iran continues to engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, including prolonged detention, torture, and executions based primarily or entirely upon the religion of the accused .
The Government of Iran continues to propagate anti-Semitism and target members of the Jewish community, and reinstated, in 2014, a Holocaust denial conference, which had been cancelled the previous year. On January 27, 2016, as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei published a video denying the Holocaust on his official website. Members of the Baha’i Faith in Iran, estimated to number between 300,000 and 350,000, are not recognized as a religious minority under the Constitution of Iran, enjoy virtually no rights under the law, and are banned from practicing their faith.
Throughout 2014 and 2015, Iranian authorities shut down numerous Baha’i-owned businesses across the country. More than 100 Baha’is are being held in prison solely because of their religious beliefs, including the Baha’i leaders Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naemi, Saeid Rezaie, Mahvash Sabet, Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Vahid Tizfahm. Christians, particularly converts and underground house church leaders, face sustained persecution, arrests, legal harassment, and long-term prison sentences.
Since 2010, more than 500 Christians have been arrested or detained. Officials of the United States have stated that the human rights record of Iran is abysmal and the Department of State has reported that there has been little meaningful improvement in human rights in Iran under the new government, including torture, political imprisonment, and harassment of religious and ethnic minorities . According to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2014 of the Department of State, Iranian law states that same-sex sexual activity is punishable by death, flogging, or other punishments.
Iranian authorities harassed, arrested, and detained individuals they suspected of being gay . While detained, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals have reported physical abuse and torture by security officers, including sexual assault and rape. The Government of Iran continues to commit egregious human rights abuses against its own citizens in violation of its international obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
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