Jan 19, 2023
In 2016, Congress passed the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act which mandated that USCIRF maintain a list of individuals targeted for their religion or belief. In 2019, USCIRF launched its Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) Victims List – an online database that catalogues persons detained, imprisoned, placed under house arrest, disappeared, forced to renounce their faith, and tortured for their religious belief, religious activity, and religious freedom advocacy. Since then, the FoRB Victims List has documented almost 2,000 victims with that number unfortunately continuing to grow.
USCIRF Researcher, Dylan Schexnaydre, joins Research Analyst, Zack Udin, to discuss the database’s background, recent upgrades, and data for 2022.
Read USCIRF’s Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) Factsheet
View USCIRF’s Freedom of Religion or Belief Victims List or complete the Victims List Intake Form.
Jan 26
Jan 26th 2:00pm
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Jan 26th 3:30pm
U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Hearing
Religious Freedom and Women’s Rights in Iran
Thursday, January 26, 2023
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM ET
Virtual
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) held a virtual hearing on religious freedom and its impact on women’s rights in Iran.
Since the killing of Mahsa Zhina Amini in September 2022, Iranians have participated in months of protest against mandatory religious headscarf laws and other restrictions on religious freedom and other human rights. Iran’s government has responded with violence and the mass arrests of men, women, and children. Women and girls who protested peacefully for their religious freedom have been sexually assaulted, raped, tortured, and killed while detained.
Iranian state violence is worsening in the wake of decades of systematic, egregious, and ongoing religious freedom violations. The government falsely considers Baha’is a “deviant sect” of Islam and has cracked down even more harshly on the community in recent months. Government security forces have opened fire on Sunni worshippers leaving mosque, raided Christmas celebrations, conducted mass arrests of Yarsanis, and issued severe sentences against Gonabadi Sufis. Men who murder women for violating their family honor evade sentences similar to those for other kinds of homicides on religious grounds. Iran also continues to use religion as the basis to target LGBTQI+ people, including sentencing two activists to death in 2022 for their advocacy for lesbian women in Iran.
Iran’s issuance in recent weeks of multiple death sentences on religiously grounded charges of “Enmity against God” and “Corruption on Earth” poses a grave danger to Iranian religious prisoners of conscience and raises credible concerns of mass executions in the months to come. Witnesses identified major religious freedom violations in Iran during the protests and highlighted available policy options for the Joseph R. Biden administration and Congress.
Opening Remarks
- Senator Jacky Rosen, U.S. Senate (D-Nevada)
Recorded Remarks - Nury Turkel, Chair, USCIRF
Written Remarks - Abraham Cooper, Vice Chair, USCIRF
Written Remarks - Sharon Kleinbaum, Commissioner, USCIRF
Written Remarks
Panel I
- Jennifer Gavito, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran, Iraq, and Public Diplomacy, U.S. Department of State
Panel II
- Hon. Javaid Rehman, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Panel III
- Marjan Keypour Greenblatt, Founder and Director, Alliance of Rights of All Minorities Iran
Written Testimony - Tschika McBean, Human Rights Officer, Baha’is of the United States Office of Public Affairs
Written Testimony - Kate Meyer, Litigation Staff Attorney, International Refugee Assistance Project
Written Testimony
Submitted for the Record
Statement by a Christian Iranian Refugee
This hearing is open to Members of Congress, congressional staff, the public, and the media. Members of the media should register online and can email [email protected] for any questions or to schedule an interview. The video recording of the hearing will be posted on the Commission website. For any additional questions, please contact Danielle Ashbahian at [email protected] or (202) 702-2778.
Jan 12, 2023
Governments around the world use many different strategies to control or repress religion, but a common tactic is for the state to elevate a particular religion to a special status in ways that can marginalize different faiths or belief systems. USCIRF’s recently released report, “A Global Overview of Official and Favored Religions and Global Implications for Religious Freedom,” looks at 78 countries that identify an official or favored religion and subsequently enforce that religion, or a particular interpretation of that religion, through the law. While several countries that maintain these relevant laws do not enforce them or even have a legal framework to enforce them, some countries take these laws seriously and are, in fact, some of the worst violators of freedom of religion or belief.
Kurt Werthmuller, Supervisory Policy Analyst and author of this report, joins us today to discuss the findings of this report.
Read the full report on “A Global Overview of Official and Favored Religions and Global Implications for Religious Freedom”