[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 128 (Wednesday, July 30, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H7350-H7352]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             CONDEMNING THE PERSECUTION OF BAHA'IS IN IRAN

  Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the 
resolution (H. Res. 1008) condemning the persecution of Baha'is in 
Iran, as amended.
  The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
  The text of the resolution is as follows:

                              H. Res. 1008

       Whereas in 1982, 1984, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2000, 
     and 2006, Congress declared that it deplored the religious 
     persecution by the Government of Iran of the Baha'i community 
     and would hold the Government of Iran responsible for 
     upholding the rights of all Iranian nationals, including 
     members of the Baha'i faith;
       Whereas on March 20, 2006, the United Nations Special 
     Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Asma Jahangir, 
     revealed the existence of a confidential letter dated October 
     29, 2005, from the chairman of the command headquarters of 
     Iran's Armed Forces

[[Page H7351]]

     to the Ministry of Information, the Revolutionary Guard, and 
     the police force, stating the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah 
     Khamenei, instructed the command headquarters to identify 
     members of the Baha'i faith in Iran and monitor their 
     activities;
       Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur expressed 
     ``grave concern and apprehension'' about the implications of 
     this letter for the safety of the Baha'i community;
       Whereas in May 2006, 54 Baha'is were arrested in Shiraz and 
     held for several days without trial in the largest roundup of 
     Baha'is since the 1980s;
       Whereas in August 2006, the Iranian Ministry of the 
     Interior ordered provincial officials to ``cautiously and 
     carefully monitor and manage'' all Baha'i social activities;
       Whereas in 2006, the Central Security Office of Iran's 
     Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology ordered 81 
     Iranian universities to expel any student discovered to be a 
     Baha'i;
       Whereas in November 2006, a letter issued by Payame Noor 
     University stated that it is Iranian policy to prevent 
     Baha'is from enrolling in universities and to expel Baha'i 
     upon discovery;
       Whereas in 2007, more than two-thirds of the Baha'is 
     enrolled in universities were expelled upon identification as 
     a Baha'i;
       Whereas in February 2007, police in Tehran and surrounding 
     towns entered Baha'i homes and businesses to collect details 
     on family members;
       Whereas in April 2007, the Iranian Public Intelligence and 
     Security Force ordered 25 industries to deny business 
     licences to Baha'is;
       Whereas in 2006 and 2007, the Iranian Ministry of 
     Information pressured employers to fire Baha'i employees and 
     instructed banks to refuse to provide loans to Baha'i-owned 
     businesses;
       Whereas in July 2007, a Baha'i cemetery was destroyed by 
     earthmoving equipment in Yazd, and in September 2007, a 
     Baha'i cemetery was bulldozed outside of Najafabad, erasing 
     the memory of those Iranian citizens;
       Whereas in November 2007, the Iranian Ministry of 
     Information in Shiraz detained Baha'is Ms. Raha Sabet, 33; 
     Mr. Sasan Taqva, 32; and Ms. Haleh Roohi, 29, for educating 
     underprivileged children;
       Whereas Mr. Taqva reportedly was detained while suffering 
     from an injured leg which required medical attention;
       Whereas on January 23, 2008, the State Department released 
     a statement urging the Iranian regime to release all 
     individuals held without due process and a fair trial, 
     including the 3 young Baha'is being held in an Iranian 
     Ministry of Intelligence detention center in Shiraz;
       Whereas in March and May of 2008, Iranian intelligence 
     officials in Mashhad and Tehran arrested and imprisoned Mrs. 
     Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, 
     Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, 
     and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm, the members of the coordinating group 
     for the Baha'i community in Iran;
       Whereas those seven individuals remain imprisoned without 
     charge;
       Whereas the Government of Iran is party to the 
     International Covenants on Human Rights; and
       Whereas in December 2007, the Iranian Parliament published 
     a draft Islamic penal code, which violates Iran's commitment 
     under the International Covenants on Human Rights by 
     requiring the death penalty for ``apostates'', a term applied 
     to Baha'is and any convert from Islam: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
       (1) condemns the Government of Iran for its state-sponsored 
     persecution of Baha'is, calls on the Government of Iran to 
     immediately cease activities aimed at the repression of the 
     Iranian Baha'i community, and continues to hold the 
     Government of Iran responsible for upholding all the rights 
     of its nationals, including members of the Baha'i community;
       (2) condemns the Government of Iran's continued 
     imprisonment of individuals without due process and a fair 
     trial;
       (3) calls on the Government of Iran to immediately release 
     10 Baha'is: Ms. Raha Sabet, Mr. Sasan Taqva, Ms. Haleh Roohi, 
     Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif 
     Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, Mrs. Mahvash 
     Sabet, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm; and
       (4) calls on the Government of Iran and the Iranian 
     Parliament to reject a draft Islamic penal code, which 
     violates Iran's commitments under the International Covenants 
     on Human Rights.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Berman) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) each 
will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California.


                             General Leave

  Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include 
extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from California?
  There was no objection.

                              {time}  1215

  Mr. BERMAN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, first let me thank our colleague, Mark Kirk, for 
introducing this important resolution.
  The Baha'i community in Iran certainly is no stranger to severe 
government persecution. But as a result of arrests in March and May of 
2008, the entire national leadership of the Iranian Baha'i community is 
now being held incommunicado.
  The May arrests are the most direct action taken against Baha'i 
leadership in Iran since the early 1980s, when the Iranian Government 
abducted and executed the entire leadership of the National Spiritual 
Assembly of the Baha'is. In 1983, all formal Baha'i administrative 
institutions were outlawed.
  In the past 4 years, 166 Baha'is have been arrested in Iran. Among 
the charges brought against them is ``creating anxiety in the minds of 
the public and those of the Iranian officials.''
  Conditions for the Baha'i in Iran are deteriorating, including an 
upsurge in violent attacks, the destruction of property, the demolition 
of homes, and arson. Ministry of Intelligence officers and agents 
continue to summon, arbitrarily detain, and interrogate Baha'is about 
all aspects of their lives and about any Muslims who may participate in 
Baha'i activities.
  The resolution before the House calls on the Government of Iran to 
immediately and unconditionally release Baha'is imprisoned as a result 
of their religion, and to cease its systematic persecution of the 
Baha'i community. It sends a strong signal that Congress will continue 
to watch closely the treatment of the Baha'i people in Iran.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 1008, which condemns 
the Iranian Government's continuing persecution of members of the 
Baha'i faith, calls on Iran's Parliament to reject a proposed Islamic 
penal code, and calls on the Iranian regime to immediately release 10 
imprisoned Baha'is.
  Mr. Speaker, Tehran's notoriously cruel regime, which denies 
religious freedoms to its citizens, has made a special example of the 
Iranian Baha'is. In addition to seizing Baha'i communal property, the 
Iranian Government prohibits the community from officially assembling, 
bans them from practicing or teaching their religion, excludes them 
from the national pension system and from public universities, prevents 
them from inheriting property, and jails them on account of their faith 
or on trumped-up charges of espionage.
  Recently, Iranian Baha'is have also reported a string of arson 
attacks against their homes and vehicles. Disturbingly, this 
persecution continues to the grave. In 2007, two Baha'i cemeteries in 
Iran were destroyed or bulldozed, wiping away the memory of these 
innocent Iranians.
  Mr. Speaker, oppression of Baha'is comes from the very top of the 
Iranian regime. The U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or 
belief has revealed that in 2005, the chairman of the command 
headquarters of Iran's Armed Forces wrote a letter stating that Iran's 
so-called ``supreme leader'' had ordered the headquarters to identify 
and monitor Iranian members of the Baha'i faith.
  This was no idle request. In March and May of 2008, the Government of 
Iran arrested and imprisoned seven senior leaders of the Baha'i 
community in Iran. And today, those leaders, along with three other 
Baha'is, remain imprisoned without charge.
  Now Iran's Parliament may aggravate repression of religious freedom 
by enacting a draft Islamic penal code that would punish so-called 
``apostates,'' including all Baha'is and converts from Islam, with 
death. Iran's regime continues to demonstrate that it is ready and 
willing to execute innocent people.
  Mr. Speaker, totalitarian regimes everywhere, hiding behind the false 
excuse of state sovereignty, are eager to combat any progress in human 
rights and freedoms and to expand their hegemony and repression as far 
as others allow them to do. Therefore, the United States must continue 
to make

[[Page H7352]]

clear, in both word and deed, that the spread of religious freedom and 
human rights worldwide is not merely an ideal, but an imperative.
  I thank my distinguished colleague and friend from Illinois (Mr. 
Kirk) for introducing this resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my 
time.
  Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), who is the author of this 
resolution. He is also a member of the powerful Appropriations 
Committee.
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, I co-authored this resolution with Rob Andrews 
as a call to action for the safety of the Baha'i faithful.
  Never have followers of a more peaceful or gentle creed faced a more 
cruel and unjust tormenter. Founded in the mid-19th century in Persia, 
the Baha'i faith now extends to every country, including our own, but 
its faithful are most numerous in the place of its origin, now the 
modern day Iran.
  The European Parliament has spoken out on this issue, and so we now 
add our voice as supporters of international human rights and the home 
of many Baha'i faithful here in America.
  We have looked at a terrible situation unfolding in Iran. While 
Iranian Baha'is have suffered for many decades, their repression has 
grown significantly in the past few years. In 2006, Iran's Armed Forces 
Command headquarters ordered their Ministry of Information and the 
Revolutionary Guard and the police to identify all members of the 
Baha'i faith in Iran and to begin to monitor their activities.
  In that same year, we saw the largest round-up of Baha'is. The 
Iranian Interior Ministry ordered provincial officials to cautiously 
and carefully monitor and then begin to manage all Baha'i activities. 
The Central Security Office of Iran's Ministry of Science, Research and 
Technology ordered 81 Iranian universities to expel any student 
discovered of being a Baha'i.
  In 2007, the situation worsened. More than two-thirds of Baha'is 
enrolled in universities were expelled once they were identified. 
Police entered Baha'i homes and businesses to collect details on family 
members. Twenty-five industries were ordered to deny licenses to 
Baha'is, employers were pressured to fire Baha'i employees, and banks 
were told to refuse loans to Baha'i-owned businesses. As we heard 
before, Baha'i cemeteries were also destroyed.
  In November of 2007, three Baha'i youths, Ms. Raha Sabet, Mr. Sasan 
Taqva and Ms. Haleh Roohi, were all detained for educating 
underprivileged children. They were later sentenced to 4 years in 
prison for this offense. The following month, the Iranian Parliament 
published a draft Islamic penal code requiring the death penalty for 
all apostates, a term that strictly applies to Baha'is and anyone who 
converts away from rigid Islam.
  On May 14, 2008, seven members of the National Baha'i Coordinating 
Group were arrested. This is reminiscent of a mass disappearance and 
assumed murder of all members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the 
Baha'is in Iran back in August of 1980. The seven arrested in May are 
still being held without any charge or access to attorneys. And in just 
the last 2 weeks, a number of Baha'i families were targeted with acts 
of arson.
  This is government-sponsored persecution. And we in the Congress 
should not be silent as Iran sets up the mechanism to ethnically 
cleanse its Baha'i minority, totaling over 250,000 human beings.
  This bipartisan resolution, which I introduced with Congressman 
Andrews, condemns the Government of Iran for its persistent repression 
of Baha'is and lack of due process afforded to this minority. Our 
resolution calls upon Iran to immediately release three Baha'i youths 
and to reject the draft Islamic penal code requiring the death penalty 
for all apostates.
  Mr. Speaker, my district is also home to the headquarters of the 
North American Assembly of Baha'is. The son of the faith's founder laid 
the cornerstone on the Baha'i Temple in Wilmette, Illinois--now 
basically a de facto symbol of the North Shore and our commitment to 
diversity and tolerance. Would that this view be shared by the Iranian 
Government.
  For the life of me, I do not understand why they attack Baha'is. The 
Baha'i faith teaches that Moses and Jesus and Mohammed are all 
respected teachers who added to the faith of our times. The Baha'is 
embody acceptance and tolerance and accommodation. They have a faith 
which renders them incapable of being a threat to a government, so it 
is up to us to speak for them. It's up to us to hold up a mirror to the 
Iranian Government to show it as a vicious and cruel state.
  We have seen this movie before, but they have worn other uniforms in 
other countries. It is my hope that we can make this call to action to 
join with the European Parliament. We can help change the ending of 
this flick so that hundreds of thousands of Baha'is may one day be able 
to sleep well in future days knowing that the great democracies from 
across the seas in Europe and America watch over them.
  I urge the adoption of this Kirk-Andrews resolution and mightily 
thank the chairman of the committee, Mr. Berman, Ranking Member Ms. 
Ros-Lehtinen, and the ranking member of the subcommittee, Mr. Chabot, 
for helping to bring this before America's Parliament and calling real 
attention to help avert what could be a new crime of the century.
  Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I 
reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res, 1008, 
condemning the persecution of the Baha'is in Iran. The Baha'is are 
Iran's largest non-Muslim minority and have faced severe and often 
brutal persecution since the Iranian government banned all formal 
Baha'i activity in 1983. Incidents of violence and persecution 
targeting members of the Baha'i community have increased under the 
current regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
  On July 18, the house of the Shaaker family in Kerman was torched 
only weeks after their car went up in flames. Officials investigating 
the scene attributed the incidents to electrical problems despite a 
series of threatening phone calls received by the family in the days 
leading up to the incident. This is one of over a dozen cases in a 
string of arson targeting Baha'is over the past 15 months.
  These attacks follow the arrest and detention of the seven members of 
Iran's national Baha'i coordinating group in May. All of these 
individuals remain isolated in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran 
without access to legal representation and are prohibited from 
contacting their families. At this time, no formal charges have been 
brought against these seven individuals.
  I am pleased to join a bipartisan group of my colleagues as a 
cosponsor of this important resolution, and I hope its passage will 
send a strong message to the Iranian government that the United States 
Congress will always stand in solidarity with the persecuted people of 
the world.
  Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Berman) that the House suspend the rules 
and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 1008, as amended.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be 
postponed.

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