[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 41 (Thursday, March 17, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1809-S1811]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IRAN'S HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSERS
Mr. KIRK. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the
deteriorating human rights situation in Iran.
We understand that Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei--Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff will be arriving in the United States as
early as tomorrow.
Mr. Mashaei is a close friend and trusted adviser of President
Ahmadinejad. Their kinship began in 1982 when President Ahmadinejad was
governor of Khoy in West Azerbaijan and the Intelligence Ministry
appointed Mr. Mashaei to the security team in the Kurdistan region next
door. Since then, Mr. Mashaei has been a member of Ahmadinejad's inner
circle.
The world knows of President Ahmadinejad's public incitement against
Jews and Israel--most infamously with his pledge to wipe Israel off the
map. But the world may not know the virulent anti-Israel and anti-
Semitic views of his trusted adviser.
In 2008, Mr. Mashaei told Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-
Bashir:
The corrupt and criminal Zionist regime is harming not only
the Arab and Islamic world, but humanity in its entirety . .
. in order to save humanity from its different crises, there
is no other way other than the limiting of Zionist influence
on human society, because the root and origin of most of the
world's current crises are related to Zionism.
Shortly after the discredited Iranian Presidential election in June
2009, Mr.
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Mashaei was appointed Presidential Chief of Staff--after a very brief
and unsuccessful attempt to serve as the first Vice President of Iran.
Since then, the persecution and repression in Iran has steadily
increased. Thousands of peaceful protesters, dissidents and activists
have been detained.
Let there be no doubt, Mr. Mashei, like his President, is directly
responsible for human rights abuses in Iran. He should not be granted a
visa to enter the United States and he, like his President, should be
designated under U.S. law as a human rights abuser in Iran.
Mr. Mashaei's visit will come just 4 days after the United Nations
Secretary-General released an interim report on the human rights in
Iran.
The report states:
The human rights situation in Iran has been marked by an
intensified crackdown on human rights defenders, woman's
rights activists, journalists and government opponents.
Concerns about torture, arbitrary detentions and unfair
trials continue to be raised by UN human rights mechanisms.
Additionally:
Discrimination persisted against minority groups, in some
cases amounting to persecution.
A worrying trend is the increased number of cases in which
political prisoners are accused of Mohareb--or enmity against
God--offences which carry the death penalty.
At least 22 people charged with Mohareb have been executed since
January 2010.
Journalists, bloggers, human rights defenders and lawyers continue to
be arrested or subjected to travel bans. Blogs and Web sites are
restricted and now more than 10 national dailies have been shut down
for refusing to toe the official line.
Concern remains over a lack of due process rights and the failure to
respect the rights of detainees.
Particularly, ``concerns were expressed at routine practice for
incommunicado detention, use of torture and ill-treatment in detention,
use of solitary confinement and of individuals without charges.''
Finally, ``concerns were expressed in public about people sentenced
to death often do not have access to legal representation and their
families and lawyers are not even informed of the execution.''
The report continues to detail the Iranian persecution of religious
minorities, especially the Baha'i. The report notes concern for six
members of the Baha'i community arrested by officials from the
Intelligence Ministry in the months of June and July 2010--and the
seven Baha'i community leaders recently sentenced to 10 years in
prison.
Regarding Iran's persecution of its Kurdish minority, the report
notes:
Members of the Kurdish community have continued to be
executed on various national security-related charges
including Mohareb. At least nine Kurdish political prisoners,
including Jafar Kazemi, Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaei, and Ali
Saremi were executed since January 2010, and several others
remain at risk of execution.
And regarding Iran's persecution of Christians, we read:
Reports also continued to be received about Christians, in
particular converts, being subjected to arbitrary arrest and
harassment.
The Secretary-General's report follows others by our own State
Department and human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch.
While we expect the State Department to release its 2010 country
human rights reports on March 25, these are a few highlights from the
2009 report on Iran.
Security forces were implicated in custodial deaths and the
killings of election protesters and committed other acts of
politically motivated violence, including torture, beatings,
and rape.
* * *
The government administered severe officially sanctioned
punishments, including death by stoning, amputation, and
flogging.
* * *
Authorities responded to all the demonstrations with raids
on opposition activists' offices.
* * *
Some prison facilities, including Evin Prison in Tehran,
were notorious for cruel and prolonged torture of political
opponents of the government. Authorities also maintained
``unofficial'' secret prisons and detention centers outside
the national prison system where abuse reportedly occurred.
The government reportedly used white torture--prolonged
solitary confinement with extreme sensory deprivation--
especially on political prisoners, often in detention centers
outside the control of prison authorities, including Section
209 of Evin Prison.
* * *
The government threatened, harassed, and arrested
individuals who posted comments critical of the government on
the Internet; in some cases it reportedly confiscated their
passports or arrested their family members.
Amnesty's 2010 report on human rights in Iran starts with the
following summary:
An intensified clampdown on political protest preceded and,
particularly, followed the presidential election in June,
whose outcome was widely disputed, deepening the long-
standing patterns of repression. The security forces, notably
the paramilitary Basij, used excessive force against
demonstrators; dozens of people were killed or fatally
injured. The authorities suppressed freedom of expression to
an unprecedented level, blocking mobile and terrestrial phone
networks and Internet communications. Well over 5,000 people
had been detained by the end of the year. Many were tortured,
including some who were alleged to have been raped in
detention, or otherwise ill-treated. Some died from their
injuries. Dozens were then prosecuted in grossly unfair mass
`show trials.' Most were sentenced to prison terms but at
least six were sentenced to death.
* * *
The election-related violations occurred against a
background of severe repression, which persisted throughout
2009 and whose victims included members of ethnic and
religious minorities, students, human rights defenders and
advocates of political reform. Women continued to face severe
discrimination under the law and in practice, and women's
rights campaigners were harassed, arrested and imprisoned.
Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained rife
and at least 12 people died in custody. Detainees were
systematically denied access to lawyers, medical care and
their families, and many faced unfair trials.
In its 2011 World Report chapter on Iran, Human Rights Watch writes:
Iran's human rights crisis deepened as the government
sought to consolidate its power following 2009's disputed
presidential election. Public demonstrations waned after
security forces used live ammunition to suppress protesters
in late 2009, resulting in the death of at least seven
protesters and, I would add, we all remember Neda, who was
killed online. Authorities announced that security forces had
arrested more than 6,000 individuals after June 2009.
Hundreds--including lawyers, rights defenders, journalists,
civil society activists, and opposition leaders--remain in
detention without charge. Since the election crackdown last
year, well over a thousand people have fled Iran to seek
asylum in neighboring countries. Interrogators used torture
to extract confessions, on which the judiciary relied on to
sentence people to long prison terms and even death.
Restrictions on freedom of expression and association, as
well as religious and gender-based discrimination, continued
unabated.
The report continued:
Authorities systematically used torture to coerce
confessions. Student activist Abdullah Momeni wrote to
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei in September
describing the torture he suffered at the hands of jailers.
At this writing no high-level official has been prosecuted
for the torture, ill-treatment, and deaths of three detainees
held at Kahrizak detention center after June 2009.
We cannot allow these violations to go unnoticed. Nor can we continue
to turn a blind eye to the countless prisoners of conscience fighting
for basic human dignity in this brutal dictatorship.
It is time we take a stand for people like Nasrin Sotoudeh, detained
for her work as a human rights lawyer, women's rights activist, and
defender of children who face capital charges; Hossein Ronaghi-Maleki,
detained for his work as a blogger and human rights activist. He has
been refused medical treatment for kidney failure; and Fariba
Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saied Rezaie, Behrouz
Tavakkoli, Vahid Tizfahm, Mahvash Sabet--all detained for their
leadership in the Baha'i community.
As of today, the precise whereabouts of opposition leaders Mehdi
Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, and their respective wives Fatemeh
Karroubi and Zahra Rahnavard, remain unknown following their arrest and
detention in February. Meanwhile, according to international human
rights organizations, the whereabouts of hundreds of Iranians,
including journalists and political activists, arrested just before the
February 14 opposition protests remain unknown.
To each of them, I echo President Reagan's words: ``I came here to
give you strength, but it is you who have strengthened me.''
As we approach the Iranian New Year celebration of Nowruz, it is time
for
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the President to demonstrate this administration's commitment to the
Iranian people's struggle for human rights.
We know that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian
Presidential Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei and other senior
Iranian government officials are directly responsible for and complicit
in ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing the commission of
serious human rights abuses against the people of Iran on or after June
12, 2009.
Pursuant to Executive Order 13553 and the Comprehensive Iran
Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010, the President
should designate these individuals as human rights abusers and reaffirm
our core American values: freedom, democracy and human rights.
I would just end by quoting from section 105 of the Comprehensive
Iran Sanctions Accountability and Divestment Act of 2010, signed by the
President into law last year. It requires that the executive branch
produce a list of persons who are responsible or complicit in certain
rights abuses. It says:
Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of
this Act, the President shall submit to the appropriate
congressional committees a list of persons who are officials
of the Government of Iran or persons acting on behalf of that
Government (including members of paramilitary organizations
such as Ansar-e-Hezbollah and Basij-e Mostaz'afin), that the
President determines, based on credible evidence, are
responsible for or complicit in, or responsible for ordering,
controlling, or otherwise directing, the commission of
serious human rights abuses against citizens of Iran or their
family members on or after June 12, 2009, regardless of
whether such abuses occurred in Iran.
Clearly this official about to arrive in the United States meets the
standard under section 105 of CISADA, and the U.S. administration
should designate him as an abuser of human rights. He should not be
admitted entry into the United States.
We should call it the way we see it, which is, this is one of the
most dangerous human rights-abusing officials that we know of.
Comprehensive data now exists from Human Rights Watch, from Amnesty
International, even from the United Nations on what this man has
directed. He should not be given a visa, and he should be so listed
under U.S. law.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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