FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 23, 2018

USCIRF Concerned by Denial of Lautenberg Refugees from Iran

“These refugees face the imminent danger of return to Iran, where the already dire situation for religious minorities is steadily deteriorating,” said USCIRF Chairman Daniel Mark

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is concerned by recent reports that roughly 100 members of Iranian religious minorities, who sought resettlement to the United States, have been denied asylum and could be returned to Iran where they may face discrimination and persecution.

The refugees, most of whom are reported to be Assyrian or Armenian Christians, were seeking refuge in the United States under the Lautenberg Amendment. The Lautenberg Amendment, enacted in 1990, was expanded in 2004 to allow members of Iranian religious minorities, including Christians, Zoroastrians, Baha’is, and others, to apply for refugee status under a special category in recognition of their status as persecuted minorities.

“National security must remain a priority for all U.S. government policies,” commented Chairman Daniel Mark. “Yet we also must make timely security assessments in keeping with the intent of the Lautenberg Amendment. These refugees face the imminent danger of return to Iran, where the already dire situation for religious minorities is steadily deteriorating.”

Typically, Lautenberg Amendment processing takes only a few months and has a high rate of approval for admission into the United States. This group of Iranian religious minorities has waited in Vienna for over a year, despite reportedly being vetted before being invited to Vienna, as is common practice for refugees under the Lautenberg Amendment.

“Recent public statements by the administration regarding the plight of religious minorities in the Middle East as well as President Trump’s national security strategy evince a clear commitment to the protection of religious freedom as a U.S. foreign policy priority, and few policies embody this commitment more than the Lautenberg Amendment,” continued Chairman Mark.

USCIRF repeatedly has recommended that the Lautenberg Amendment be renewed in order to offer protection to Iranian religious minorities like Christians and Baha’is who face persecution, discrimination, or harassment at the hands of the Iranian government. Since 1999, the State Department has designated Iran as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.

For more information, see USCIRF’s 2017 annual report chapter on Iran.

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The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission, the first of its kind in the world. USCIRF reviews the facts and circumstances of religious freedom violations abroad and makes policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the Congressional leadership of both political parties. To interview a Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or Isaac Six, Associate Director of Congressional Affairs ([email protected] +1-202-786-0606).

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February 13, 2018

USCIRF Mourns Death of Leading Pakistani Human Rights Defender

USCIRF Chairman Mark says Ms. Jahangir “will always be remembered as a fearless advocate for human rights”

WASHINGTON, DC -- The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) was deeply saddened to learn of the death on Sunday of Ms. Asma Jahangir, a leading human rights defender in Pakistan and a former United Nations expert on freedom of religion or belief.

“Ms. Jahangir was an outspoken critic of the Pakistani government’s misuse of blasphemy laws, particularly targeting Ahmadis and Christians,” said USCIRF Chairman Daniel Mark. “She did this despite great risk to her own personal safety. She will always be remembered as a fearless advocate for human rights both in Pakistan and around the globe.”

Ms. Jahangir died on February 10 in her native Pakistan. She was 66. She served in various capacities as a human rights expert for the United Nations, most recently as UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran since 2016.  She previously served as Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief (2004 to 2010) and Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions (1998 to 2004).

As a lawyer in Pakistan, Ms. Jahangir was the first woman admitted to the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Council and was the first female President of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan. She brought many cases to Pakistan’s courts on behalf of underrepresented communities, including religious minorities and women. She also co-founded the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the Women’s Action Forum.

She was imprisoned and placed under house arrest several times in response to her work as a human rights activist.  In 2007, USCIRF condemned the house arrest of Ms. Jahangir by the government of Pakistan during her tenure as UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.

“The death of Ms. Jahangir is a loss to the global human rights community,” continued Chairman Mark. “Her tireless advocacy on behalf of religious minorities in Pakistan and around the world will never be forgotten.”

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The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission, the first of its kind in the world. USCIRF reviews the facts and circumstances of religious freedom violations abroad and makes policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the Congressional leadership of both political parties. To interview a Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or Isaac Six, Associate Director of Congressional Affairs ([email protected] +1-202-786-0606).

This Op-Ed appeared originally in the Atlantic Council's blog, UkraineAlert, on January 31, 2018.

By Clifford D. May and Thomas J. Reese, S.J.

(Atlantic Council) - In 2017, for the first time ever, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that Russia be designated a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for the religious repression occurring there and for its exportation of such repression to Ukraine. USCIRF’s primary role is to monitor countries engaging in or tolerating "systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom,” and to recommend those countries that should be designated as CPCs. CPC designations open the door to a wide array of possible sanctions, though implementation is at the discretion of the State Department. Even without sanctions, the designation alone serves as a powerful signal to religious freedom violators of US disapproval. In its most recent announcement of CPC designations on January 4, however, the State Department did not include Russia. 

In December, we traveled to Ukraine to learn more about the conditions of religious freedom in the Russian-occupied areas of Crimea and the Donbas. What we saw and heard confirmed the reality of Russian persecution and harassment of religious minorities in Russian-occupied Luhansk and Donetsk, the so-called “People’s Republics.” In these regions, religious freedom appears to be at the whim of armed militias untethered to any legal authority.

Religious freedom in Russian-occupied Crimea is also greatly curtailed. According to the United Nations, there were roughly 2,200 religious organizations, both registered and unregistered, in Crimea before the 2014 occupation. As of September 2017, only 800 remained. In June 2017, after the Russian Supreme Court decision to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses as extremist, all twenty-two local Witnesses organizations in Crimea, representing 8,000 congregants, were officially banned as well.

Although Russian repression of Crimean Tatars is mainly motivated by political rather than religious concerns, it disrupts Crimean Tatar religious activities and institutions. Russian authorities have co-opted the spiritual life of the Muslim Crimean Tatar minority and arrested or driven into exile its community representatives.

Oppression through the judicial process also continues apace. For example, in August 2017, the main church space of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in Simferopol, the administrative capital of Crimea, was seized by bailiffs enforcing a February 2017 court decision transferring its ownership to the Crimean Ministry of Property and Land Relations. According to the United Nations, five UOC churches have been officially seized or shut down since 2014. Meanwhile, Russia’s laws on religion and extremism, strengthened in July 2016, have been used to punish believers of various churches, including Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, for the exercise of their faith.

Although the worst excesses in the Donbas have declined since 2015, Christian minorities remain the subject of raids, harassment, fines, and official slander. In August 2017, Luhansk security forces recorded themselves raiding two Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Halls, at the end of which they claimed to have found leaflets promoting Nazism and collaboration with Ukrainian intelligence. If this incident inspires déjà vu, it is because the Russian police were caught on video in 2016 planting evidence against Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A prime example of how religious activists and scholars can fall afoul of the authorities in the Russian-occupied areas is the case of Ihor Kozlovsky, sixty-three. Kozlovsky was a professor at the university in Donetsk who studied local religious movements. Active in Protestant Christian life in the area, he had earlier worked in the regional administration, dealing with religious affairs.

In January 2016, he was kidnapped by Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) security forces and accused of storing weapons in his apartment. The forces entered his apartment and searched it for several hours while terrifying his adult son, who suffers from Down Syndrome and paralysis and was alone at the time.

In May 2017, Kozlovsky was convicted of weapons possession and sentenced to nearly three years in prison. His wife and son were forced to flee to Ukrainian government-controlled territory. As far as we could tell on our trip, he was the only religious prisoner in the DPR under continuing detention and his only “crime” was civic activity on behalf of religious groups. Just after Christmas, however, he was released.

More than ever, USCIRF believes that the United States should take a stand for the religious minorities that Russia is oppressing in Russia, as well as in Crimea and the Russian-occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk. The commissioners strongly recommend that Russia be designated a Country of Particular Concern for its severe religious freedom violations, and that appropriate sanctions be imposed against the Russian Federation, including under the Magnitsky Act and the new provisions available in the Global Magnitsky Act.

(Clifford D. May and Thomas J. Reese, S.J. are commissioners on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.)

Photo credit: Screenshot Hromadske International