This op-ed originally appeared in The Hill, on August 5, 2020.

By USCIRF Commissioner Nadine Maenza and Congressman Doug Lamborn

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani must be released. As a religious prisoner of conscience in Iran, Pastor Nadarkhani is serving the second year of his six-year sentence, recently reduced from ten years. In the first half of this year, Iranian authorities have furloughed criminals, while those wrongly imprisoned for their religious beliefs remain locked up. In light of these circumstances, we call on the government of Iran to show mercy by releasing Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani and return him safely to his family.

As advocates for Pastor Nadarkhani, part of the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) Religious Prisoners of Conscience Project and United States Congress Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission’s Defending Freedoms Project, we are concerned that some governments are using the COVID-19 pandemic to unduly restrict religious freedom and stigmatize religious minorities. We are particularly concerned for the safety of religious prisoners of conscience who now face imprisonment and possible death for the crime of peacefully practicing their religion.  

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani is one such religious prisoner. He converted to Christianity at the age of 19 and leads a 400-member house church in Rasht, Iran. Since 2006, Iranian authorities have consistently harassed and detained Pastor Nadarkhani and his family. In 2010, the authorities sentenced him to death for apostasy before acquitting him in 2012. Pastor Nadarkhani was tried again in 2017 on false charges of “acting against national security” and promoting “Zionist Christianity,” for which he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. By July 2018, plainclothes agents raided Pastor Nadarkhani’s home to execute the sentence, beating and apprehending him and using a taser gun on one of his sons. He is now incarcerated at the notorious Evin prison near Tehran.

Iran has gone after Pastor Nadarkhani’s family as well. In September 2019, he declared a three week hunger strike after the government denied both his sons, Daniel and Yoel, permission to advance their education after they asked to opt out of Muslim religious classes. 

The Iranian government has shown no interest in respecting religious freedom despite its pluralistic society. In December 2019, its government removed the “other” option from the religion category on national ID cards, forcing Baha’is to register as Muslim or be denied cards altogether. Soon after in 2020, several Baha’is and Christians were imprisoned, including a city councilman jailed because he advocated for religious freedom.

Religious prisoners of conscience like Pastor Nadarkhani are a major liability to Iran’s government so long as they remain incarcerated. Were Pastor Nadarkhani to be detained further, it would increasingly jeopardize Iran’s already unstable position in the international community. Pastor Nadarkhani is an unequivocally peaceful religious leader who poses no threat to society. He should have never been detained in the first place.

The U.S. Department of State should continue to call for his release, and more Members of Congress should advocate on his behalf. The new International Religious Freedom Alliance is also an important tool for religious freedom. The United States should work with alliance members—particularly those with interests in improving religious freedom conditions in Iran—to advocate together for Pastor Nadarkhani’s release.

Until then, we pray for the health of Pastor Nadarkhani and call for his immediate release.

This op-ed originally appeared in the Washington Examiner, on August 3, 2020.

By USCIRF Commissioner Nadine Maenza and Mural Ismael.

Tomorrow, August 3rd, the Yazidis will commemorate the sixth anniversary of the genocide committed by the so-called Islamic State, ISIS, that took place in Sinjar, located in northern Iraq. Yazidis will not have the chance to consider how to protect themselves from a future one. Instead, they will be haunted and reminded by the genocide they still endure. However, Yazidis should not be the only ones commemorating their tragedy, we all must.

Despite how the situation may appear, the genocide is not over; more than 2700 Yazidi women, girls, and children remain missing. Fewer than a third of the 400,000 Yazidis have returned, and their homeland of Sinjar is in shambles. They do not feel safe.

It was in the early hours of Sunday, August 3, 2014 when ISIS started its systematic campaign to kill thousands of Yazidi men and nearly one hundred women. Except for several mass graves in Kocho exhumed by Iraqi authorities and UNITAD, most of their remains lay unexhumed on the bare land where the sun of the summers and winds and rain of winters have been washing them away.

While the murder of men and elderly women that did not have “sexual value” to the group was horrific, it was the mass enslavement of more than 6800 Yazidi women, girls, and children that broke the community and brought it down to its knees. What happened to Yazidis is a tragedy for humanity as a whole and will not be healed within six centuries, let alone six years

In Sinjar, Yazidi women and girls have long sought a life with dignity, to marry and have a family, but they were also recently finding how to play a larger role in their conservative community. From almost no girls in school in the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of Yazidis girls began to receive equal education in the 1990s. Additionally, after decades of negligence and injustice toward this religious minority, it was only in 2003 when the community started a path to economic prosperity. For the first time, thousands of homes were turned from clay to concrete, small factories were built, and towns and villages received electricity and better services. 

This all changed when ISIS’ massacre devastated the Yazidi community as the world watched in 2014. After initial denial, international attention increased thanks to the advocacy and resilience of Yazidi advocates, survivors, and supporters around the world. This genocide was recognized by more than ten countries, including United States, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Armenia, and others. The United Nations Commission on Syria also concluded a genocide was committed, and finally, the UN created an investigative team, UNITAD, which Yazidis hope it will give a legal recognition for the genocide. While a platform for investigation was created with UNITAD, there has been no judicial process, domestically in Iraq or Syria, or internationally, that leads to accountability against perpetrators. More than 20,000 ISIS members remain in prison in Syria alone without a path to accountability. From tens of thousands of Yazidi victims and their families, only a handful have had the opportunity to participate in trial proceedings. So far, only Germany has begun a process to prosecute ISIS capital crimes.

Justice for the Yazidi community does not stop at accountability. The community deserves the right to protection of their homeland as well. It is troubling that the Yazidi areas remain disputed per Article 140 of the Constitution between the governments of Baghdad and Erbil, which the subsequent Iraqi governments have and International community failed to address. It is without a local administration, under threat of Turkish air strikes, and is continually torn apart by the interests of various militia groups. Houses and infrastructure have not been rebuilt. Justice should also have meant a return of two thirds of Yazidi IDPs who continue to endure a challenging life in more than 15 camps in the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. But Yazidis do not only deserve to exist, they deserve to thrive. The progress once made in local education, infrastructure, and the economy illustrates what the Yazidi community in Sinjar is capable of achieving. Before this, however, there must be stability, which means an resolution to local disputes, end of era of militias, immediate ceasing of Turkish airstrikes, and an economic and humanitarian plan.

Yazidis are not ungrateful people, their leaders have acknowledged the support of international community, the Kurdish People who embraced them, the NGOs, and international humanitarian agencies who contributed generously over the past six years and made up the backbone of genocide response. 

The Iraqi government, with the support of the United States and the international community, must address issues that still remain in both Sinjar as well as the entire Nineveh Plains, home to Christians, Yazidis, and other religious communities of Iraq. Stabilization and economic prosperity should be a priority if we want to help Iraq build a just society where everyone is treated equally, especially the weakest. The international community should support the Yazidis and other minorities to build resilience in their homeland so that their rich cultures can be preserved. Only then will the Yazidi community be able to rebuild a homeland with opportunities for economic prosperity and a life with dignity.

This op-ed originally appears in The National Interest, on August 2, 2020.

By USCIRF Commissioners James W. Carr and Frederick A. Davie

For years, Deacon Jang Moon Seok ministered to North Koreans living in Changbai, China until he was kidnapped by North Korean agents in November 2014. The agents snuck across the border, abducted the deacon, and formally arrested him once he was on North Korean soil. Deacon Jang was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. He was tortured for information about Han Chung-Ryeol, a high-profile pastor also working in Changbai whom North Korean agents assassinated in 2016.

Deacon Jang’s case is just one example of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s attempts to suffocate religious freedom. The Kim dynasty’s cult of personality leaves no room for any independent religion or belief. After decades of persecution, percentage of the North Korean population affiliating with a religion—including Christianity, Buddhism, and Cheondoism—plummeted from approximately 24 percent in 1950 to a mere 0.16 percent in 2002.

The only houses of worship in North Korea are state-sponsored venues tightly controlled by the regime and available exclusively to citizens deemed loyal. Anyone else caught practicing their religious beliefs or possessing religious texts risks arrest, torture, or even execution. Christians are especially vulnerable because the ruling Worker’s Party views them as foreign agents and the practice of Christianity is treated as a political crime. North Korean propaganda has even compared missionaries to vampires.

As Commissioners for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), we review reports about religious freedom conditions in dozens of countries; the situation in North Korea is one of the worst in the world. As such, we are advocating for the release of Deacon Jang through USCIRF’s Religious Prisoners of Conscience Project. We also hope to increase awareness of the thousands of individuals held in North Korea’s political prison and labor camps for their religious beliefs.

There’s nothing permanent or inevitable about this state of affairs. A century ago, Pyongyang was known as the “Jerusalem of the East” because of its thriving Christian population. Individuals from all religious communities could worship freely and openly. South Korea has proven that religious freedom can take root and thrive on Korean soil.

Progress on religious freedom in North Korea is possible, but will require patience, flexibility, and U.S. leadership and commitment.

First, USCIRF recommends making religious freedom and other human rights a priority during any negotiations with the North Korean government. U.S. administrations have typically treated nuclear nonproliferation and human rights as competing goals, but that need not be the case. As argued in a recent USCIRF report, negotiators could draw upon the Helsinki Accords to pursue a comprehensive agreement that furthers progress on both issues. North Korea in 2020 is not Eastern Europe in 1975, but there are valuable lessons to be drawn, such as the importance of coordinating with allies and not preemptively limiting the scope of rights raised during the negotiations.

In addition, we recommend the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) prioritize projects on North Korea given the limited access its citizens have to accurate and reliable information. It is more difficult for the North Korean regime to censor legacy broadcast and nonnetworked digital technologies, so DRL should focus on the use of DVDs and USB drives to promote the dissemination of information.

Finally, the State Department should fill the current vacancy for the Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues. Past special envoys have been instrumental in raising awareness of and rallying international support to take action against religious freedom violations in North Korea. The last Special Envoy was Robert R. King (2009-2017), and the post has been vacant since his departure.

For too long, the international community has shied away from forcefully pressing the North Korean regime about its human rights abuses for fear of jeopardizing ongoing security-related negotiations. We recognize the gravity of the security concerns on the Korean peninsula, but neglecting human rights has not led to breakthroughs on nonproliferation issues. It is time for creative thinking about how to protect both security interests and basic human rights.