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December 30, 2013 | By Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett

The following op-ed appeared in Real Clear World on December 28, 2013.

December 28, 2013 - With the approach of a new year comes the hope of peace among and within nations. But as our nation explores peace on the nuclear front with Tehran, members of Iran 's diaspora community in the United States and other concerned Americans must wonder when Iran will cease its war against its own people and their rights, including freedom of conscience and religion.

Consider the eight-year jail sentence handed down in January, upheld in September and imposed without due process on the Iranian-born American citizen, Pastor Saeed Abedini. His crime? Somehow, he was "threatening national security" through his involvement in Iran's house church movement. After holding Abedini in solitary confinement in Evin prison, Tehran compounded the injustice, transferring him last month to the forbiddingly harsh Gohardasht prison.

The outrage perpetrated against Abedini reflects Iran's misconduct against religious minorities, especially Christians and Baha'is, but also Zoroastrians, Jews and Sufi and Sunni Muslims, as well as majority Shi'a dissenters. It is with good reason that, since 1999, the United States has designated Iran a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), marking it a world-class religious freedom violator.

Today, decades after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, the regime's radically theocratic character is unchanged. Any Iranian dissenting from its interpretation of Shi'a Islam may be branded an enemy of the state and a potential target for abuse, including detention, torture, imprisonment and even execution. The UN Special Rapporteur's October report found that since 2010 more than 300 Christians have been arrested and detained; as of July, at least 20 Christians were detained or imprisoned.

While all of Iran's Christians face a regime that restricts their rights, Tehran reserves some of its harshest treatment for Protestants. Next to the Baha'is, authorities view the Protestant community, comprised largely of evangelically minded individuals, as their most serious spiritual competitor for Iranian hearts and minds.

The vast majority of Iran's Protestants are, like Abedini, converts from Islam. While conversion to or from a faith is an internationally guaranteed right, Iran's leaders deem conversion from Islam an act of apostasy against Islam and Iran's character as an Islamic state, punishable by death. Revolutionary courts also charge converts with political crimes such as harming national security or contact with a foreign enemy. These courts apply such unfounded charges to innocent religious activities such as meetings with foreign Christians, associations with overseas Christian organizations or attending Christian seminars outside of Iran.

Despite talk of reform since Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, took office in August, Baha'i and Christian prisoners remain in jail and a crackdown on Protestant Christians has brought a new wave of arrests. Conditions are at levels not seen since the early years of the revolution.

In the face of these abuses, what can the United States do?

First, it must keep Iran a Country of Particular Concern.

Further, Congress should reauthorize for multiple years, and President Obama should then sign into law, the Lautenberg Amendment, a lifeline for Iranian religious minorities seeking refuge in the United States.

Tehran must release Pastor Abedini and all other prisoners whose only "crime" is exercising their right to freedom of conscience and religion. We invite members of Congress to join the Defending Freedoms Project, an initiative of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in conjunction with USCIRF and Amnesty International, and "adopt" prisoners of conscience, including Iranian prisoners, becoming their voice and spotlighting Tehran's tyranny.

Finally, as it highlights the innocent, Washington must do more to call out the regime's guilty parties, starting with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It should bar them from the country and freeze their assets. At this point, the European Union is outpacing the United States in sanctioning these abusers. Earlier this month, White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice said, "Our sanctions on Iran's human rights abusers will continue and so will our support for the fundamental rights of all Iranians." These promising words must translate into concrete deeds by our Treasury and State departments.

No government has the right to make war on anyone's conscience. As the New Year approaches, Pastor Abedini and others belong at home with their spouses and children, not in a jail cell for following the call of conscience.

Washington must tell Tehran: Prove your peaceful intentions abroad by ceasing your war against conscience at home.

Katrina Lantos Swett is the Vice Chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or 202-786-0613.

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December 11, 2013 | By Katrina Lantos Swett and Mary Ann Glendon

The following op-ed appeared in Reuters & the Chicago Tribune on December 10, 2013.

December 10 marks Human Rights Day, the 65^th anniversary of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), signed by 48 nations - with just eight abstentions.

Sixty-five years ago, naysayers insisted it was nobody else's business how governments behaved within their borders.The declaration confronted this cynical view - and continues to do so today.Human rights abuses and their consequences spill beyond national borders, darkening prospects for harmony and stability across the globe.Freedom of religion or belief, as well as other human rights, are essential to peace and security.They are everyone's business.

Each signatory nation pledged to honor and protect these rights. For example, the declaration provides the foundation for much of the agenda of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, on which we serve.

Yet 75 percent of the world's population now lives in countries in which this freedom is highly restricted, according to a recent Pew study .

These include countries like Saudi Arabia, which abstained, as well as many that signed the declaration, including China, Iran and Nigeria.

Saudi Arabia originally refused to endorse the declaration, in part because of its ban on all public religious expression besides its own extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam. The Kingdom not only continues on this path, but has exported its religious ideology to other nations, fueling religious freedom abuses, including violence. To grasp the security implications of this approach, Americans need only recall that 15 of the 19 attackers on September 11 were Saudi nationals.

All but one of the other abstaining nations comprised the old Soviet Union or its satellites, long notorious violators of religious liberty and other human rights. Today, Russia continues to engage in serious abuses, as Moscow passes extremism laws against certain Muslim groups and "non-traditional” religious communities, particularly Jehovah's Witnesses. The government orchestrates raids, detains and imprisons people who practice these religions. Mass human rights violations also continue in the North Caucasus region.

Another serious problem, however, are nations that signed the declaration but continue to abuse religious freedom.

In China, the government is persecuting Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims. Beijing is repressing and arresting leaders as well as members of independent Catholic and Protestant churches, shuttering their places of worship and imposing long prison sentences. It is also perpetrating forced renunciations and acts of torture on members of the Falun Gong and other groups deemed "evil cults.”

In Myanmar, the military government's celebrated political reforms have yet to improve religious freedom. Sectarian violence continues with impunity against ethnic minority Christians and Muslims. The plight of the persecuted Rohingya Muslims, for example, is a tragedy.

Egypt, another signatory, also has a history of repressing religious minorities, which continued during the administrations of both Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi. Cairo did not protect Coptic Christians from violence , while prosecuting and jailing Christians and others for "defamation” of religion.

Iran also continues to detain, torture and even kill members of religious minority groups, including Baha'is and Christians, whose beliefs are viewed as a fundamental threat to the theocratic state and its interpretation of Shi'ite Islam. It is still using terrorism to export its extremism.

The Nigerian government, another signatory, has failed to bring to justice the perpetrators of sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians, which has claimed the lives of more than 14,000 Nigerians since 1999. It has not countered the Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, which also fuels sectarian fires.

Pakistan is another signatory facing a rise in sectarian violence. Religious liberty abuses have increased to unprecedented levels. Sunni extremists are targeting religious minorities, including Shi"ites, Christians and Ahmadis. Pakistan's government helps fuel the bloodshed through its anti-blasphemy laws, which foster vigilante violence against perceived transgressors.

These countries have not only betrayed the commitment made in 1948; they have done nothing to advance peace and security within or beyond their borders.

Indeed, study after study confirms that countries that do not protect freedom of conscience produce strife and instability, including terrorism.

The United States and the entire world community have an enormous stake in upholding the UDHR's human rights principles - including religious freedom. On this Human Rights Day, it is time to reaffirm the declaration by holding its signatories accountable.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at 202-786-0613 or [email protected].

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December 2, 2013 | By Robert P. George

The following op-ed appeared in the Providence Journal on November 30, 2013.

Washington - As the nation celebrates Thanksgiving, Jewish Americans are also commemorating Hanukkah, the eight-day Feast of Dedication.

Interestingly, this year these holidays overlap. Much more importantly, however, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah share a common theme: religious freedom. Thanksgiving reminds us of the Pilgrims' arduous and risky journey to the New World to practice their religion in accordance with their consciences. Hanukkah celebrates ancient Israel's Maccabees who, by defeating the foreign despot Antiochus, gained the freedom to practice their religion as they rededicated their Temple.

Yet another commemoration harkens to this freedom. On Monday, Hanukkah's fifth full day, America will mark the 250th anniversary of the dedication of its oldest temple, Touro Synagogue, in Newport.

Decades later, in 1790, George Washington addressed to its congregants his historic letter on freedom of conscience. Writing that all Americans, Jews no less than Christians, "possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship,” Washington reaffirmed that the U.S. government "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

True to Washington's words and the spirit of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, America has been a refuge throughout its history for people fleeing religious persecution.

Unfortunately, such persecution continues today across the world. Religious-freedom abuses affect an alarming range of people: Rohingya Muslims in Burma; Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, Protestant house church members, Falun Gong and others in China; Coptic Christians in Egypt and other Christians elsewhere in the Middle East; Baha'is and Jews in Iran; Ahmadis, Christians and Hindus in Pakistan; and Muslims of minority sects in Muslim-majority nations such as Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan and non-Muslim nations such as Russia.

Indeed, according to a Pew study, 75 percent of the world's people live in countries which perpetrate or tolerate serious violations, ranging from restrictions on worship to the commission of torture and murder.

In 1998, in response to such violations, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed into law, the International Religious Freedom Act. The law created a new international religious freedom office in the State Department, headed by an ambassador-at-large. The law also created the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

USCIRF was founded as an independent, bipartisan federal body to monitor freedom of religion abroad and make policy recommendations to the president, secretary of state and Congress. One of USCIRF"s key responsibilities is to recommend to the State Department nations that should be designated as "countries of particular concern,” marking them as the world's worst religious-freedom abusers, as well as actions that should be taken given this designation.

This year, USCIRF recommended that eight nations be re-designated: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan. We found that seven other states deserved the same status: Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.

In our work, we are aided by the fact that this fundamental right is not only a foundational part of America's heritage, but is enshrined in international law and covenants, including Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims the following:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

As USCIRF's chairman, I am committed, along with my colleagues and commission staff, to do all I can to make religious freedom a central issue in the foreign policy of our nation - one that cannot be pushed aside or ignored. It is my hope that during this holiday season, we will gain a renewed appreciation for this bedrock freedom and the importance of proclaiming it to the world.

Robert P. George is Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at 202-786-0613 or [email protected].