Iran‘s theocratic regime has violently crushed peaceful protests demanding greater religious freedom in the year since the killing of Mahsa Zhina Amini in the custody of the government’s “morality police” final Sept. 16, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom stated in a brand new report launched Tuesday.
As many as 537 Iranians have been killed in protests over the younger lady’s loss of life and the Iranian regime’s insistence that girls put on a hijab in public, human rights advocates say, in response to the USCIRF survey. Amini was reportedly detained for failing to put on the necessary head scarf.
The bipartisan federal panel stated the United States ought to take the lead in coordinating “international efforts to counter” the human rights violations perpetrated by Iran’s rulers and the Tehran regime’s “violations of the Iranian people’s right to freedom of religion or belief.”
The USCIRF doc stated the U.S. ought to assist teams working “document specific evidence of crimes against humanity in Iran, including those targeting religious minorities and dissidents,” and may “seriously consider” supporting a referral of Iran to the International Criminal Court by the U.N. Security Council.
However, Biden administration officers seem headed in a distinct path. On Monday, the Associated Press reported Secretary of State Antony Blinken has signed off on a waiver releasing $6 billion in frozen Iranian property as a part of a prisoner swap deal. The cash can be transferred from banks in South Korea to establishments in Qatar, the information company stated, and will clear the best way for extra direct diplomatic engagement between Washington and Tehran on safety and different points.
Critics say the White House ought to maintain off on any rapprochement with Tehran given Iran‘s poor record on human rights and religious liberties, and Tuesday’s report will hand them recent ammunition within the debate. According to the USCIRF report, demonstrators searching for an finish to hijab restrictions have been met “with live fire, mass arrests and imprisonment, sexual and gender-based violence, and executions” by the regime, and the repression is just getting worse.
“State violence in Iran has persisted for decades, but the Iranian government’s most recent actions have reflected particular brutality,” the report stated.
In September of 2022, for instance, 16-year-old Sarina Esmailzadeh protested Ms. Amini’s loss of life close to her faculty in Karaj. USCIRF studies she was crushed “over the head until she bled,” dying quickly after at a close-by house. The report indicated six different protesters have been executed between December and May.
The Biden administration has defended this week’s take care of Iran, saying it should free 5 Iranian-Americans held by Tehran and that the Iranian funds being free of overseas financial institution accounts can solely be used for accepted purchases of humanitarian items. The State Department insisted Monday the U.S. is not going to ease up on Iran‘s file on rights and non secular liberties.
“We have not lifted any of our sanctions on Iran, and Iran is not receiving any sanctions relief,” a State Department spokesman advised reporters on background. “We continue to counter the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses, destabilizing actions abroad, its support for terrorism and its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.”
The USCIRF report charged that Iran has additionally continued to persecute its minority Baha’i inhabitants, a faith regarded by Iran’s Ja’afri Shia Islam rulers as a “deviant sect of Islam.”
USCIRF stated persecution of Baha’is ramped up after the 2022 protests of Ms. Amini’s killing “and is again escalating near the one-year anniversary” of these demonstrations. “Scores” of Baha’is throughout the nation have been arrested and given “excessive” jail phrases in an effort to tamp down dissent, the report stated.
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