A voice for Iran's freedom

The week of June 20 marks the second anniversary of the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old Iranian who was slain during demonstrations in Tehran against her country’s fraudulent June 12, 2009 presidential election.

Captured on video, Neda’s death sparked global revulsion against one of the world’s worst human rights abusers – the government of Iran. It also symbolized a democratic movement’s brave resistance to tyranny. Across the region, this resistance stirred hearts and minds, helping sow the seeds for the Arab Spring. 

The aftermath of the election and Neda’s murder also spurred the United States and the world community to take action against the abusers -- action that must continue if freedom is to prevail in Iran and the Middle East.

Since seizing power in 1979, Iran’s radical Islamist theocracy has been a particularly egregious abuser of the fundamental freedom of religion or belief, detaining, torturing, and executing people based on religious identity.

Religious minorities are systematically targeted. The Baha’is have been labeled as “heretics” and have suffered severe repression. Since 1979, Iranian authorities have killed more than 200 Baha’i leaders, while dismissing more than 10,000 from government and university jobs. 

Officially recognized minorities, including Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews, face repression. Religious services are subject to arbitrary raids, with members threatened, and leaders and worshippers imprisoned. State-run television broadcasts anti-Semitic messages, while the government has hosted conferences and cartoon contests denying the Holocaust.

Iran’s government also oppresses minority Sunni and Sufi Muslims, sometimes harassing and imprisoning their leaders. The regime has imposed harsh prison sentences as well on reformers from the Shi’a majority.

The government’s extremist interpretations of Islam also have led to women being assigned inferior legal status and to the imprisonment of female advocates seeking to repeal laws that repress and discriminate against them.

Since the June 2009 election and Neda’s death, conditions have worsened, with authorities executing peaceful protesters and reformers for “waging war against God.” 

This surge in abuses has driven the U.S. and the world community to respond.

In July 2010, President Obama signed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (CISADA) which requires the President to impose travel bans and asset freezes on severe human rights abusers, including religious freedom violators. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), on which we serve, had called for this action.

Mommy Life: Reagan blasts Carter 1980 campaign Liberty Park

Forget Huntsman - who announced his cadidacy without ever mentioning the name of the man he is running against.  Who promised to be nice.  Who worked for Obama as ambassador to China. Who contributed to Harry Reid's campaign.  A real wolf in sheep's clothing. That's why the media is cramming him down our throats. Why should we let them pick our candidate????? I've been asked by some of my friends in the press why we picked Hudson County for this kind of kick off of the campaign. Now I'm sure they asked because Hudson County is the home of Democrats in such great numbers.... No -- No and I hope a lot are here. As a matter of fact, I'm the first Republican candidate to come here since 1968. You're right. The Carter record is a litany of despair, of broken promises, of sacred trusts abandoned and forgotten. Eight million -- eight million out of work. Inflation running at 18 percent in the first quarter of this year. Black unemployment at 14 percent, higher than any single year since the government began keeping separate statistics. Four straight major deficits run up by Carter and his friends in Congress. The highest interest rates since the Civil War, reaching at times close to 20 percent, lately they're down to more than 11 percent but now they've begun to go up again. Productivity falling for six straight quarters among the most productive people in the world. The President promised that he would not increase taxes for the low and middle-income people, the workers of America. Then he imposed on American families the largest single tax increase in our nation's history. His answer to all this misery? He tries to tell us that we're "only" in a recession, not a depression, as if definitions, words, relieve our suffering. Let it show on the record that when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary. Well if it's a definition -- if it's a definition he wants, I'll give him one.  A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.  A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his. Let Mr. Carter go to their homes, look their children in the eye and argue with them that it's "only" a recession that put Dad or Mom out of work. Let him go to the unemployment lines and lecture those workers who have been betrayed on what is the proper definition for their widespread economic misery.

Between form and event, Machiavelli's theory of political freedom

Examining identity in sports media

Congressional Record, V. 144, Pt. 1, January 27, 1998 to February 13, 1998

Action and freedom, 2000

A Man Named Doris