On motion of Irwin Cotler, it was agreed, — Whereas the Subcommittee has heard timely and compelling testimony during this year’s Third Annual Iran Accountability Week regarding the deteriorating human rights situation in Iran, including that:
The Iranian regime has engaged in widespread and systematic violations of the human rights of its own people, including arbitrary arrests, detentions, beatings, and torture;
Executions in Iran continue unabated, with more people per capita executed in Iran than in any other country in the world, and with an execution binge that has seen more than 600 executions since President Hassan Rouhani took office in August 2013, and more than 250 in 2014 alone;
The Iranian regime has imprisoned more journalists and bloggers than any other country in the world;
The Iranian regime continues to detain political activists, members of religious and ethnic minorities, women, human rights defenders, student activists, academics, artists, journalists, and other leaders of civil society; and that
Members of the Baha’i community remain subject to harassment and persecution, with seven Baha’i leaders now beginning their seventh year of imprisonment;
Be it resolved that the Subcommittee:
Condemn the systematic and widespread state-sanctioned assaults on the human rights of the Iranian people and particularly the leaders of Iranian civil society;
Recognize the importance of not allowing nuclear negotiations with the Iranian regime to overshadow, distract from, or even sanitize the regime’s human rights violations;
Call upon the Iranian regime to declare a moratorium on its state policy of wanton executions;
Urge the Iranian regime to release its political prisoners, including the seven imprisoned leaders of the Baha’i, and Iranian-Canadian Saeed Malekpour;
Call upon the Iranian regime to uphold the rule of law, protect the independence of the judiciary, end its culture of impunity, and cease and desist from its arrest and imprisonment of lawyers for no other reason than that they have defended victims of human rights violations;
Urge the Iranian regime to cease and desist from its persistent and pervasive assaults on the rights of women, including cruel and inhumane treatment, and implement its promise to improve gender equality;
Call upon the Iranian regime to end the criminalization of dissent and the arrest and imprisonment of journalists and bloggers;
Urge the Iranian regime to permit the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran to visit the country and its prisons;
Support targeted sanctions under section 4.1 of the Special Economic Measures Act (SEMA) against the major human rights violators complicit in wanton executions and massive assaults on human rights, and put them on notice that they will be held accountable before the law;
Urge the Iranian regime to respect the right of all Iranians to run for elected office, and increase the transparency of the Iranian electoral process by allowing elections to be monitored by independent domestic and international elections observers, beginning with parliamentary elections in 2016;
Express solidarity with the people of Iran, who are themselves the targets and victims of the Iranian regime's massive assault on human rights;
Commends the government for its leadership in the annual UN Resolution on the human rights situation in Iran; and
Refer the situation of human rights violations in Iran to the Foreign Affairs Committee and recommend that it endorse this resolution.