It was agreed, — Whereas the Subcommittee heard timely and compelling testimony during this year’s Fourth 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, and have even intensified, with more people per capita executed in Iran than in any other country, an execution binge that has seen more than 730 put to death during 2014, more than 350 in 2015 alone, and some 45 people executed in a single week in April;
The Iranian regime has the second-highest incarceration rate of journalists and bloggers 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;
Members of the Baha’i community remain subject to harassment and persecution and are denied access to education and employment opportunities, with the seven Baha’i leaders – known as the Yaran-i-Iran – now beginning their eighth year of imprisonment; and
Be it resolved that the Subcommittee:
Condemn the systematic and widespread state-sanctioned assaults on the human rights of the Iranian people, particularly including the leaders of Iranian civil society;
Recognize the importance of not allowing the ongoing nuclear negotiations with the Iranian regime to overshadow, distract from, or 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 the following political prisoners and prisoners of conscience: the seven imprisoned leaders of the Baha’i, senior cleric and long-time advocate for religious freedom in Iran Mr. Hossein Kazamani Boroujerdi, Iranian-Canadian Saeed Malekpour and Pastor Abedini;
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 to 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;
Reaffirm the unanimous call of the House of Commons and the Senate of Canada, which have urged the Government of Canada to explore sanctions as appropriate against any foreign nationals responsible for violations of internationally recognized human rights in a foreign country, when authorities in that country are unable or unwilling to conduct a thorough, independent and objective investigation of the violations.
Urge the Iranian regime to respect the right of all Iranians to run for elected office, and to 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;
Call on the government to continue its leadership in the annual UN General Assembly Resolution on the human rights situation in Iran and mainstream concerns with Iranian human rights throughout the United Nations System.