Welcome, colleagues, to the 106th meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights and the beginning of our sixth annual Iran Accountability Week.
I want to mention the presence of the Honourable Irwin Cotler, who is no stranger to this subcommittee.
While our focus during this week's hearings will be the Iranian regime's deplorable record of domestic human rights abuses, we also take note of the regime's increasing export of violence and terror.
In the last year, Iran's role as a destabilizing force in the Middle East, and specifically Syria, has become increasingly alarming as its state sponsorship of terror has continued to expand. In particular, the activities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, have caused immense suffering for millions of people in the Middle East.
Iran's activities in Syria and support of the Assad regime's brutal repression of the Syrian people has been called one of the greatest concerns for geopolitical stability and security in the world today.
On the domestic front, this past December, 3,700 Iranian demonstrators calling for their democratic rights were arrested, including women and girls calling for equal rights. Those protesters have become subject to Iran's vindictive judicial system, including the notorious Evin prison, where Canadian citizen Dr. Kavous Seyed-Emami died in February. His wife, Canadian citizen Maryam Mombeini, remains in Iran against her will.
As the human rights subcommittee, we want to be on the record that human rights abuses in Iran are always top of mind. We want to express our solidarity with the Iranian people, among them the many political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, and human rights defenders who work tirelessly in Iran and abroad, and at great personal cost, for the promotion and protection of and respect for human rights in their country.
To begin our hearing, we have two witnesses before us. By video conference from London, we have Professor Payam Akhavan, co-founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and, in person, Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Professor Akhavan, if you begin with your opening remarks, we'll then move to Mr. Dubowitz, and then proceed straight to questions from the members. Please go ahead.