Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you to the chair and the committee.
I appeared before this same committee 17 years ago. Tragically, the human rights atrocities in Iran remain the same, as do my recommendations.
The war on women continues. Girls are beaten, dragged screaming into police vans and raped for not wearing a hijab. There is a surge in the executions of peaceful protesters. There is a crisis in Turkey, where bona fide Iranian refugees, like Shilan Mirzaee, are sent notices of deportation back to Iran, despite lethal outcomes.
Preparing for this talk, I came to the conclusion that I could not possibly scratch the surface in a five-minute talk of the abuses of human rights by the Islamic Republic. Therefore, I would like to ask permission to table the 20-page synopsis of the recent UN fact-finding mission's 500-page report. It covers the time frame of September 2022, after the death of Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina, at the hands of the regime's morality police, which sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in which more than 600 peaceful protesters were killed.
Excuse me. I can hear the simultaneous Persian translation.