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THE TROUBLING CASE OF MERIAM IBRAHIM

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, 

GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND 

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 23, 2014

Serial No. 113–199

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

SEAN DUFFY, Wisconsin 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

KAREN BASS, California 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

AMI BERA, California 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., Commissioner, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom ................................................................................. 8

The Honorable Tony Perkins, president, Family Research Council .................... 19

The Honorable Grover Joseph Rees (former General Counsel, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service) ......................................................................... 32

Mr. Omer Ismail, senior policy advisor, Enough Project ...................................... 41

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Zuhdi Jasser, M.D.: Prepared statement ............................................................... 11

The Honorable Tony Perkins: Prepared statement .............................................. 22

The Honorable Grover Joseph Rees: Prepared statement .................................... 35

Mr. Omer Ismail: Prepared statement ................................................................... 43

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 62

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 63

Zuhdi Jasser, M.D.: USCIRF Sudan Policy Brief ................................................. 64

(1)

THE TROUBLING CASE OF MERIAM IBRAHIM 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2014

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,

GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o’clock p.m., in 

room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. 

Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. SMITH. The subcommittee will come to order. 

Let me begin by, again, expressing my apology for the lateness 

of our start. We did have two votes, recorded votes. They went 

longer than anyone could have anticipated. 

For weeks this spring the world watched as Meriam Ibrahim, a 

pregnant Christian woman in Sudan, faced flogging and the death 

penalty because her government would not accept that she had 

lived her life as a Christian and married a Christian man. Meriam 

has demonstrated both courage and grace under pressure, giving 

birth in jail in May, while chained, and caring for her two children, 

including her newborn, not only under restraints but without the 

normal amenities that any pregnant woman and nursing mother 

should expect. 

The harsh application of Sharia law on non-Muslims was the 

trigger, and everyone knows this, for the two-decade-long civil war 

in Sudan that eventually led to the secession of the South. Sudan 

is one of 20 countries in the world who have laws against apostasy, 

defined as the abandonment by an individual of his or her original 

religion. 

In Sudan, apostasy is effectively considered leaving the Muslim 

faith, particularly the interpretation of Islam followed by authorities there. In Sudan, to leave the Muslim faith is an automatic 

death sentence. If you are considered an apostate, you cannot legally marry someone of another faith, and for this Meriam was also 

charged with adultery and sentenced to flogging. 

However, this story is not just about harshly applied religious 

and legal principles in violation of national and international law. 

Daniel Wani, Meriam’s husband, is a Christian, who is a dual 

American and South Sudanese citizen. He has lived in the United 

States for more than a decade. He married Meriam in late 2011, 

and they had a son a year later. 

Somehow, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum could not find a way 

to help bring this American to get his family out of Sudan before 

2

the crisis developed. Even after she was arrested and released last 

year on charges involving apostasy. 

Today’s hearing is intended to examine the facts as we know 

them and to determine how strictly applied rules almost led to the 

officially sanctioned beating and execution of a young woman who 

has lived as a Christian all of her life, but who has now been told 

that she has no right to choose her religious belief. 

This hearing was originally scheduled to take place in June, but 

at the urging of Sudanese officials and Mark Meadows, who has 

been doing yeoman’s work on this issue, and some in our Government, we postponed it to allow for quiet diplomacy to take place. 

However, Meriam’s legal entanglements seem to be increasing now 

rather than diminishing. 

We intend for this hearing to be a strong appeal to the Government of Sudan to use their legal authority to end the official entanglements Meriam has faced since her arrest in January and subsequent trial. A Sudanese court initially ruled that the mere fact that 

her father was Muslim means that she should have been raised as 

a Muslim. She was given 3 days to convert to Islam, but she told 

authorities she would not abandon her Christian faith. Her refusal 

to leave the faith she had practiced her entire life led to her being 

in mortal fear for her life. 

Fortunately, a Sudanese appeals court believed that she considered herself Christian and overturned her conviction on apostasy 

and adultery charges. However, members of her family, allegedly, 

have appealed the overturning of her conviction. Meanwhile, the 

Government of Sudan rearrested Meriam for using South Sudanese 

documents in an attempt to leave the country while she was released on bail. That case is still pending. 

Finally, Meriam’s family has filed a case in domestic law court 

to establish that she is Muslim and that her brother, who was unable to prove his legal connection in the original apostasy/adultery 

case, should be her legal guardian under Sharia law. The hearing 

date for at least part of that case is currently set for August 4, because she was not given a written summons to appear at a July 

17 hearing on the matter. 

We cannot be absolutely certain of the exact chain of events that 

led to this situation. The Department of State understandably decided not to testify at this particular hearing, although this will become a hearing in a series of hearings until this is resolved. Daniel 

and Meriam are still in Sudan at this point, and we will invite the 

State Department to give a full accounting and any insights they 

might want to provide. 

Daniel and Meriam are still in Sudan, as we all know, at this 

point. Daniel is free to leave with his children, but has chosen of 

course to stay with his wife until she, too, can leave with her family. Since Meriam’s conviction in May, a bipartisan, bicameral congressional coalition has worked tirelessly to undo the harsh penalties for her under the apostasy and adultery laws, and to secure 

her family’s repatriation to the U.S. 

Contact was made with Daniel, as well as the U.S. Embassy in 

Khartoum, and the Sudanese Embassy right here in Washington. 

Eventually, the headquarters offices of both State Department and 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services got involved. You know, 

3

one wonders why this matter had to come to a crisis stage before 

a means could be found to avoid what now seems to have been an 

inevitable outcome in this case. 

Daniel told congressional staff that he sought help from the U.S. 

Embassy in Khartoum, but was told that he should seek an attorney, since the situation was mostly focused on his wife who was not 

an American. This was the advice he received even when he was—

when arrested and had his passport seized. An American citizen 

should expect more, I believe, from his government’s representatives in a foreign country when the country’s government has taken 

action against them. 

Sudanese officials do not have the right to force someone to be 

Muslim when they assert their beliefs to be otherwise. Under the 

principles of natural law, which are the basis of our governing documents and those of countries around the world, there are certain 

inalienable rights endowed by our Creator. The decision on how to 

worship our Creator is one of them. 

Elements in Sudan’s Islamic clergy and in the government interpret the Koran, to give them license to tell people how they will 

live out their faith, whether they consider themselves Muslim or 

not. 

In Meriam’s case, her father had been absent from her life since 

she was a small child. Her Christian mother raised her as a Christian. Sadly, Meriam is not the only Sudanese who chose differently 

on the matter of faith only to be faced with a death sentence for 

that choice. Sudanese activist Mahmoud Mohammed Taha was arrested and charged with apostasy in 1984 for his efforts to end 

Sharia law in Sudan. He was subsequently executed. 

In some countries, Christian converts have been forced to renounce their faith and conform to the version of Islam favored by 

the government of that day. Some of these countries have constitutions that ostensibly guarantee religious freedom, even as they may 

also have laws that actually contradict those rights. 

Except for Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United 

Arab Emirates, the other 15 countries, including Sudan, have 

signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 

guaranteeing freedoms for their citizens. 

Article 18 of that document enshrines ‘‘the right to freedom of 

thought, conscience, and religion.’’ Speaking of the rights of the individual, that article also forbids ‘‘coercion which would impair his 

freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.’’

Article 18 also guarantees ‘‘the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in 

community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.’’

The current report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom cites Sudan as a Country of Particular Concern due 

to its government’s engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious 

violations of freedom of religion. According to USCIRF, Sudan is 

the world’s most violent abuser of the right to freedom of religion 

or belief. 

Thankfully, we have the author of that law, the International Religious Freedom Act, Frank Wolf, who back in 1998 authored that 

landmark legislation. And today testifying we have Zuhdi Jasser 

4

from the Commission, who recommends in his testimony that not 

only should the U.S. Government take appropriate actions against 

Sudan, as detailed in IRFA, but that our Government should also 

make freedom of religion and human rights a centerpiece of the 

U.S.-Sudan bilateral relationship, as that has not been the case to 

date. 

The troubling case of Meriam Ibrahim should warn of future incidents in which those who do not believe in Islam are defined by 

the government, are persecuted, or placed in fear of death or torture. We, again, appeal to the Government of Sudan to use all legal 

means at its disposal to free her, this courageous young woman, 

allow her to pursue her faith and join her husband in the United 

States. 

I would like to yield to a friend and colleague, the ranking member, Ms. Bass. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership and for 

convening today’s hearing. I would also like to thank our distinguished witnesses, and I look forward to hearing your perspective 

on the socio-political context in Sudan as it relates to this case, the 

legal framework, as well as adultery laws and information on the 

limitations on religious freedom. 

As we prepare to hear from today’s witnesses, I hope we can 

learn critical lessons from their experiences and use them to increase awareness and support for the improved protections of 

human rights and religious freedom in Sudan. 

I am also interested in hearing an update on the case. I met not 

too long ago with representatives from the Embassy, and it was my 

understanding that this case was going to be resolved very soon. 

So I will be interested to hear your updates. 

Thank you very much. I yield back my time. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. 

I would like to now yield to a gentleman on the committee, Mark 

Meadows. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank each one 

of you for your valuable time in coming here, and I think the fundamental question for all of us is, is this a day where truly religious freedoms of all faiths are going to be upheld and valued in 

America? And with that, it is critical history shows us—and it is 

not about—just about Christian faith. It is of many faiths. History 

shows us that time and time again when we don’t value that the 

outcome is tragic. 

And so I thank each one of you for coming today to spend your 

valuable time to not only continue to intercede on behalf of 

Meriam, but to also make it a reminder to those of us in a freedomloving world that it is critical that we stand on those foundations 

of upholding religious liberty. If there are policies that we can use 

to go more toward valuing that, I look forward to hearing from 

each of you on that particular subject. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your leadership. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Meadows. And I want to thank you 

for the meetings that you arranged with the Ambassador in an attempt to try to do this as efficaciously as possible, and the meeting 

that you did convene was I think a very important one, but still, 

5

it has not yielded the result that we are all hoping and praying for, 

but thank you for that leadership. 

Mr. Pittenger. 

Mr. PITTENGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to 

participate and for holding this hearing of such great importance. 

I commend you for your tireless dedication, as always. I have 

watched you now for the last 30 years bringing the right of freedom 

of religion to everyone in the world. 

I would also like to thank the witnesses for appearing before us 

today and for the dedication you have shown to defending human 

rights and religious freedoms, freedoms of conscience throughout 

the world. 

The case of Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag is tragic, a story now, 

regrettably, that is being told throughout the world, she—a young 

woman imprisoned because she has chosen to be a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. Her punishment for following her faith, for 

refusing to convert to a religion she does not believe in, death by 

hanging. 

The Sudanese Government declared her marriage to a Christian 

man unlawful, and, therefore, convicted her of adultery, punishable 

by 100 lashes. Thankfully, an appellate court overruled both of 

these convictions, but Ms. Ishag still is not free. While trying to 

leave Sudan with her husband and children, one which she gave 

birth to while she was in prison, the family was again detained on 

claims of using false travel documents. 

Here is a family simply trying to believe in their own convictions 

and live out their faith, trying to practice their own religion, and 

this is what they have been subjected to. While Ms. Ishag’s case 

has garnered significant media attention, we must remember that 

denial of the basic human right to religious freedom is not an isolated case. 

As members of the United States Congress, it is vital that we 

continue to shine light on all of the cases of injustice and for the 

United States to continue exerting whatever pressure we can on 

governments who so blatantly and obviously infringe upon those 

rights. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I do yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Pittenger, thank you very much for your comments and your leadership. 

We now yield to Chairman Frank Wolf. And, again, he is the author of the International Religious Freedom Act, landmark legislation that finally, at long last in 1998, put religious freedom as a 

core element of our U.S. foreign policy. Chairman Wolf? 

Mr. WOLF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for 

having the hearing. I think, as Mr. Pittenger said, you have probably done more than anybody else in the time that I have served 

here, so I want to thank you. 

I want to thank the witnesses. I think there are two points. I 

think our State Department is failing us. We have seen their lack 

of action on people in Korea. We have seen their lack of action with 

regard to people in Vietnam. We have seen their lack of action to 

not even visit Liu Xiaobo’s house in China when he is the Nobel 

Prize winner, and his wife is not well, and we see the fundamental 

weakness. 

6

And we have also seen the failure of this administration with 

Pastor Abedini. I mean, Pastor Abedini and his wife, they are 

American citizens and we can’t even get them to do anything, nor 

will the Secretary meet with them. So this is not a surprise. 

Secondly, I think I would just separate myself out from the State 

Department. Weakness is never good. And we are weak. We are 

perceived as weak. Now, I say somewhere out there—and I can almost predict who—there is a representative or two of the Sudanese 

Government. They are going to listen. They are going to send a 

message back to al-Bashir who is an indicted war criminal. Indicted war criminal. Two-point-one million people died in the 

North-South battle. He has blood on his hands. 

So this ought to be a test. If Meriam is not out in 2 or 3 weeks, 

the word should go out they will never be off the list. They will always be on the terrorist list. There will always be sanctions. We 

will bring the government down. What they are doing with the 

Nuba Mountains, what they are doing with regard to Darfur, they 

were responsible for the genocide in Darfur and it still continues 

today. 

So they are going to look to see how strong you are. One of them 

out there—they may have a law firm working for them, too—will 

come back and tell them, ‘‘If Meriam is not out in 2 weeks, never 

should they ever be taken off the sanctions list.’’ And we should 

make sure the U.N. tracks al-Bashir down when he goes to Egypt, 

or wherever he goes, and bring him so he goes to The Hague and 

stands as a criminal. 

And thank you for having the hearing. 

Mr. SMITH. Chairman Wolf, thank you very much. 

Mr. Cotton. 

Mr. COTTON. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and Ranking Member 

Bass, for letting me join your subcommittee today, first off. Second 

off, I would like to closely associate myself with the remarks of 

Frank Wolf, a great champion in the United States Congress for religious liberty. It is a travesty that Meriam was detained at all in 

Sudan, or that her detention has continued. I agree with Mr. Wolf 

she should be released posthaste, if not in 2 weeks from now. 

But it is troubling that this is part of a pattern more broadly 

throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and, regrettably, all 

around the world. Twenty countries now have laws penalizing 

apostasy, and eight of those can legally impose the death penalty 

for apostasy, for nothing more than being a follower of Jesus 

Christ. 

I saw this kind of persecution firsthand when I was a lieutenant 

with the 101st Airborne in Iraq and Baghdad in 2006, Christian 

churches being vandalized and Christians being persecuted and 

driven out of their homes and neighborhoods. We see it again today 

in Mosul as the Islamic State is driving Christians out of that city 

where they have lived almost since the times of Jesus Christ. 

As a country that was founded by religious refugees, and for 

whom religious freedom is our very first freedom, it is incumbent 

upon us in this institution, as well as the President and the State 

Department, to rectify the injustice, not just when it involves 

Americans, like Pastor Abedini or Meriam and her family, but to 

the greatest extent we can all around the world. 

7

Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Cotton, thank you so very much, and thank you 

for your extraordinary military service. 

I would like to now introduce our distinguished panel. We are 

very fortunate to have four very knowledgeable and eminent individuals to provide testimony to the committee, beginning with Dr. 

Zuhdi Jasser, who is a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is also the founder and president 

of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. 

Dr. Jasser is a first generation American Muslim whose parents 

fled the oppressive Baathist regime of Syria. He earned his medical 

degree in the U.S. Navy, on a U.S. Navy scholarship, and served 

11 years in the Navy. Dr. Jasser has testified before Congress before, including before our subcommittee, and has briefed members 

of the House and Senate frequently on issues related to religious 

freedom. 

We will then hear from The Honorable Tony Perkins, who is 

president of the Family Research Council. He is a former member 

of the Louisiana legislature where he served for 8 years, and he is 

recognized as a legislative pioneer. Since joining FRC in the fall of 

2003, he has launched new initiatives to affirm and defend the 

Judeo-Christian values upon which this nation was founded. 

Tony Perkins and FRC have led the way in defending religious 

freedom. He hosts a daily national radio program and broadcasts 

a daily commentary heard on over 300 stations nationwide. His 

daily email update is sent to tens of thousands of individuals 

throughout this country and in the world. 

We will then hear from Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees, who 

has served as the first United States Ambassador to East Timor, 

and as Special Representative for Social Issues in the U.S. Department of State where he was responsible for promoting human dignity, including issues affecting vulnerable persons and the family 

within the U.N. system. 

He was also a senior staff member of this committee. As a matter 

of fact, he was general counsel and staff director, where he was responsible for human rights and refugee protection, and he played 

a major role in drafting an enactment of important human rights 

legislation including the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, International Religious Freedom Act, and the Torture Victims Relief 

Act. 

Of high significance as well, he served as general counsel of the 

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and was extremely 

knowledgeable, especially in fighting against the forced repatriation of many, including the Vietnamese boat people. 

As a direct result of his work, some 20,000 Vietnamese who were 

sent back were brought to this country, were rereviewed when they 

were improperly screened out as refugees. So I want to publicly acknowledge the extraordinary work that he did to ensure the safe 

immigration of those people, those Vietnamese boat people, to the 

United States. 

And, finally, we will hear from Mr. Omer Ismail, who was born 

in the Darfur region of Sudan and spent over 20 years working 

both independently and with international organizations on relief 

efforts in human rights. He fled Sudan in 1989 as a result of his 

8

political views and helped found the Sudan Democratic Forum, a 

think-tank of Sudanese intellectuals working for the advancement 

of democracy in Sudan. 

In addition, he co-founded the Darfur Peace and Development 

Organization to raise awareness about the crisis in this troubled 

region. He currently works as policy advisor to several agencies 

working in crisis management and conflict resolution in Africa. 

Thank you as well for your leadership and for being here. I 

would like to begin with Dr. Jasser. 

STATEMENT OF ZUHDI JASSER, M.D., COMMISSIONER, UNITED 

STATES COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 

Dr. JASSER. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and Ranking Member 

Bass, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the extremely troubling case of Meriam 

Ibrahim. I ask that my written testimony be submitted for the 

record. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, so ordered. 

Dr. JASSER. Meriam Ibrahim’s case must—must continue to draw 

international attention until she and her family leave Sudan for 

freedom in the United States. Even then, the international community must continue to focus on Sudan, because while Meriam’s case 

is among the most egregious, it is only the latest example of the 

Sudanese Government’s deplorable religious freedom and human 

rights record. It is simply the tip of the iceberg, as we have heard 

from many of your comments. 

This record has earned Sudan a Country of Particular Concern 

(CPC) designation since 1999 from not only our commission but 

also from the State Department. The government imposes a restrictive interpretation of Sharia law on Muslims and non-Muslims 

alike, and charges individuals with the capital crime of apostasy, 

flogging Sudanese for undefined acts of indecency and immorality, 

and arrests, threatens, harasses, and discriminates against Christians and others with minority views. 

These religious freedom violations, along with the violence in 

Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile, and Darfur, derive from President 

al-Bashir’s policy of Islamization and Arabization. 

Meriam’s ordeal began with her February 17 arrest—here is a 

picture of her from before her arrest. At that time, her brother reported to the police that she had left Islam to marry a Christian 

man, a capital crime in Sudan. The Sudanese Government’s application of Sharia law prohibits a Muslim woman from marrying a 

Christian man. However, while Meriam was born to a Muslim father and an Ethiopian Orthodox mother, her father left the family 

when she was six, and she was essentially raised a Christian. 

Meriam was convicted on May 15 of apostasy and sentenced to 

death by hanging. Because the court did not recognize her marriage, she was also found guilty of adultery and sentenced to 100 

lashes. While imprisoned, Meriam gave birth on May 27 to her 

baby daughter, who was detained with her and her 2-year-old son. 

On June 23, an appeals court cancelled the apostasy charges and 

death sentence, most likely due to the international attention that 

many of you and others have brought, and ordered her release from 

9

prison. She and her family then were detained on June 24, a day 

later, in Khartoum’s airport when they sought to leave the country, 

after which she was held with her family at a police station, and 

then arrested again on document fraud charges. Since June 27, she 

and her family now remain in Sudan, safely, as the Sudanese Government continues to block their departure from the country. 

On July 17, Meriam’s brother, alleged brother, challenged the appeal that had overturned her apostasy and adultery convictions. 

The Sudanese Supreme Court has up to 3 months to review the 

brother’s court action. And that is her current status. 

Meriam’s ordeal reflects more deeply the Sudanese Government’s 

enforcement of a rigid ideology against Sudan’s religiously diverse 

population, particularly non-conforming Muslims and Christians. 

As detailed in our commission’s November 13 policy brief, which we 

have available in the back—I request that that also be submitted 

for the record. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, it will be made a part of the 

record. 

Dr. JASSER. Thank you. The Sudanese Government has implemented Sharia law for more than 30 years, with the 1991 Criminal 

Code Act being the cornerstone of that implementation. The Act addresses offenses that violate public order and carry the death sentence for apostasy, stoning for adultery, prison sentences for blasphemy, and floggings for undefined offenses of honor, reputation, 

and public morality. 

Since 2011, there has been an alarming increase in the number 

of persons arrested and found guilty of what are called hudood offenses, with the most dramatic increase in the number of those 

such as Meriam arrested for apostasy, carrying an automatic death 

sentence. For example, in the past 3 years alone, more than 170 

persons have been arrested, the majority of whom practice a 

version of Islam which differs from that of the ruling National Congress Party of al-Bashir. 

Government pressure on Christians in Sudan has also increased 

since South Sudan’s 2011 independence, with the government announcing in July that it no longer would issue any permits—this 

is just a few weeks ago—for new church buildings. In the last several years, at least 11 churches have been attacked and others 

threatened. Individual Christians have also been arrested, threatened, and harassed, in Nuba, and South Sudanese Christians continue to be arrested and deported. 

The Sudanese Government also discriminates against its minority Christian community by promoting conversion openly to Islam, 

prohibiting foreign church officials from traveling outside Khartoum, using school textbooks that negatively stereotype non-Muslims, and giving preferential treatment to Muslims in employment 

and services and in court cases involving Muslims against nonMuslims. 

So what can we do? Meriam’s case underscores the need for the 

U.S. Government to do the following. First, we need to continue to 

advocate tirelessly for Meriam and her family to immediately leave 

Sudan and that all charges against her be dropped, and all prisoners who have been jailed on account of their religion or belief 

also be released and the charges against them be dropped. 

10

Second, we need to redesignate Sudan as a CPC and take appropriate actions that follow thereof. We also need to make religious 

freedom and human rights a centerpiece of the U.S.-Sudan bilateral relations, and take the conversation beyond simply being the 

issue of violence. 

We need to press the Sudanese Government to engage in an inclusive and transparent constitution drafting convention. We also 

need to require before normalizing relations or lifting sanctions, 

that the Sudanese Government abide by international standards of 

freedom of religion and belief. And we must also support all those 

civil society groups monitoring the implementation of the public 

order laws and advocate for their immediate repeal. 

We must hold the Sudanese Government accountable to protect 

and respect freedom of religion or belief, not only for Meriam 

Ibrahim but for all Sudanese. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Jasser follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Dr. Jasser, thank you very much for your testimony. 

The Honorable Tony Perkins. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE TONY PERKINS, 

PRESIDENT, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL 

Mr. PERKINS. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member 

Bass, and members of the subcommittee. I want to thank you for 

not only the opportunity to address the situation of Meriam 

Ibrahim, but also for the work that this subcommittee has done on 

religious liberty around the world. And with that, I want to briefly 

address the broader issue of religious liberty internationally. 

I would like to address the why and the how. First is the why. 

Now, I am here, as many have tracked the media reports that have 

been out there, some accurate, some not. I have worked with members of this committee, other Members of Congress, and I have also 

engaged in conversations, ongoing conversations, with Sudanese officials. 

The why we are here I think is very clear. We are here because 

of the courage of a 27-year-old mother, a 27-year-old mother. If you 

will, just for a moment, imagine the situation in a prison in Khartoum which the U.N. says has an infant mortality rate of one child 

a day dying in that prison. At her side, 8 months pregnant, is a 

20-month-old boy, and she is told that if she will denounce her 

faith in Jesus Christ, there is the door, you can be a free person. 

But, yet, she refused to denounce her faith because she had the 

courage to stare death in the face. 

What has America done? Where is the courage in America to 

speak out for those who are suffering at the hands of dictators who 

refuse to recognize not an American right, but a human right? A 

human right of religious freedom, to determine the destiny of one’s 

own life, to live your life according to your own conviction and your 

faith. Why the silence in America? 

Now, you might be tempted to say, ‘‘Well, this is just one case. 

Why the big deal?’’ This is not an isolated case, as Dr. Jasser said, 

but just in April another individual who the attorneys have asked 

that the name not be used, was detained under the same charges 

of apostasy and facing the same possible outcome. 

We also have to consider Daniel, her husband, American husband that has been referenced here, a man who is bound to a 

wheelchair, who was powerless to do anything to secure the freedom of his wife and his children, and yet he went to the State Department waiting for them to act on behalf of his children and his 

wife, and there was silence until just recently. 

Now, while other governments have called attention to Meriam’s 

situation, including the European Parliament passing a resolution, 

and the British Government’s Prime Minister speaking publicly, as 

I said, the U.S. Government has been practically mute. Even after 

multiple activist organizations initiated petitions with hundreds of 

thousands of signatures, the U.S. Government’s disinterest in the 

plight of an American and his family is simply indefensible. 

And, of course, we do this ignoring the International Religious 

Freedom Act of 1998, which states that

‘‘It shall be the policy of the United States to condemn violations of religious freedom and to promote and to assist 

20

other governments in the promotion of the fundamental 

right to freedom of religion.’’

The United States has clearly failed to adequately condemn this 

violation or to speak out clearly and with conviction and courage 

on behalf of Meriam. 

Religious freedom is increasingly under attack around the world 

today. According to Pew Research Center, as of 2012, Christians 

continue to be harassed in more countries than those of any other 

faith, Muslims not far behind. 

Religious freedom is a fundamental inherent in international 

human right. Yes, it is a core American ideal, an ideal that we 

should defend at home and abroad. And a warning should be 

sounded across America that an indifference to religious persecution abroad can only lead to greater religious intolerance here at 

home. 

Now, the binding International Convention on Civil and Political 

Rights, which there has been a reference to, ICCPR, explicitly 

states,

‘‘Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. This right shall include freedom to 

have or to adopt a religion or a belief of his choice and 

freedom, either individually or in community with others 

in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in 

worship, observance, practice, and teaching.’’

And that is binding. 

U.S. inaction overseas is all the more troubling when U.S. citizens are involved as has been referenced, such as Daniel Wani, 

Pastor Saeed Abedini detained in Iran, and Kenneth Bae in North 

Korea. 

And I want to point out the U.S. indifference to religious hostility 

is not limited by political party. It was under the George W. Bush 

administration’s allowance of blasphemy laws under the new Afghan constitution that almost led to the execution of Abdul 

Rahman, a Muslim convert to Christianity, who only escaped with 

the assistance of the U.N. when he was offered asylum in Italy. 

It is difficult to look at these facts and not understand them in 

light of the current administration’s unilateral reinterpretation of 

religious freedom domestically. This administration believes religious belief should be quarantined to private spaces and excluded 

from the public space. 

This truncated view of religious freedom domestically, more accurately described as the freedom of worship, is matched by the administration’s failure to even address the growing threats to religious freedom internationally. Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State John 

Kerry only commented on Meriam Ibrahim’s case after international outcry over her plight made it impossible for them to remain silent. 

Now, there is more reasons we should be involved and concerned 

about religious freedom. There is a growing body of research that 

points to nations that protect religious freedom as nations that 

have freer economic markets, and, therefore, greater economic stability and prosperity. 

21

This religious intolerance, as evidenced in Sudan, must be condemned in its own right, yet such intolerance is also harmful because it stifles economic growth in countries that need economic 

growth greatly. In turn, the lack of economic growth fosters instability and a lack of security. 

There is the why. What is the how? Religious freedom should be 

a central priority in U.S. diplomatic and strategic engagement 

worldwide in order to promote freedom for its own sake as well as 

for reasons of global stability and security. The U.S. and this committee must seriously consider making human rights and religious 

freedom a central component of U.S. international aid contributions. In short, promoting religious freedom promotes societal wellbeing at home and abroad. 

We must—in this particular case, the administration should specifically work to ensure Meriam’s children are immediately granted 

U.S. citizenship as all of the proper documents have been submitted and continue to provide Meriam and her family physical 

protection while they are in Sudan. Their lives are at risk. Provide 

Meriam and her family the proper medical care. There are reports 

that the child, Maya, was injured at birth. We need to make sure 

that they have the proper medical care. And then we must pressure the Sudanese Government to ensure that legal proceedings 

conclude quickly, as in yesterday. 

And then, secondly, we must urge Congress to pass H. Res. 601, 

the Trent Franks resolution that condemns the treatment of 

Meriam Ibrahim and pressures the administration to act in accordance with the United States’ responsibility to be a strong advocate 

for religious freedom generally, and Meriam specifically. 

It was Meriam’s courage that brought us here today. Now, it is 

our turn to act with courage to bring Meriam and her family to 

America. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Perkins follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you so very much, Mr. Perkins, for your testimony. 

Ambassador Rees? 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE GROVER JOSEPH REES 

(FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL, U.S. IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE) 

Ambassador REES. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Madam Ranking 

Member, and members of the subcommittee, thank you so much for 

the opportunity to testify at this timely and important hearing, and 

I am very honored to be on a panel with these extremely distinguished and dedicated witnesses. Thank you. 

I have been asked to testify on a narrow question about the citizenship of the two children. Whether the two children of Meriam 

Ibrahim and Daniel Wani are United States citizens who should be 

given appropriate documentation of their citizenship, and who 

should be afforded such protection and assistance as the Government of the United States typically gives its citizens who are residing or visiting in other countries. 

Now, United States citizenship law with respect to children born 

overseas to a United States citizen is fairly straightforward. Section 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides in pertinent part that when a child is born outside the United States and 

its possessions to parents one of whom is a United States citizen 

and the other of whom is a foreign national, the child is a citizen 

at birth, provided that the U.S. citizen parent has lived in the 

United States for at least 5 years before the birth and that 2 of 

those years were after the parent had reached the age of 14. 

Looking at the facts of the case, which have been set forth by 

other witnesses, and lining them up against the law, it seems pretty clear that these two children are United States citizens and 

should be certified as such. The two parents were married at the 

time of both births. Mr. Wani is listed on the birth certificate of 

Martin, the oldest child, as the father. There is as yet, I understand, no birth certificate for Maya, who was born while her mother was in prison. But there is no reason to think that anyone else 

will be put as the—will be listed as the father on that birth certificate. 

It would seem that the application for a Certificate of Citizenship 

or for a Report of Consular Birth Overseas should have been granted, yet Mr. Wani says it wasn’t. Importantly, by the way, Section 

309 of the Immigration and Nationality Act sets forth some additional requirements for children born out of wedlock. If the parents 

are not married at the time of the birth, there has to be ‘‘clear and 

convincing evidence’’ of the blood relationship between the child 

and the United States citizen parent. 

Importantly, that provision does not apply to children who were 

born of a marriage of the parents. And yet Mr. Wani says that he 

has been asked to provide a DNA test. So what it looks like is that 

the State Department is applying the test—the consular officer in 

question is applying the test that the statute provides for out-ofwedlock births instead of the one that is provided for children born 

in marriage. 

33

Now, some supporters of Mrs. Ibrahim have said that this must 

mean that our Government is applying Sharia law to the case, because if the law is—if the marriage is not recognized under Sudanese law, then they are not married, and he would have to meet 

the test of blood relationship by clear and convincing evidence, and 

perhaps a DNA test would be appropriate. 

I can’t say that is not what the consular officer was thinking. I 

don’t know. But I think that unfortunately this may be indicative 

of a broader attitude, a broader culture of negativity and denial, 

that many of us who work in the immigration and citizenship area 

have encountered not only in this case, not only in cases involving 

Sudan or involving Christians, but in cases across the board and 

around the world. 

I am an alumnus of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 

and I worked with many fine and conscientious people. But we 

often had to confront this idea that our job was to turn everybody 

down and then somebody would straighten it out later on if we 

were wrong. 

I later learned working with the—I used to say we either needed 

to change our attitude or we needed to change the sign on the door 

to say ‘‘Anti-Immigration and Naturalization Service.’’ And I later 

learned working for the State Department and working for this 

committee that that culture of denial is even more robust, unfortunately, in the consular corps than in the Immigration Service. 

This doesn’t happen because consular officers or immigration officers are bad people. Most of them are fine and decent and conscientious people. It happens partly because they really do encounter 

fraud. They really do encounter frivolous applications. And we all 

know the adage ‘‘Once bitten, twice shy.’’ I think a corollary of that 

is that if you are bitten four or five times you are probably shy the 

rest of your life. 

Consular officers also work typically in—a lot of what they do involves non-immigrant visas. And for non-immigrant visas, tourist 

visas, visitor visas, the law says that you are presumed to be an 

intending immigrant. That is, you are presumed to be lying until 

you can prove to the satisfaction of the officer that you really will 

return to your home country according to the terms of your visa. 

Now, the problem is that a lot of consular officers seem to carry 

over that extreme skepticism which is required by law in some 

cases to cases where the law doesn’t require it, including the provision of documentation and other consular services to United States 

citizens. 

Now, I want to suggest—in my written testimony, which I hope 

will be accepted for the record, I have given some specific language 

in the Foreign Affairs Manual that seems to encourage consular officers in this attitude that somehow citizenship is a benefit that 

they are conferring, and that they have discretion, and that they 

ought to do the same kind of investigation in a case involving a 

married couple, a child of a married couple, as they would in an 

out-of-wedlock case under the statute. 

I do want to say that it is possible that the facts of the case—

there could be facts known to the consular officer that would justify 

requiring further evidence, not just the fact that the parents were 

married and that the father is on the birth certificate. For instance, 

34

if Mr. Wani’s passport showed that he hadn’t been in Sudan at any 

relevant time when the child could have been conceived, then it 

would be reasonable to ask for more evidence. 

That is not what Mr. Wani said happened. He says that from the 

very beginning when he approached the consular officer he was 

told ‘‘I don’t have time.’’ He said that the consular officer was rude 

and high-handed. 

If that happened, it was a violation of the law. When a consular 

officer denies a visa to somebody who is eligible for that visa, that 

might be bad policy. That might be a bad decision. But that is 

within the discretion of the consular officer. But citizenship is not 

a benefit. The consular officer isn’t making you a citizen by giving 

you the certificate. You either are or you are not a citizen. 

And if a consular officer denies the appropriate documentation, 

appropriate assistance and protection, to a United States citizen, 

he or she is not just making bad policy, not just making a bad decision, he or she is violating the law. 

I am happy to say that the State Department—that I am proud 

of our Government, that in the last few weeks they seem to be 

making amends. They seem to be providing Mrs. Ibrahim and her 

family with the appropriate attention and care and are really working to solve this case. It is nice to know that first principles can 

sometimes trump institutional cultures and institutional concerns. 

In this case, the principle is that we Americans do not leave our 

own in harm’s way. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Rees follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Ambassador Rees, thank you very much. And without 

objection, the additional information you would like to make a part 

of the record is so ordered. 

Mr. Ismail. 

STATEMENT OF MR. OMER ISMAIL, SENIOR POLICY ADVISOR, 

ENOUGH PROJECT 

Mr. ISMAIL. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass, 

and honorable members. I am honored to be here to appear before 

you to testify in this important case of Meriam Ibrahim, and I 

kindly request that my testimony be included in the record. 

My testimony is going to focus on showing that this is not an isolated case. The case of Meriam Ibrahim is not an isolated case. It 

is a pattern of behavior that the Government of Sudan has demonstrated through the years. 

Ten years ago yesterday, the United States Congress determined 

that the violence that plagued the Darfur region of Sudan is a 

genocide perpetrated by the country’s own government. The brutal 

Janjaweed militia that is recruited, armed, and financed by the 

Government of Sudan rode through the villages terrorizing civilians, raping women, burning homes and markets, and destroying 

the livelihood of a great number of communities. 

That same tyrannical government is persecuting Meriam 

Ibrahim and sentenced her to death by hanging because of her religious convictions. The Government of Sudan is the main perpetrator and culprit in the violence across Sudan that is visited on 

millions of Sudanese who this government considers enemies for no 

other reason than being different from the image it sponsors. This 

government flaunts a brand of Islam and promotes a racial identity 

that is exclusive and divisive and met with widespread rejection 

and resistance among the majority of the Sudanese people. 

According to credible reports, Meriam Ibrahim was born to a 

Muslim father and a Christian mother, and she chose to be Christian. Meriam would not be considered a criminal in any democratic 

society that respects human rights because she would have the 

right to choose her religion and her life. The Government of Sudan, 

however, not only ignores its citizens’ human rights, it disrespects 

its own constitution and the laws drawn from it. 

According to the Sudanese Interim National Constitute of 2005, 

and I quote, ‘‘Every person shall have the right to the freedom of 

religious creed and worship.’’ In practice, the Government of Sudan 

does anything but adhere to its own contract with the Sudanese 

people. 

Shortly after the secession of the South of the country from the 

motherland became inevitable, President al-Bashir declared in AlGadarif in eastern Sudan in 2010 that Sudan would become a 

country ‘‘with no racial or religious diversity.’’ Successive events 

that took place thereafter proved that this statement was not a slip 

of the tongue but a government policy that spares no one who opposes it. 

The issue of racial diversity was dealt with by continuing the 

raging war in the periphery that, in addition to Darfur, witnessed 

unprecedented violence in the Nuba Mountains and South Blue 

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ters by killing students in cold blood and committing widespread 

rape and torture. 

The violence has led to hundreds of thousands of displaced, in 

addition to refugees that have fled to the neighboring countries, including the restive South Sudan. Food is used as a weapon of war, 

and the fate of close to 1 million Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of indigenous religions and other faiths is in jeopardy. 

The genocidal regime in Khartoum was not satisfied with the social engineering that it ushered in to distort the ethnic composition 

of the country, but it coupled that with a no less lethal policy of 

religious intolerance. In April 2012, an old church in the outskirts 

of Khartoum was burned down to the ground by a mob of supporters of an Islamic cleric who is a member of the government appointed Islamic Ulama Council. 

In addition, many Sudanese Christians complain about discrimination in getting jobs or in the workplace when they are employed, 

in addition to a general atmosphere of intimidation and intolerance. In academia, staunch fundamentalists were appointed to the 

faculty of the universities and devised syllabi to indoctrinate the 

students, and they banned all opposing activities in the schools. 

Furthermore, the State of Khartoum issued a decree banning all 

building permits for new churches and Christian schools, claiming 

that the capacity of the existing churches and schools is more than 

enough to serve the Christian minority of 3 percent of the population. This figure was not supported by any census or any credible 

statistics. 

In the areas of the Nuba Mountains and the South Blue Nile, 

mosques, as well as churches, and the limited number of hospitals, 

are subject to indiscriminate bombing that is meant to scare civilians and drive them into the horrors of displacement. The government authorities and the security apparatus are used to harass 

people of different faiths other than Islam through intimidation 

and terror. 

The case of Meriam Ibrahim has backfired by making citizens 

more aware of the extent of the callous behavior that the government is willing to carry out in order to achieve its objective of remaining in power at any cost. Her case is also serving as a wakeup 

call to all peace-loving nations that this regime should be dealt 

with in a manner that will force it to alter its behavior. 

In conclusion, I respectfully ask this honorable institution, which 

represents the American people, to support the moderate Sudanese 

opposition that is working diligently for the democratization and 

the respect for human rights. The Sudanese Muslims and Christians and practitioners of other faiths deserve to live in peace 

among themselves and with other fellow human beings. History 

will look kindly at those who help them live in dignity and with 

the most sacred value of all, freedom. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ismail follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Ismail, thank you very much. 

My understanding, Ambassador Rees, you will have to leave at 

4:00? 

Ambassador REES. My plane is running late, so I can leave a little bit after that. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. That is great. Thank you. Let me just begin with a 

couple of opening questions, and then yield to my colleagues. 

First, as you said, Ambassador Rees, in your statement, in a 

CNN interview dated May 30, an interview of Daniel Wani by Nina 

Elbagir. This is Mr. Wani speaking in response to a question, 

‘‘Sadly, it is not the U.S. Government. When the problem began, 

the U.S. consul here had a very negative position on this. She was 

very high-handed. She was very, very rude. She said, and I quote, 

‘I don’t have the time.’ ’’

If you could perhaps elaborate on this culture of denial that you 

mentioned earlier, because this has been a systemic problem that 

I and you, when you served as staff director for this committee and 

I have been in Congress now for 34 years, all over the world we 

encounter this, and I will give you a few examples. 

Tony Perkins mentioned Saeed Abedini. Saeed Abedini’s wife, 

Nagmeh, was originally told, ‘‘There is nothing we can do.’’ Frank 

Wolf convened a hearing of the Lantos Commission and passionately called on the State Department and Secretary Kerry, and 

then they said that they will raise it, and Secretary Kerry did issue 

a statement. 

When Nagmeh came here, she was still bewildered by the lack 

of engagement on the part of the U.S. Government on behalf of this 

American being held by the Iranians. As we hold nuclear talks, 

human rights fell off the page, if you will. 

Chen Guangcheng, there were four hearings on Chen 

Guangcheng, and he was given back to the Chinese secret police 

under guard in a ‘‘hospital’’ where he could not leave, and there 

was an unbelievably porous assurance that Chen Guangcheng 

would be okay. That is what we were told. 

Thankfully, he testified by way of a phone call and said, ‘‘I want 

to come to America,’’ and 6 hours later that permission was granted. And we had more press here than I have ever seen before and 

that helped his case. 

I had a couple of my constituents stuck in Abkhazia as well as 

in South Ossetia, so I went there. And I found out, to my shock 

and dismay, that the Consul General had said that this marriage, 

purported marriage, of an American who used to be a guard at the 

White House, so he had to be vetted quite effectively, and he was 

telling the truth, and this woman who was of Georgian origin was 

bogus, and, therefore, the little child who was in Abkhazia was 

stuck and literally was prostrate as Russian tanks went through 

her town, and obviously everybody was scared to death something 

might happen to her. 

And then, finally, Jacob Ostreicher, we have had several hearings on Jacob. He is finally out because of a private extradition effort, or an effort to ferry him out of the country by way of an automobile. At first we were told, and I was told this directly by the 

Embassy and by top people in the State Department, at his request 

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comed? Because he felt his life was in dire jeopardy. He even had 

for a while Venezuelan guards, of all things, guarding him when 

he was in the hospital. They said, ‘‘We will put him out the door.’’

I made that phone call myself and heard that and just said, ‘‘Are 

you kidding?’’ An American? I mean, we are supposed to be the 

oasis. So, Mr. Ambassador, if you could speak to this culture perhaps a little bit more, because I think there needs to be a seachange of attitude, which, again, the IRFA bill, the religious freedom bill, was supposed to do about religious freedom. 

Part of that legislation had text in it about training Foreign 

Service Officers to understand the importance and centrality of religious freedom, and that trading has been very slight all these 

years. So if you could answer that question, I would appreciate it. 

Ambassador REES. Well, Mr. Chairman, there are at least three 

things going on. One of them I have already spoken to, which is 

that you do get fraudulent applications, you do get frivolous applications. We are not supposed to grant those applications. And perhaps there is a natural human tendency when you have been 

snookered a couple of times to assume that the snookering level is 

99 percent instead of some lower number, and that is just an occupational hazard of these kinds of jobs. 

A second—but we have all seen people in customer service jobs, 

which is what this is, who frankly have outlived their usefulness 

on those jobs and ought to go find other jobs. And so I think we 

do need to try to inoculate people against that tendency to deny 

good cases simply because some cases are fraudulent. And that is 

particularly true where you are dealing with people who may well 

be American citizens. 

The second thing has to do with the institutional culture of the 

State Department itself, broader than just consular officers. The 

State Department is a foreign ministry. A foreign ministry’s main 

job is to deal with governments. With other foreign ministries, with 

governments of other countries. And these kinds of issues, these 

humanitarian issues, these human rights issues, these refugee 

issues, they complicate what many Foreign Service Officers see as 

their main job, which is to improve the relationship between the 

United States and that other government. 

Now, I am not suggesting that they are simplistic or one dimensional. Everybody knows that we have to pay attention to those 

other issues. But I don’t think that the natural reaction of somebody who has to go deal with the foreign ministry in the country 

that he is living in every day, when he hears about a Meriam 

Ibrahim case, he is not going to say, ‘‘Oh, boy, a chance to strike 

a blow for human freedom.’’

He might understand that is his duty. We hope he does. But it 

is not something that makes the State Department’s life easier. 

The third thing with these high profile cases where Members of 

Congress involved is—as you know, I have seen it from both sides. 

I worked in Congress, I worked in the State Department. The executive branch in general, and the State Department in particular, 

hate to be told what to do by Congress. And so there is this faux 

integrity that gets built up, that we are not going to be politically 

influenced, we are going to do what we would have done anyway. 

47

Now, I don’t want to say that happens all the time, and I do have 

to say, as I said in my testimony, that there are many fine and decent and conscientious people in the State Department, that many 

of them do the right thing even if it hurts their career. But I do 

think that institutions have institutional cultures, and that there 

are some of those tendencies that we need to fight. 

Mr. SMITH. If you could answer that as well, but you mentioned, 

Dr. Jasser, about no CPCs, the fact that they have not been redesignated. And Robbie George, who was then the chairman of 

USCIRF, and now Katrina Lantos Swett has taken over that leadership as chairman, no CPCs have been named since 2011, which 

I think is a huge abrogation of duty on behalf of the administration. Hopefully, they will do it soon and do it robustly, including 

all of those countries that need to be so named. 

But I think if you could speak to whether or not that sends a 

message to countries that are committing egregious violations of religious freedom, when we don’t even do the designations anymore. 

Dr. JASSER. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and that really was 

the followup to Ambassador Rees’ comments, is that, you know, we 

started a program on prisoners of conscience, that various members 

have adopted, if you will, various prisoners across the spectrum in 

many different countries because these cases, like Meriam Ibrahim, 

are emblematic of deeper problems typically, not only in Sudan but 

in every one of these countries where prisoners of freedom of conscience, of faith, belief, that are in prison simply because of their 

belief are a sign typically of more systematic, egregious, and ongoing violations of religious freedom and human rights related to 

that. 

So as a result, that is why you make the connection between 

these prisoners. And when we defend them, when our President, 

when our State Department, our Embassies defend these prisoners 

and say that we want them released and freed, it then sends a 

message that our freedoms that we defend at home, and our International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, actually means something. 

And we have been concerned at the Commission that there has 

been a stagnation, and there has been no designations of CPCs 

since 2011. 

The lists, while there is no disparity on Sudan, we have—both 

the State Department and our commission agrees that they are a 

CPC, they have not redesignated them since 2011, and we hope 

that when their report comes out they follow that quickly with a 

designation. 

So it is important that when these designations are made it 

sends the message that we believe that there is egregious and ongoing violations, and, as a result, it carries with it the sanctions 

that the law—the statute provides. And I think that is how we 

translate the plight of people like the brave and courageous people 

like Meriam Ibrahim that get translated into a process and policy 

that means that, then, religious freedom becomes the centerpiece. 

And most studies have shown recently repeatedly that countries 

that honor these principles then become more successful economically and more secure and less threats of terrorism and regionally 

become better actors in the world. So this is why I think it is very 

important that this be highlighted, and they have not do so. And 

48

we hope—their report is supposed to be coming out this week. I 

think it has been delayed again, and hopefully it will be followed 

by a redesignation of Sudan and other countries. 

Mr. SMITH. I have some additional questions for Tony Perkins 

and Mr. Ismail, and I will go back to that in the second round. I 

would like to yield to Ms. Bass. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I wanted to get a sense from the panel how widespread they 

think apostasy is in countries, one, where we are in conflict with, 

but also in countries where we are allied. And if you could respond 

to that, any of the panelists, I am not sure which one of you might 

know. 

Dr. JASSER. Thank you, Ranking Member Bass. You know, the 

issue of the implementation, as our report on Sudan talks about, 

typically what happens with countries that enact more draconian 

forms of Sharia law, apostasy violations become a central part of 

that as we saw in Afghanistan and in Pakistan and in other countries in which the restriction upon the implementation of religious 

freedom is based upon one of the red flags for the government 

being that if somebody leaves his or her faith, and apostasy being 

one of those, but typically it is not isolated. 

We see the cries of apostasy, if you look at Raef Badawi in Saudi 

Arabia, he is a Muslim who reports being a Muslim and yet he is 

in jail on a crime of apostasy because the version of Islam that he 

defended was not one in line with the Saudi Government. So typically where you see governments like Saudi Arabia or Iran or 

Sudan that implement draconian, more restrictive forms of Sharia, 

apostasy is often one of the centerpieces, but linked to apostasy, 

then, are blasphemy laws that the government controls free speech 

with and then crimes against especially women, controlling their 

ability for dress and expression and property. All of that follows the 

whole implementation of Sharia if you will. 

Ms. BASS. So do any of the panelists know exactly what her situation is right now? I mean, I realize she is still incarcerated, but 

the Embassy says that there is supposed to be a hearing, it is supposed to be an expedited process. Now, I heard that a few weeks 

ago. Obviously, it is not that much expedited, but I wanted to know 

if any of you had information on her exact status now. 

Mr. PERKINS. The information is not completely reliable. As the 

press reports one thing, Sudanese officials say something else, and 

we often find the two are in conflict. But she is in a safe house 

overseen by——

Ms. BASS. Is she under house arrest, is that what it is? 

Mr. PERKINS. She is not under house arrest. She is actually 

under the watch care of the U.S. Embassy. 

Ms. BASS. Oh. 

Mr. PERKINS. And so she has been released from incarceration. 

When she was seeking to leave the country——

Ms. BASS. Right. 

Mr. PERKINS [continuing]. And detain, she was detained for a few 

days in the police station, then released. They had a bond and she 

was released, and she has been released to the custody of the oversight of U.S. officials. So she is safe at present, as long as she stays 

49

where she is. If she moves off of the property where she is currently residing, there is concern for her safety. 

Ms. BASS. Why can’t she leave the country? I mean——

Mr. PERKINS. They have not issued her documents in order for 

her to leave. 

Ms. BASS. Her Sudanese passport? 

Mr. PERKINS. Correct. 

Ms. BASS. Was it correct that she was detained because she had 

a South Sudanese passport? 

Mr. PERKINS. That is correct information based—that is correct 

based on the information we have. 

Ms. BASS. And do we know where she got that from, why she——

Mr. PERKINS. From the South Sudanese Embassy. 

Ms. BASS. You look like you want to respond. Mr. Rees looks like 

he wants to say something. 

Ambassador REES. Well, I don’t—I am not sure it was a passport. 

My reading of—I am just reading the same news reports everyone 

else is. My reading is it was probably a travel document issued by 

the Government of South Sudan, because Mr. Wani, who is an 

American citizen, has dual citizenship——

Ms. BASS. I see. 

Ambassador REES [continuing]. With South Sudan. And we, the 

United States, issue travel documents to people who are not citizens. We issue them, for instance, to lawful permanent residents, 

and it was probably a document like that. 

Ms. BASS. So at this point, what do you think—again, any of the 

panelists—what do you think that we could do to be concrete and 

helpful in this situation now, as it stands now? I am not talking 

about the broader picture but just in terms of her and getting her 

out of the country. Mr. Ismail? 

Mr. ISMAIL. Thank you, Madam Ranking Member. I think the 

pressure should continue on the Government of Sudan to release 

her, because being there is not serving the purpose of anybody. And 

uniting with her family in the place that she wants to travel to is 

a right of all Sudanese people, and she should exercise that right. 

And she should be given what is called an exit visa out of Sudan, 

and she is free to go to the destination of her choice. 

I think without that pressure her situation is going to be in jeopardy, and we don’t know, because the Government of Sudan also 

is under pressure from some of the fundamentalist constituencies. 

And I would say they brought it on themselves, because it would 

have been one of the many, many, many cases that our normal everyday people go to court, but they made a political issue out of it. 

And now it backfires and the fundamentalist constituency of the 

government is pushing them, and they are saying, ‘‘You shouldn’t 

release this woman because this is a clear case of apostasy and we 

want to prosecute her.’’ The government, I don’t think they are interested, but also I believe there are some elements inside the government, because the government is now really not in control of everything. I believe there are some elements inside the government 

want to get some mileage out of this. At the end of the day, ‘‘Here, 

the United States, we release this person to you. What is in it for 

us?’’ And so it becomes, you know, kind of a quid pro quo of some 

sort. 

50

So that is also a possibility, but I think it is not serving the larger purpose of the bad rap that the government has got——

Ms. BASS. Thank you. 

Mr. ISMAIL [continuing]. As a result of this case. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the ranking member. I thank each of you. 

I am going to follow up with a few questions and would like for you 

to comment on this. Many people, at times, think that the voice to 

free people like Meriam and her family is just silent; they are just 

a few people, it is a few activists here or there. Mr. Perkins, would 

you say that—could you comment on just what you are hearing 

from either your listeners or people that are contacting you from 

the American people? Can you give us a sense of what you are 

hearing? 

Mr. PERKINS. Congressman Meadows, I think the—what we have 

actually seen internationally from Great Britain and how this was 

really a front page story, and leading to the Prime Minister making 

statements on it, is more reflective, really, of where the American 

public is on this issue as we have seen hundreds of thousands, 

there was a White House petition that garnered over 50,000 people 

that signed that in a very short window of time, that are concerned 

about this. 

I think people recognize that there is a correlation between religious persecution abroad and the growing religious intolerance 

here at home. And I also think that people realize that there was 

a time when it meant something to be an American, that when you 

were in—you found yourself in trouble someplace in the world, that 

you were not alone. 

Unfortunately, what we are seeing increasingly is that if you are 

an American on foreign soil, and you are held captive, you are 

alone. And I think that scares people. They want to return to 

where it meant something to be an American, and that is why I 

believe people are responding to this and saying Congress should 

do something. I know Members of Congress have received lots of 

phone calls on this, and I know Congress is doing what they can. 

I express my public appreciation to you for the work that you 

have done on this particular case, but it is a broader symptom of 

a greater problem with our country here today and our defense of 

religious freedom. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So, Mr. Ambassador, your comment earlier that 

the State Department does not want to have Congress telling them 

what to do, how can we encourage them? You know, they don’t express that when they come before this committee for authorization 

or the Appropriations Committee for their budget, so I am shocked 

to hear this kind of information. But what can we do to work hand 

in glove with the State Department? They have a difficult job, obviously. 

Ambassador REES. Well, I think that recognizing a tendency, recognizing an institutional tendency, doesn’t mean that you have to 

assume that forever after everybody who works for that other institution is your enemy. There are many people in the State Department who would be very sympathetic on this particular case, for instance. 

51

I think there is one phrase that I remember. I have never heard 

it before or since, but I must have heard it 20, 30 times when I 

was working as a staff member for this committee some years ago, 

and we would be in negotiations with the State Department, and 

they would complain that something on human rights or on refugees that went into a little too much detail, they would say, ‘‘We 

know how to handle these cases. We don’t have to be taught how 

to suck eggs.’’ That was the favorite expression. 

So I think that—and it always made me wonder, why would anybody want to learn how to suck eggs? But I think that you need 

to reach out, as I know the committee has, to the State Department 

on these issues and say, ‘‘How can we help?’’ But making clear that 

help includes an active role in the process, an active concern for the 

outcome. 

And you are right, there are many times when the State Department is very anxious for Congress to get involved, but of course we 

used to do the State Department authorization bill every 2 years, 

and the State Department’s idea of a great authorization bill was, 

‘‘Here is $13 billion. Be good.’’ Whereas, many Members of Congress wanted paragraph after paragraph after paragraph about 

what to do in Haiti and about what to do in Sudan, what to do in 

Burma, and you need to reach a mean between those extremes. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So, Dr. Jasser, let me come to you. There are 

those within the Muslim countries who say that all we are trying 

to do is export our Christian faith. And yet I know in the case of 

Sudan that is really not what this is about. My mother went there 

51 years ago, I believe, on a medical mission. I have friends who 

served in the Peace Corps, very dear friends who served in Khartoum in the Peace Corps. For many years, my family and my kids 

have sent money to provide for relief for Sudan, Sudanese people 

that were in harm’s way. 

How do we do a good job of elevating religious freedom and liberty without it being one dimensional? Because, really, when we 

look at religious liberty, it is across all faiths, and yet sometimes 

we put a priority on one faith or another in terms of what we will 

or will not tolerate. So how do we do that? How do we communicate 

that to a predominantly Muslim world in North Africa and the 

Middle East? 

Dr. JASSER. Well, you know, I think, Mr. Meadows, that is really 

a wonderful question, and I think that the wisdom of the IRFA is 

that it is about religious liberty for all the citizens in the countries 

that we review and decide their CPC status on. And if you look at 

the citizens, for every—as much as often, the religious freedom limitations for minorities can be a touchpoint of the conversation. 

One of the things our commission always talks about is the fact 

that within the majority there are those in those countries, Sunnis, 

for example, I, as a Sunni Muslim, know that those who have a minority viewpoint within a majority population are also as persecuted, if not more, than the minorities. 

And I think I would ask anyone, through not only the work of 

our commission but also the implementation of the IRFA abroad, 

in countries to see that it is not specifically related to Christian minorities, but really related to any prisoners of conscience who have 

wanted to express their particular practice of faith differently and 

52

have been arrested for it or have suffered because of those expressions. 

And I think that is really what we have been expressing. It has 

not been about advancing or protecting Christianity. I know that 

as a Muslim. But it has been about advancing and protecting liberty, and that is when those countries are more secure. 

There is no wisdom in believing that protecting only minorities 

protects a country’s security. It is about protecting freedom for all 

of its citizens, and that is the wisdom of the International Religious 

Freedom Act. And we hope, you know, that an Ambassador is 

named soon for religious freedom who can begin to advance these 

ideas. That spot has been vacant for some time, and I think this 

would allow the world to see that America is not just about protecting our own rights but protecting every citizen and their right 

to the free practice of faith or no faith. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Right. Mr. Perkins, you made a comment in your 

opening statements where you said that we are here because someone that was 27 years of age had the courage to stand up for her 

faith. That cut deep to my heart, because in a similar situation, 

knowing that my kids were in a prison, knowing that a simple 

word would release them, I don’t know that I would have had as 

much courage, and so it was very convicting. 

I think the other part of that, though, is if a voice of a 27-yearold woman, mother, that I have never met, I have only seen pictures, can cause us to come together and cause us to start to understand that religious freedom is not only paramount, but it is 

foundational for who we are as a nation, what would you say to the 

millions and millions of Americans that are out there that many 

times allow us each and every day to make small concessions? 

Each and every day we sometimes look the other way, when 

something is said, something is done. We say, ‘‘Well, that is just 

the way things are.’’ But yet they continue to get worse if we are 

not willing to stand up as this brave young mother has so eloquently articulated. What would you say to them? What do we 

need to do as a nation? 

Mr. PERKINS. Well, Congressman Meadows, I think just looking 

at this table is a reflection that is unique to America and our understanding of religious freedom. To my right, a Muslim; to my left, 

a Muslim and a Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical; and we are here 

for the same reason. We are here not in conflict, but we are here 

in concert. We are not here working against one another, but we 

are working together for someone that none of us have ever met, 

as you pointed out. 

It is a principle. It is a foundational principle through which I 

would say, as former late Harvard professor Samuel Huntington 

pointed out, that America became an economic powerhouse in part 

because of its religious ethic. That provided for the ability for us 

to be successful as a nation. 

So that silence on behalf of whether it is Meriam and that growing persecution abroad—I mean, as we see what is happening in 

Iraq, as it is becoming an Islamic state and Christians are being 

told that either they leave, convert to Islam, or they pay an impoverishing tax, or they die, that should be a concern for us as Americans. In fact, in our historical record, it has been a concern, beVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:48 Oct 08, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\072314\88830 SHIRL
53

cause this indifference abroad will lead to greater religious hostility 

at home, which ultimately affects the well-being and the prosperity 

of our society as a whole. 

So I believe we must advocate for individuals like Meriam. As 

has been pointed out, there are many more like her, but this is one 

we know about. This is one we cannot escape. We have no excuse 

not to help this mother and her family. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well, I want to thank you and your work as the 

American people have reached out. You have been daily, hourly, 

minute by minute, advocating on behalf of Meriam and religious 

freedom, and I want to thank you personally, but also on behalf of 

our Nation, for speaking up for someone who does not have a voice, 

because the silence that so often is deafening cannot be something 

that we tolerate. So I want to thank you. 

Mr. Ismail, let me come to you. You said something earlier that 

said that your belief is the Sudanese Government is wanting something from this. You know, what basis—why would you say that? 

So you are saying that it is—the release would be predicated on 

Congress giving them something? 

Mr. ISMAIL. It is just speculation on my side, that some of the 

elements inside the government might see this as an opportunity 

to gain something from the United States. This government is desperate to get recognition, especially from the United States, because this is the country that has all kinds of sanctions against it. 

This is the country that designated this government to be a sponsor of terrorism. 

This is the country that is not supporting international law in 

the sense that President al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, and so on and so forth. So, and this is the 

country where we have a testimony like this from all these wonderful people who are trying to support this woman in need. 

And in this support, I don’t see the support to Meriam Ibrahim 

only. There are 1 million Meriam Ibrahims in Sudan that are 

Christians, that are Muslims, that are practitioners of other faiths, 

that were persecuted daily. The women that were sentenced to 40 

lashes or 50 lashes because they are wearing pants, the women 

that were without any kind of respect, the decency of human 

beings, were considered indecent in public, and they were faced 

with all kinds of threats and harassment. 

This is a case where the Government of Sudan is trying to see 

if they can—or at least some elements there, to see that, well, if 

we do this, what is in it for us? We have seen from Naivasha and 

even before that when the negotiations for the peace agreement, 

the negotiations to the secession of South Sudan, this government 

is always demanding something. 

They create obstacles, so that when they come and they release 

these obstacles, somebody will say, ‘‘Oh, they did this, they are 

good, so let us reward them.’’ And they do just enough to get this 

monkey off their back—that is called the international community—and they are not sincere in going the extra mile to make sure 

that they do this in good faith. 

Every single step that they have done, be it negotiation with the 

rebels, be it through, you know, letting the South go as they boast, 

54

it wasn’t because of them. It is because of the will of the people 

of South Sudan that they seceded that country. 

So the government is willing to do everything, including incarcerating people or detaining them by force, or put them in house arrest, so that they can get something out of this. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well, let me comment on that, because I—we met 

with some of the Sudanese officials here in Washington, DC, as I 

know Mr. Perkins has, and I think any relationship has to be built 

on mutual trust and respect. But negotiating for Meriam’s release, 

with financial or other concessions, is not something that is on the 

table. I think we have made that very clear. 

But I am hopeful that if there is a new day in Sudan, that this 

can be the start. And it may be very embryonic, but it could be the 

start of perhaps a new relationship where religious freedoms are 

not only held up, but a relationship that is, to both countries, mutual benefit. But to negotiate because there is a woman in prison 

or being held, or thousands of others, for small, incremental 

changes, is not what this is about. 

And so, Mr. Ambassador, I want to come back to you before your 

plane. You know, this is the only time I have ever heard of applauding a delayed plane, but I thank you for bearing with us. You 

said that the State Department likes for us to say, ‘‘Okay. Here is 

$13 billion; go do with it what you will and do a good job.’’

How can we encourage them that addressing situations like 

Meriam will foster more of an open, non-earmarked, non-directive 

way in terms of finances going forward? Because if they are truly 

standing up for the Meriams or the Saeed Abedini’s or whomever 

it may be, I am more willing to look at it and say, ‘‘Well, we don’t 

have to put parameters.’’ How do we do a better job of working 

with the State Department where they can see the will of the 

American people? 

Ambassador REES. Well, it is a very big conversation, and it is 

a conversation that has been going on for a long time. I remember 

Senator Helms when he was chairman of the Foreign Relations 

Committee used to say they needed an America desk at the State 

Department. And Secretary Albright responded by saying, ‘‘The 

America desk is me.’’ And so—and I believe that you need to keep 

on doing what you are doing. You need to keep on having hearings 

like this. 

I assume the State Department was invited to this hearing. 

Maybe if you have another one they will come and have something 

to say at the appropriate time. I think you need to—I think it is 

okay for Congress to legislate on foreign affairs matters. There are 

some in the executive branch who think that is unconstitutional. 

I don’t think it is unconstitutional. 

And I think that the executive branch’s job is to execute, Congress’ job is to make policy. The International Religious Freedom 

Act, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, these are examples of 

cases where—the State Department resisted both of those bills. 

And it wasn’t that they said they didn’t agree with the objectives. 

They did agree with the objectives, but they didn’t think they needed a legal framework in which to operate. 

Trafficking at least, once it became law, the Department has 

taken that issue to its bosom. They really do the job. They really 

55

do the reports well. International religious freedom, I think sometimes they do well, but it has taken them a little more time to get 

used to that idea. But you change the legislative landscape, gradually people will begin to get used to it, and sometimes even to like 

it. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well, I am going to yield to my good friend and 

the chairman of the subcommittee, and I am going to yield not only 

the mike but his chair back to him. 

Mr. SMITH. No, no. Stay put. Stay put. Stay put. Thank you very 

much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your advocacy, because it 

has been extraordinary. I want the record to show that Mark 

Meadows has been absolutely relentless in pushing all of us—didn’t 

take much push for a few of us, but certainly made it very clear 

that this was one of the highest, if not the highest priority. So I 

want to thank him for his leadership. 

I want to thank our distinguished witnesses again for your testimonies, which were very comprehensive and I think extraordinarily 

incisive. You know, human rights usually is demoted in U.S. foreign policy. That has been my experience. I have probably chaired 

some 500 hearings over the years on human rights, and it has 

never ceased to amaze me how when it talked about it is usually 

page 4, if it is there, in terms of our priorities, somewhere at the 

bottom of page 4. And that is not the way it ought to be. 

Recently, we had a hearing on North Korea, and our former Special Envoy to Sudan, who is also co-chair of a North Korean human 

rights organization, said that when the Six-Party Talks were still 

underway, he and so many others, including me, tried to make 

human rights a part of that, and it was excluded. So when those 

talks imploded and nothing happened on the nuclear issue, we got 

even less when it came to human rights. 

Same goes with Iran. We have asked Secretary Kerry repeatedly 

to include human rights, and he has not done so. It is only the nuclear issue, and that is not going very well either. 

If you could perhaps speak to the minimalist effort that I believe 

has been expended. I mean, the President, if he has time for golf 

and time for all of the other things that he engages in that would 

be called recreational, he should pick up the phone and call some 

top leadership. Maybe he wouldn’t want to talk to al-Bashir. He is 

an indicted war criminal, and I met with him in the year 2005 with 

Greg Simpkins, and we had more of an argument than a conversation. But pick up the phone and say, ‘‘We want these Americans 

to come back.’’ That is not a heavy lift. And the same goes to Secretary Kerry and others, to be in contact with them. 

What is your thought on that? It seems to me that they measure 

the prioritization of administration by how up the chain of command they are admonished and even demanded of. What is your 

thoughts on that? Dr. Jasser? 

Dr. JASSER. Thank you, Chairman Smith. You know, I think 

from the perspective of a commission focused on religious liberty, 

one of the reasons for our existence is that we hope to push the 

needle to emphasize the importance that the focus—the current 

focus, regardless of what the motivation is—and I can’t speak for 

how the State Department chooses its priorities, but, you know, if 

you look at the situation in Sudan, the violence that they have 

56

tried to address, which has been the centerpiece of their current 

focus, is trying to address the violence in places within the states 

of Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile, et cetera. It has failed. We have 

not done anything to address that. Why? Because one of the primary, if not the primary, reason for that violence is the use of religious repression and institutionalized mechanisms through Sharia 

law and other ways that have prevented religious freedom. 

And if that became—if religious liberty became a focus, we may 

then start to make some headways in an embryonic fashion with 

various cases like Meriam’s and others that would begin to show 

that we are not only looking to stop the symptom, which is violence, but the causes, which is the lack of religious freedom and 

whatever tools, whether it be, you know, draconian Sharia law or 

places like North Korea that are just repressive prisons of governments, the bottom line is that the prevention of religious freedom, 

as we know in our history, is the first freedom for a reason. 

And, you know, I think that ultimately that needs to become a 

centerpiece of American foreign policy, and we think it will then 

change and move the needle to decrease violence. And as we have 

seen, as Mr. Perkins mentioned earlier, across the world from Iraq 

with ISIS and other places, it is not a coincidence that religiously 

violent organizations are beginning to fill this vacuum. And that 

vacuum needs to be filled with something else, and it can only be 

filled with the idea of religious liberty, I believe, as a step toward 

a solution. 

Mr. PERKINS. Mr. Chairman, I think the State Department has 

been busy aggressively pursuing its values and human rights priorities, which have not included religious liberty. They have been exerting pressure upon foreign governments to abide by their values 

and their views, which are in large part inconsistent with the majority of Americans. And I think because of that, when we are talking about pushing the LGBT agenda on foreign governments and 

making that a priority at the State Department, religious liberty 

has suffered as a result. 

That has been a higher priority for this administration rather 

than a foundational principle upon which this nation is rooted in, 

and, as we have talked about, the economic success of other nations 

have benefitted from. So I think what we are creating by our negligence is greater world instability. 

Now, to verify that, all you have to do is pick up the newspaper, 

and the world is imploding. And what is this administration doing? 

Scant, little, when it comes to these core value issues that guarantee the freedom and protection of not just American citizens, but 

the value of human life in general and this fundamental principle 

of religious liberty. I think the administration is very busy, but not 

about the people’s business. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Ambassador Rees? 

Ambassador REES. I do want to put in a good word for some of 

the people who work on these issues in our Government, including 

in the State Department. I said earlier that I think it took a while 

for the bureaucracy, if you will, to warm to this issue the way they 

did to trafficking. Trafficking, very early after the passage of the 

57

Act, which the State Department opposed, they decided to implement it, and they implemented it vigorously. 

The International Religious Freedom Act, you could tell the first 

few years they weren’t very vigorous. And when I was in the State 

Department, I mean, a week didn’t go by that we didn’t get a 

memo telling us to do something, a cable telling us to do something 

about trafficking. We didn’t get those about religious freedom nearly as often. 

I meet with State Department officials. I do a lot of work on 

Southeast Asia, and I meet with—both with the regional bureau 

and with the human rights bureau, the DRL (Democracy, Human 

Rights, and Labor), and with some other bureaus. And in recent 

years I have sensed that the people in DRL at least really do take 

these issues seriously, and they really do know more about chapter 

and verse of what is happening to Montagnard Protestants in Vietnam, and what is happening to Hoa Hao Buddhists in Vietnam, 

than they did a few years ago. 

And so I think the legislation is working. The work that you are 

doing, that Congress is doing, to highlight these issues, the work 

that the Commission is doing—I don’t know if the Commission has 

had the same experience, but I think there was real hostility to the 

Commission a few years ago within the Department. 

I think there are still people in the regional bureaus in particular 

who, as I said earlier, see their job as having a good relationship 

with these other governments. And we all hear about knock-down, 

drag-out battles within the Department where the Democracy Bureau, the Ambassador for Religious Freedom, may recommend that 

a certain country be a CPC, and the Embassy in that country, the 

U.S. Embassy in that country and the regional bureau come back 

with everything they have got and they manage to defeat that. But 

that happens in trafficking as well. That is just one of the realities 

of working in institutions is that they are not monolithic. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Ismail? 

Mr. ISMAIL. Thank you, Chairman Smith. In my view, humbly I 

would say freedom is indivisible. And the people of Sudan, they 

don’t have freedom, period. There is no freedom of speech. There 

is no freedom of assembly. There is no freedom to choose your religion. There is no freedom to choose anything. 

What we want in Sudan is that the rest of the world, including 

or spearheaded by the United States, helping us gain the freedom 

of the people of Sudan. Freedom, as it is, indivisible. Freedom in 

everything. That is not available today. What we need to do with 

this government, this honorable institution, is to push the Government of Sudan to change or else. 

We have to say in the loudest voice that this government needs 

to open up. We need more democratization in Sudan. We need to 

give the freedom of the people of Sudan to choose their government, to choose whoever they want to represent them, to choose 

their religion, and to have absolute choice on everything. 

Without that, we are going—maybe pushing just for religious 

freedom or maybe for freedom of speech, and the other freedoms 

will be curtailed, and we have a freedom that is not complete. I 

think the people of Sudan deserve better. They deserve to live like 

58

the rest of people in the world, with dignity and with respect to 

their rights. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Ismail, just ask you a question. It would seem 

to me that in any dictatorship or authoritarian government there 

is always people, even within the government, who could be called 

reformers. Very often, they stay quiet for obvious reasons. We saw 

it after Tiananmen Square. There were a number of people, including in the People’s Daily, who showed themselves. They thought 

things were changing, and unfortunately, when things didn’t, they 

found themselves in prison or in the Laogai as a direct result. 

I believe there is at least some tug of war going on in Khartoum 

between some people who would like reform and those who do not. 

My hope is that if we start putting clear lines of demarcation, and 

the international community, and especially the U.S. Government, 

ratchets up significantly the importance—when I met with President al-Bashir, he spent most of his time talking about lifting the 

sanctions. 

And I said, ‘‘That is not hard to do. There are conditionalities attached which have everything to do with respecting fundamental 

human rights and protecting the value and the dignity of life. And 

those sanctions are a goner when that happens.’’

We need to ratchet up, I think. And I think, Mr. Perkins, your 

point about other issues becoming prioritized, frankly, I have been 

shocked and dismayed by how many Ambassadors and foreign 

leaders have told me to my face that the LGBT agenda is what 

trumps everything in the U.S. foreign policy. So religious freedom, 

in a way, is seen as an impediment to the advancement of that. 

And even the former head of the UNFPA, Dr. Sadik, when it 

came to the abortion issue, said that the last remaining barrier to 

promoting the culture of death worldwide was churches and synagogues and mosques, who believe in the sanctity of human life, including unborn children. 

So there is a tension, I think, within the State Department. I 

know that DRL has pushed that issue to the exclusion of most everything else. And Secretary Clinton’s statement to the Human 

Rights Council a couple of years ago couldn’t be more clear, that 

that was the priority, to the exclusion, I believe, of most everything 

else. 

So it is a very, very important issue, because now we are seeing 

how it demonstrates on the ground when a woman of faith is neglected, at least for several months, and I would say mistreated, as 

well as her children and her husband. You know, as I think Ambassador Rees said recently, they are doing things that we all can 

be proud of, but at first there was—and why did that—why did it 

take an outcry by Members of Congress, Members of the U.S. Senate, religious freedom NGOs, and others, to bring a focus upon 

this? It seems wrong to me that it takes that kind of pressure just 

to do the right thing. 

So if you wanted to speak to any of that, and then I think you 

have some concluding remarks as well. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well, I want to thank the chairman for his words. 

They have actually called votes. We have got just a few minutes 

left, and I want to—this is defining day. It is a defining day for 

America. Are we willing to stand up and say enough is enough? 

59

And I thank each of you for being here today to take time from 

your busy schedule. 

But it is also a defining day for Sudan. They have a choice to 

make. Either to make a decision that will hopefully provide a foundation for moving forward or to make another decision that could 

cause irreparable harm to the relationship going forward. 

And so with that, we pray for Meriam’s safe arrival in the United 

States, and I thank each of you, and we will adjourn. 

[Whereupon, at 4:29 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY ZUHDI JASSER, M.D., COMMISSIONER, 

UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM


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