Katrina Lantos Swett

I think that it is a very flimsy excuse for not funding technologies that enable vast numbers of people to access the internet freely.

The progress of freedom requires courage, it requires people in extraordinarily difficult circumstances who are willing to put their safety, their well-being on the line.

It offends me that as a result of exercising my right to free speech by writing a book, it has been necessary to take these steps to protect myself from an authoritarian foreign power.

We cannot entirely protect, we can't basically protect people in China or in any other country where they are being brutally repressed.

Any independent religious expression is targeted in China . . . unless practitioners of whatever faith basically submit to government-controlled religious organizations and religious worship, they are at risk of becoming a target.

I think one thing we need to be prepared to do as a government is raise the refugee resettlement quotas for some of these horribly targeted communities in the region of, you know, Iraq, in particular, the area that ISIL has taken over in…

When you have societies that repress, oppress, persecute on the basis of sectarianism and religion, you create the seedbed for extremism...

I do think probably the single most significant thing that could be done to make IRFA a more effective piece of legislation...

We cannot go back. After what happened to us, after the way we saw our neighbors, neighbors going back generation upon generation, either turn against us or fail to defend us in any meaningful way, we cannot rebuild our lives there.

We are concerned that the designations that have been made in the past simply become... part of the wallpaper that nobody pays attention to.

Unfortunately, the appalling treatment of Pastor Abedini reflects the dismal reality of religious freedom and human rights in Iran today.