December 16, 2024
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)
483 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Rubio,
We are an informal coalition of organizations, religious and secular leaders, advocates, and scholars dedicated to the protection of individuals worldwide imprisoned for their faith or beliefs, and to securing their freedom. We write to congratulate you on your nomination to Secretary of State, and to thank you for your tireless advocacy while in the Senate on behalf of prisoners of conscience. Through your advocacy, including your #ExpressionNotOppression campaign, you have helped to free prisoners globally and strengthen the rights of all people to live out their faith. We ask that, if confirmed, you use your leadership position and all tools available to you to highlight the plight of religious prisoners of conscience and work to free Them.
All around the world, individuals are unjustly imprisoned for no other reason than for peacefully expressing their faith or beliefs. People like Nigerian Sufi Muslim Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, who has been imprisoned for nearly five years on allegations of “blasphemy” and who faces the death penalty only because he shared song lyrics over social media. Or like Abdulbaqi Saeed Abdo and Nour Girgis, Christian converts detained for years in Egypt on false terrorism allegations, seemingly only for their affiliation with a Facebook group that was a forum for theological discussions with other Christian converts. Or like the dozens of Ahmadis and Christians arrested and imprisoned regularly in Pakistan on blasphemy and related charges.
All of them, and many, many others, remain in prison to this day and need the strongest voices, such as yours, to put pressure on governments to release them and to cease the persecution.
Senator Rubio, your work and dedication to prisoners of conscience has led to freedom for prisoners all around the world, from Nicaragua to Algeria, from Iran to China and Vietnam, and elsewhere. We have gratefully considered you a friend to the voiceless and powerless, and one of the most effective leaders in bringing justice for the oppressed.
If confirmed as Secretary of State, we ask that you use your platform to give an even greater voice to those who languish hidden away behind bars only because of their faith or beliefs. We ask that you use all available tools to ensure that those unjustly imprisoned for their faith around the world are freed. We know that advocacy for the unjustly imprisoned has been a personal priority for you, and we are confident that, through your leadership, it will be a foreign policy priority of the United States.
We thank you, again, for your tireless efforts throughout your career on behalf of the persecuted and imprisoned, particularly those imprisoned and persecuted for their faith or beliefs, and look forward to working with you to secure religious freedom in the years to come.
Sincerely,
