; Whereas the 2017 Annual Report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) found that in 2016 the Government of Azerbaijan increased its repression of independent religious activity, closing Sunni mosques, raiding religious bookshops, and harassing Jehovah’s Witnesses and certain Protestant communities ; Whereas, as of September 1, 2017, more than 90 prisoners of conscience are in jail for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of religion and assembly; Whereas the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act authorizes the United States Government to deny travel visas and freeze the United States-based assets of foreign government officials responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights or ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing, acts of significant corruption ; and Whereas the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 authorizes the United States Government to deny travel visas to any foreign government official responsible for particularly severe violations of religious freedom , including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; prolonged detention without charges; causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction or clandestine detention of those persons; or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons : Now, therefore, be it