[Congressional Bills 113th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 327 Introduced in House (IH)]

113th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 327

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding China's 
     membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             August 2, 2013

 Mr. Bentivolio submitted the following resolution; which was referred 
                  to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding China's 
     membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Whereas the United States endorsed the Charter of the United Nations and the 
        Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is a party to the Convention 
        Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political 
        Rights, and other relevant human rights instruments;
Whereas the People's Republic of China has ratified or signed the Convention 
        against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or 
        Punishment, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 
        and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;
Whereas all United Nations Member States have an obligation to promote and 
        protect human rights and fundamental freedoms and the duty to fulfill 
        the obligations they have undertaken under the various international 
        instruments in this field;
Whereas the People's Republic of China has continually flouted its obligations 
        under those instruments, by actions such as its pervasive use of 
        torture, extra-judicial execution, slave labor, cultural degradation, 
        and routine refoulement of refugees from North Korea despite the extreme 
        likelihood that they will suffer torture and other inhuman treatment, in 
        violation of China's obligations as a signatory of the Convention 
        Against Torture;
Whereas General Assembly Resolution 60/251 of March 15, 2006, states that the 
        United Nations General Assembly may suspend the rights of membership in 
        the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) of any member of the 
        Council that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights, 
        which manifests the incompatibility of such a United Nations Member 
        State and membership on the UNHRC;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China continues to unlawfully 
        imprison and abuse Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, and hold his 
        wife Liu Xia under harsh house arrest;
Whereas the People's Republic of China has ``disappeared'' and severely 
        mistreated prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who went missing 
        while in the custody of public security officials in February 2009, and 
        is now imprisoned in China;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China brutalized and 
        imprisoned blind, human rights attorney Chen Guancheng, who is now 
        living free in the United States only because of strong demands for his 
        liberty by both the United States Department of State and Congress, 
        while China continues to abuse, incarcerate, or prosecute his innocent 
        relatives, such as his nephew Chen Kegui;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China imprisons, tortures, 
        intimidates, and harasses individuals of various faiths for peacefully 
        practicing their chosen religion, including members of the Protestant 
        and Catholic faiths, such as Ms. Yang Rongli, leader of a persecuted 
        Protestant ``house church'', who is serving an 8-year sentence for 
        ``assembling a mob'', and Uyghur religious leader Abdukerim Abduveli;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China, in its campaign to 
        ``reform'' practitioners of Falun Gong and to entirely extinguish that 
        religion systematically uses long imprisonment, torture, and other 
        inhumane treatment of practitioners and their family members, often 
        resulting in death, ``solely because of adherence to their personal 
        beliefs'', as stated in the prior near-unanimous 2010 House Resolution 
        605, including Cao Dong, who has been detained on 4 separate occasions 
        for a total of 10 years, and has been tortured severely during that 
        time, and Dr. Charles Lee, a United States citizen who was released 
        after years of imprisonment and torture only because of pressure by 
        United States officials and human rights groups;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China brutally represses the 
        cultural, educational, linguistic, and religious rights of ethnic 
        minorities, using torture, beatings, imprisonment, and inhumane 
        treatment, as illustrated by its violent actions against Uyghurs, 
        Mongols, such as Mr. Hada, who is still detained after serving an 
        unlawful 15-year sentence and whose wife and son recently have been 
        ``disappeared'', and against Tibetans, such as Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a 
        monk sentenced to life imprisonment, which persecution has, in the case 
        of Tibetans, also induced numerous desperate monks to self-immolate;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China systematically denies 
        its citizens freedom of expression and has incarcerated at least 24 
        Chinese journalists, including Uyghur journalist Gheyret Niyaz, who was 
        sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for publishing articles and giving 
        an interview criticizing government persecution;
Whereas hundreds of thousands of Chinese dissidents and political prisoners have 
        suffered from the Government of the People's Republic of China's use of 
        illegal forms of detention, including prolonged isolation through house 
        arrest without legal grounds, detention in unofficial ``black prisons'', 
        incarceration without medical basis in ``psychiatric institutions'', and 
        forced participation in brutal ``re-education programs'';
Whereas the United States Department of State has designated the People's 
        Republic of China as a ``Country of Particular Concern'' in regard to 
        human rights violations every single year since 1999, including its 
        consistent reporting of such violations in China, and in special 
        sections on Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau;
Whereas the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has 
        continuously reported China's systematic and egregious violations of 
        religious freedom, and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 
        has constantly found, and continues to find, systematic and gross 
        violations of human rights by China;
Whereas independent human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, 
        Freedom House, and Human Rights Watch have all documented similar 
        horrific human rights violations by the People's Republic of China;
Whereas many of the human rights violations committed by the Government of the 
        People's Republic of China are also in violation of its own constitution 
        and statutes, which have often been subordinated to such catch-all 
        statutes as section 105 of China's criminal code for ``incitement to 
        subvert state power'', a law that is improperly used by China's 
        repressive regime, and which provisions also are undermined by more 
        recent enactments of criminal procedure laws depriving accused persons 
        of fair trial on false charges;
Whereas during its previous membership on the UNHRC, the People's Republic of 
        China repeatedly opposed and tried to impede efforts supported by the 
        United States to effectively monitor or reduce human rights abuses in 
        other countries;
Whereas when the People's Republic of China submitted its last required self-
        assessment of its claimed compliance with its obligations under the 
        Convention Against Torture, that report was roundly disputed by 
        international human rights groups as to its accuracy and omissions;
Whereas the UNHRC's Universal Periodic Review, in which all United Nations 
        Member States must participate, is based upon the Member's compliance 
        with its obligations and commitments under the United Nations Charter, 
        the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other human rights 
        instruments to which it is a party;
Whereas the State Under Review has the responsibility to implement all 
        recommendations contained in the final review report, but the UNHRC's 
        Mid-Term Implementation Assessment indicated that the People's Republic 
        of China had failed to implement 71 of the 138 UNHRC recommendations 
        from its initial 2009 Universal Periodic Review for China;
Whereas the above-mentioned human rights violations and the many others 
        systematically inflicted by the Government of the People's Republic of 
        China, as well as its prior efforts to undermine the work of the Council 
        and to hinder the Committee Against Torture, are blatantly incompatible 
        with membership on the UNHRC;
Whereas United States policy acknowledges that the United States and China have 
        overlapping interests to pursue cooperatively, but also acknowledges the 
        United States' obligation to stand up for universal human rights and to 
        speak out against their brutal repression;
Whereas in the past, the United States has been able to negotiate arms control 
        and trade agreements with other countries while continuing to press them 
        for human rights reform;
Whereas the House of Representatives acknowledges the United States friendship 
        with the Chinese people and the goal of pursuing shared national 
        interests in combating true terrorism, promoting economic stability, and 
        the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, but also remains gravely 
        concerned about these gross and systematic violations of human rights by 
        the Government of the People's Republic of China;
Whereas countries that have openly confronted the human rights abuse by the 
        People's Republic of China, such as Norway, which awarded the Nobel 
        Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo over China's strong objection, Australia, 
        which sharply criticized its treatment of Tibetans, and the European 
        Union, which condemned human rights abuse in China at the UNHRC 
        meetings, all subsequently enjoyed marked trade increases with China;
Whereas the currently publicized ``reforms'' in the People's Republic of China, 
        involve reforms of economic and governmental institutions or minor legal 
        procedural improvements, but there is no indication that they will 
        extend to meaningful reform of human rights protection, and, in fact, 
        those reforms have been accompanied by intensified repression of human 
        rights;
Whereas the most recent instance of such intensified repression is a blatantly 
        unfounded prosecution and severe 11-year sentence of Mr. Liu Hui, simply 
        because he is a brother-in-law of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, 
        which, coming right after the summit between China's President Xi 
        Jinping and President Barack Obama, was a defiant rebuke to the United 
        States;
Whereas even the recent discussion in China of ``reform'' of so-called ``re-
        education labor camps'' is confined to punitive treatment of petty 
        criminals and protesters about personal economic disputes, rather than 
        including the pervasive illegal detention of religious practitioners and 
        ethnic or human rights protestors;
Whereas although a number of current UNHRC members, and prospective candidates 
        for it, have blemished human rights records, the scope and intensity of 
        human rights violations by a major country like the People's Republic of 
        China is so great that opposition to its renewed membership would send a 
        strong signal to those other countries to change their behavior as well;
Whereas the United States has previously opposed the candidacy of other 
        countries for membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council 
        because they had committed pervasive violations of human rights, and has 
        recently expressed strong opposition to the candidacies of Iran and 
        Syria because of their human rights records;
Whereas the United States, at the urging of the Congress, has previously helped 
        to improve the effectiveness and credibility of the UNHRC; and
Whereas United States opposition to the People's Republic of China's rejoining 
        the Council would be consistent with the congressional tradition of 
        supporting the United Nations while helping it to achieve one of its 
        main goals, namely, the protection of human rights: Now, therefore, be 
        it
    Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives 
that--
            (1) the United States Government should strongly oppose and 
        vote against the People's Republic of China regaining 
        membership in the United Nations Council on Human Rights 
        (UNHRC) and encourage other members to similarly vote against 
        its election; and
            (2) the United States Government should encourage a 
        suitably qualified member to stand for election, under the 
        UNHRC procedures, as alternate candidates from the Asia-Pacific 
        region.
                                 <all>