[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 66 (Tuesday, May 24, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: May 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE EXPLOITED IN CHINA AS PRESIDENT CLINTON CODDLES
THEIR OPPRESSORS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
February 11, 1994, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith] is
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, for the last year and a half
one foreign affairs crisis after another has burst onto the world
stage, and this administration always seems to be unprepared,
indecisive, and sadly lacking principle.
This morning I want to highlight but one example of how Mr. Clinton's
foreign policy is in disarray. Mr. Clinton arrived in Washington 16
months ago, and his penchant for obfuscation and indecision is causing
people around the globe to question and to lose faith in the ability of
the United States to stand firm for what is right, for what is
honorable and true, to fight even for our own national interests and to
base decisions on a consistent human rights agenda.
United States relations with China is but one example. Mr. Clinton
has failed, in my view, to even hold to his own words regarding respect
for human rights.
The White House has become a Tower of Babel, and as we look back over
the past year, we saw many voices speaking, sometimes pro-human rights
linkage, sometimes against it. At other times they only emphasized
certain human rights, diminishing the others. When you take it all
together, the White House has been a virtual Tower of Babel speaking
with so many tongues.
This is also true in the area of the population control program in
the People's Republic of China, one of the most heinous crimes being
committed against women today, crimes of gender, crimes against women,
the exploitation of women, and yet this administration has not only
been silent, paying only lip service to it, but its actions have spoken
much louder in the opposite direction.
Madam Speaker, each year population control fanatics in China
forcibly abort about 10 million children, and that is each year, out of
approximately 13 million annual Chinese abortions. That is as many
children per year as the combined totals of the entire populations of
Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Forced abortion, properly construed to be a crime against humanity at
the Nuremberg war crimes trials, is today employed with chilling
effectiveness and unbearable pain, especially against women. Women in
China are required to obtain a birth coupon, because conceiving a child
is out of bounds if she is not given permission by the Government.
The New York Times pointed out in its April 25, 1993 expose that when
the Chinese authorities discover an unauthorized pregnancy, in other
words, an illegal pregnancy, they normally apply a daily dose of
threats and browbeating. Those who resist are often assessed massive
fines, and many times, this is many times, their per-capita income.
Peasants in many provinces say their homes are routinely knocked down
if the fines are not paid, the Times reported.
Clearly the population gestapo and their use of coercion wears down
many women. They finally give up, because they cannot fight back. They
know they cannot win. And yet this administration has not stood by
those women.
In December 1993, the Chinese Government also issued a draft eugenics
law which would nationalize discrimination against the handicapped,
much of which is already in effect at the provincial level. Taking a
page right out of Nazi Germany, the Chinese Government is aggressively
implementing forced abortion against handicapped children simply
because they may be suffering from some anomaly like Down's syndrome.
When the rest of the world moves to protect the rights and dignity of
handicapped persons, China is seeking ways to exterminate them. Sadly,
again, the Clinton administration has turned its back on this massive
exploitation of women and of children.
Syndicated columnist Bob Novak in yesterday's Washington Post
provided a very, very distressing insight into this daily occurrence.
He points out:
On April 25, Alan Lin, a Chinese immigrant working for a
bank in Concord, California, called Senator Dianne
Feinstein's office pleading for help. His 5-months-pregnant
wife in China faced abortion demanded by the Communist
authorities. Could the Senator prod the INS to grant a visa?
As the story goes on to say, and I urge Members to read this, it goes
on to say that he, on behalf of his wife, was met with deaf ears on
behalf of or by the Senator from California and also, sadly to say, by
the administration.
Madam Speaker, I am including that newspaper article at this point in
the Record as follows:
[From the Washington Post, May 23, 1994]
Forced Abortion in China
(By Robert D. Novak)
On April 28, Alan Wanrong Lin, a Chinese immigrant working
for a bank in Concord, Calif., called the San Francisco
office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein pleading for help. His five-
months pregnant wife in China faced an abortion demanded by
Communist authorities. Could the senator prod the Immigration
and Naturalization Service bureaucrats to grant Mrs. Lin a
visa to enter the United States?
According to a memo Lin typed at 8 o'clock the next
morning, David Swerdlick, the Democratic senator's case
officer, ``told me not to waste time.'' The aide was quoted
as saying: ``The senator is not interested in the birth-
control policies in another country.''
Lin said Swerdlick wanted him to ``give up,'' adding: ``He
make me feel like that I am fighting against the senator and
the president, but I only want to fight the inhuman Chinese
government.'' Fearing the Chinese would order a ``delayed
abortion to kill my wife,'' he told her to succumb. The baby
was aborted that day, April 29.
This abortion, one of millions forced by China's draconian
birth-control policy, shows what happens in official U.S.
circles when human rights and abortion rights collide. The
administration and its congressional allies threaten to sever
trading relations with China if it does not treat its
citizens more kindly, but they flinch from an antiabortion
posture.
It is a dilemma for well-intended liberals such as
Feinstein: how to press China for a more humane treatment of
its citizens while maintaining noninterference with abortion
policies around the world.
Feinstein on Feb. 1 voted to continue pressing for human-
rights progress in China. ``Some would say,'' she said,
``that human rights are a matter of a country's internal
affairs. However, I believe we are our brother's keepers.''
But Feinstein has introduced a bill to repeal Section 4 of
President Bush's Executive Order No. 12711, of Jan. 29, 1990.
She proposed ending ``enhanced consideration'' for
immigration of persons fleeing a country because of ``forced
abortion or coerced sterilization.'' Actually, under
President Clinton, Bush's mandate has not been complied
with--as Lin soon found out.
His wife is 22 years old--one year too young to suit Fujian
Province requirements for a ``birth license.'' To avoid a
forced abortion, she went into hiding in Fuzhou City while
awaiting a U.S. visa--a process that will take at least
another year. To escape Chinese birth-control police, the
Lins asked for her immediate entry on a ``humanitarian
parole.''
On April 4, 15 Democratic and 37 Republican congressmen
wrote Attorney General Janet Reno pleading for help. GOP Rep.
Christopher Smith tried repeatedly to get the attorney
general on the telephone.
On April 25, the INS district director in Bangkok denied
the Lins' request on grounds it was not based on ``emergency
conditions.''
After I noted on television May 7 the Feinstein office's
treatment of the Lins, the senator expressed shock. Her case
worker denied to his superior the words attributed to him by
Lin.
On May 10 Feinstein wrote Lin regretting that ``my staff
did not bring your plea to my attention'' and added this
postscript in her own hand: ``I am so sorry!''
On May 11, she wrote Secretary of State Warren Christopher,
Reno and INS Commissioner Doris Meissner. Calling the
abortion a ``personal tragedy,'' Feinstein said: ``The
suffering they have endured will never be erased, but the
United States can still act now to bring them together
immediately.''
U.S. authorities blame the Lins for their own misery.
``We did not believe that this would have been required by
the Fuzhou City government authorities,'' Assistant Attorney
General Sheila F. Anthony argued. ``We regret that Mr. and
Mrs. Lin determined that she should undergo the abortion.''
But Steven W. Mosher, an authority on Chinese birth-control
methods, denies U.S. government arguments that no abortion
would have been forced. He contends that ``coercion is not
limited to a handful of offending provinces or officials but
is found throughout China.'' Feinstein's letter to Lin noted
that ``your wife underwent surgery to terminate her pregnancy
as ordered by the Chinese government.''
``I still feel that there are still a lot of nice and
humanitarian people,'' Lin wrote, ``* * * even though [they
are] weaker than the evil power.'' What is hard for him to
understand is how the officials of his new country could
tolerate the evil.
{time} 1050
I tried repeatedly to get Attorney General Janet Reno on the phone to
ask, to plead that this poor woman with a 5-month-old baby in her womb,
that she be given a humanitarian parole. She was already approved for a
visa. Already approved. It was a matter of expediting the timetable.
She was turned down. This administration could not care less.
Madam Speaker, there are many, many examples of how this
administration has turned its back on Chinese women. The Justice
Department has suppressed a Bush administration regulation that would
have provided enhanced consideration for others seeking asylum. It has
doubled the amount of money, provided $100 million to the United
Nations Population Fund [UNFPA], an organization that has a hand-in-
glove relationship with the Chinese Government.
I suggest that my colleagues ask themselves the following question:
If you were a Chinese leader witnessing these actions, would you take
the administration's professed concern about human rights in China
seriously?
The continued coercive measures used to enforce the population
control program and the eugenics policy, which scholars from the United
States Holocaust Museum have likened to Nazi-era programs and which
would target the most vulnerable members of Chinese society, have
failed to arouse any meaningful response from the Clinton
administration. Sure, the Secretary of State has said that he is
appalled by news reports of these atrocities but lip-service is not
enough. I truly believe that it is fair to ask whether President
Clinton is genuinely concerned about the rampant practices of forced
and eugenic abortion in China.
None of us can close our eyes to, squint, or in any way downplay or
overlook the abysmal human rights record of the People's Republic of
China. Let us be candid, China has been and remains a dictatorship--its
leaders routinely and cruelly violate the rights of its citizens and
the trend is ominously moving in precisely the wrong direction. The
United States Department of State in the annual Country Report on Human
Rights Practices says that China's ``overall human rights record in
1993 fell far short of internationally accepted norms''--not just
short, far short.
In the face of this ongoing repression, the Chinese Government is
getting mixed signals from the Clinton administration regarding its
seriousness about human rights. We are certainly not getting a mixed
message from the People's Republic of China. The human rights record of
that country has continued to decline in the past year. Not only that,
the Chinese Government has chosen times and opportunities to show their
contempt for United States commitment to human rights which have been
most embarrassing.
Madam Speaker, during my visit to China in January I attended a Mass
celebrated by Bishop Su Zhi Ming. Bishop Su has spent 15 years in
Chinese prisons and suffers physical disability because of the
beatings, torture, and mistreatment at the hands of security police.
Shortly after our visit, on January 20, the very day that Secretary
Bentsen was in China discussing the future of United States-Sino
relations, Bishop Su was arrested and detained for 9 days. He was
interrogated at length about his meeting with us. His crime--leading a
worship service for foreigners.
Bishop Pei was also to say Mass for our delegation. We were told that
he had to go for an emergency anointing of the sick. I have recently
found out that the person who came to get him was actually a security
officer who took Bishop Pei to the police offices so that he could not
say Mass for our delegation.
Another Catholic priest, Father Wei Jingyi, was also arrested on
January 20. His whereabouts are unknown. Even now, the authorities deny
he is being detained, although they have accepted clothing for him from
his sister. According to information I received, it is believed that he
is being held because of his position in the underground Catholic
Church and that the Government is trying to obtain information from
him.
New religious laws which further restrict the religious activity of
foreigners and Chinese were issued on January 28. These laws outlaw
activities even done in the privacy of one's home and give the green
light to security policy to arrest, imprison, and torture religious
believers. The police have already moved to enforce these laws. One
victim has been Rev. Dennis Balcombe, an American citizen, who was
detained for 4 days, unable to contact the U.S. Embassy. Before he was
finally deported, all of his belongings were confiscated.
All religious believers in China are asking for is the ability to
worship freely and openly. Right now those who do not belong to the
government-sponsored churches have no place to worship, many of them
are denied housing and work permits, and countless numbers are
harassed, detained, tortured--and some have been martyred for their
faith.
The U.S. Government needs to speak out clearly, consistently and
unequivocally about these deplorable abuses of fundamental human
rights. In addition, we need ot take action which conveys our
seriousness about these issues. The constant vacillation by the Clinton
administration--not only toward China but throughout the world--
severely undermines our ability to bring about improvements in these
tragic human rights conditions.
Madam Speaker, this administration has failed to create a coherent
foreign policy. The President's decisionmaking process results in
confusion--confusion among U.S. policymakers, confusion among our
allies, and the exploitation of that confusion by our adversaries. When
foreign policy is in such disarray, people throughout the world lose.
Most serious of all, Madam Speaker, the American people lose.
____________________