[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 93 (Thursday, June 8, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1181]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


 HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN CHINA: MILLIONS SUFFER WHILE THE GOVERNMENT IS 
                 REWARDED BY THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION

                                 ______


                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 7, 1995
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, two significant events marking 
the tragic human rights record of the People's Republic of China must 
not be allowed to pass without this body pausing to remember the 
victims in China who are not allowed to speak out for themselves 
without fear of persecution, imprisonment, torture, and death. There 
are even those victims who will never have the opportunity to cry out 
for their lives.
  On June 1, the Maternal and Infantile Health Care Law went into 
effect in the People's Republic of China. This law, though titled a 
``health care'' policy, is nothing short of Nazi-style eugenics policy 
added to an already oppressive, nonvoluntary, coercive one-child-per-
couple family planning policy being implemented in China.
  China's coercive population control policy is already well known and 
is a crime against women. Xiaorong Li, the vice-chair of Human Rights 
in China's Executive Committee and a research fellow at the Institute 
of Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland recently 
wrote: ``In assessing the population policy, the unfair burdens that 
women have been made to bear in recent history for mistaken national 
policies must not be ignored * * * If China faces a population crisis, 
is it just to make women (and children) primarily bear the cost of 
reducing birth rates?'' She goes on to note that ``75 percent of urban 
women would like to have two children, but most settled for having one 
child to avoid losing subsidies, housing, medical care, retirement 
benefits, and even their jobs. Rural women seem to suffer more from 
pressures of all kinds * * * to evade the quotas set by the policy and 
produce more, preferably male, babies. They alone have to endure 
abortions in the 7th and 8th months of pregnancy, use IUD's, take the 
pill, get sterilized, bear the children, and suffer the health 
consequences of all these things. In most cases, they alone are 
punished for their extra-quota births, having to escape the harassment 
of family planning workers, lying about their pregnancies, and eluding 
the teams sent to take them for abortions and sterilizations.''
  The new law goes even further than setting quotas, it is aimed at 
ensuring that parents can have a perfect child, according to Sun 
Nianfu, senior obstetrician at Beijing's Capital Hospital. To this end, 
the law prohibits marriage between people if one of them has a serious 
hereditary disease, which is medically deemed unsuitable for 
reproduction unless the couple would agree to take long lasting 
contraceptive measures or give up childbearing by undergoing tubal 
ligation. Further, the law indicates that when a woman is determined to 
be carrying a child that may have serious hereditary diseases or have a 
serious deformity, the pregnancy should be terminated.
  What will this mean for the people of China? According to one report 
``couples discovered to have a genetic predisposition toward conditions 
like diabetes, mild retardation, or even rheumatoid arthritis * * * 
could be forced by the government's medical establishment to abort 
their child.'' The law, so vague in its definition of serious diseases 
would allow the government and medical officials to determine in each 
case which people may get married, which couples may have children, 
which children may be born.
  Three days after the eugenics law went into effect, on June 4, the 
world remembered the brave men and women who filled Tiananmen Square 6 
years ago calling for democratic reform and greater freedoms. 
Tragically, that peaceful protest, watched by millions the world over, 
turned violent when the government ordered military troops into 
Tiananmen Square and opened fire on peaceful, unarmed citizens.
  Hundreds were killed. The Chinese Government has never given an 
accounting of the exact number. More were rounded up and imprisoned. 
Many of these peaceful protesters remain in Chinese prison, many of 
them are imprisoned in labor camps, where they are forced to 
participate in China's slave labor system, producing items exported to 
the United States under the administration's tragic trade policy which 
sacrifices human lives and dignity on the altar of the dollar. On 
Friday the President once again renewed MFN with China, while paying 
lip service to the human rights situation in China. While unborn 
children are being called undesirable, while women are forced to 
undergo coerced abortions and sterilizations, while hundreds of 
political dissidents are imprisoned and their voices silenced, the 
government which inflicts there horrors on the people is rewarded.
  Mr. Speaker, fortunately there are others who have more integrity. 
And these people are paying a high price for standing up for human 
rights. Several appeals, signed by dozens of China's leading 
intellectuals have been issued calling for a commemoration of the 
Tiananmen Square victims and the release of those who are still 
detained for their participation in the peaceful protests. Some of 
those who have signed the petitions have been arrested, including Wang 
Dan, the 26-year-old former student leader at Tiananmen Square. Others 
arrested include Wang Xizhe who was imprisoned for 12 years for his 
participation in the 1978 Democracy Wall movement, Liu Xiaobo, a 
professor, Huang Xiang, a poet, and Liu Nianchun.
  And, Mr. Speaker, we must not forget that Wei Jingsheng, the father 
of China's democracy movement was detained on April 1, 1994 and has 
vanished without a trace. He had already spent over 14 years in prison. 
He was released in September 1993 during China's bid to host the 
Olympics in the year 2000. Once this no longer served their purpose, 
Wei was picked up by authorities and has not been heard from since. At 
this point he has not been charged with any crime nor have there been 
any judicial proceedings against him.
  Mr. Speaker, today the government of China enjoys most-favored-nation 
trade status with the United States. Government officials and the 
military are reaping the rewards of unlimited trade with our Nation 
while at the same time they trample the rights, dignity, and lives of 
millions of women and men in the name of population control and 
stability.
  These victims of China's human rights abuses must not be forgotten. 
Today I honor the forgotten women and men of China, who are victims of 
Nazi-like eugenic policies, who cannot choose the number and spacing of 
their children, whose bodies are violated, whose voices are silenced, 
but whose hopes and dreams remain alive.


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