[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 24, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H778-H779]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE CHINA HOLOCAUST
(Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to address the House for 1
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, every Member should read the editorial in the
Washington Post called ``Holocaust: The China Parallel.'' It is by
Walter Reich, the director of the Holocaust Museum and the chairman of
the American Psychiatric Association's Committee on Human Rights.
What does he say?
According to the reports provided by Human Rights Watch,
the starved children in the Chinese orphanages look very much
like the starved children in the German ``Children's
Specialty Institutions''; the Chinese institutions, too,
administer sedatives to some children selected for death;
they, too, use false diagnoses as coverups; they too, cremate
the remains of starved children; and they, too, employ
physicians, many of whom probably tell themselves that the
children dying under their care would have died anyway, and
in any case are useless eaters in a country challenged by
scarce resources.
The parallels between the Chinese orphanages and the Nazi
programs to kill disabled children are alarming. These
parallels remind us that human beings, including physicians
and other caregivers, are extraordinarily vulnerable to
inhuman acts and extraordinarily capable of justifying their
behavior on what they see as rational grounds. And they
remind us that countries in which democratic institutions are
forcibly forbidden and human rights systematically quashed
are ones in which human life becomes, quite simply,
expendable.
[[Page H779]]
Finally, somebody has said something about the similarities between
the Holocaust and the activities of the Chinese Government.
Now, I know the Clinton administration will not do anything. But will
the Congress do anything? This Congress has done nothing. The business
of this Congress is business. You have watched priests put in jail in
China; you have watched bishops be put in jail in China; you have
watched Harry Wu's enslavement. Now you watch 60 Minutes and orphans
being killed, and we know the Clinton administration has done nothing,
but this Congress, this Congress, where we all have the right to speak
out, we have done nothing.
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