[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 57 (Tuesday, May 6, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H2177-H2178]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      A MESSAGE FROM WEI JINGSHENG

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, today from this center of freedom in 
this people's House, I come to raise my voice in support of a lonely 
voice for freedom halfway across the globe. I speak of Chinese 
dissident Wei Jingsheng.
  Yesterday, in a New York Times editorial notebook piece, Tina 
Rosenberg wrote an article called Letters From a Chinese Jail: The 
Blunt Demands of Wei Jingsheng. She wrote:

       For nearly 20 years, the Chinese Government has sought to 
     silence one of the world's most important political 
     prisoners, Wei Jingsheng. Once an electrician in the Beijing

[[Page H2178]]

     Zoo, Mr. Wei is the strongest voice in China's democracy 
     movement. He has spent all but six months of the last 18 
     years in prison and in labor camps, mostly in solitary 
     confinement in conditions that would have killed a less 
     stubborn man a long time ago, and may soon kill Mr. Wei, who 
     is 46 and very ill.
       Now serving his second long sentence, he is watched around 
     the clock by nonpolitical criminal prisoners who ensure that 
     he does not put pen to paper.
       But during his first imprisonment he was permitted to write 
     letters on certain topics to his family, prison authorities 
     and China's leaders. Most were never sent. But they now have 
     been translated and published. They form a remarkable body of 
     Chinese political writing.
       The book, The Courage to Stand Alone, is published by 
     Viking. It shows why the Chinese Government is so afraid of 
     Mr. Wei. His weapon is simplicity. Unlike other Chinese 
     activists, Mr. Wei does not worry about tailoring his 
     argument to his audience and does not indulge in the Chinese 
     intellectual tradition of flattering the powerful. He does 
     not worry about being seen as pro-Western, or a traitor to 
     China.
       He writes as if what is obvious to him, that China needs 
     democratic freedoms, should be clear to anyone.

  He has also been uncompromising. In 1978, Mr. Deng was fighting for 
control of the leadership and encouraged reformist thinking. Mr. Wei 
wrote a bold poster and was arrested in March 1979, given a show trial, 
and sentenced to jail for 15 years for simply writing a statement.

                              {time}  1330

  He was released 6 months before completing that sentence as part of 
China's bid to win the Olympics in the year 2000. He refused to leave 
before getting back letters the prison authorities had stolen. But once 
free, he immediately resumed his work for democracy. He was rearrested, 
and after a 20-month incommunicado imprisonment, he was sentenced to 
another 14 years.
  Today the New York Times writes that there is no visible dissent in 
China, that activists went into exile, many were arrested, and others 
just simply gave up politics and turned their talents to commerce. But 
the moral force of his writing recalls the prison letters from other 
famous dissidents such as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letters from the 
Birmingham Jail, Michnik's Letters From Prison, and Havel's Letters to 
Olga. He is not a man of many words, and he was probably not writing 
with an eye to publication. But the most important thing that these 
other political dissidents had that Mr. Wei does not have is widespread 
international support.
  All over the world dissidents look out for others to see that 
governments that are oppressing them are getting pressure from outside 
forces. Unfortunately, such is not the case, for Mr. Wei and his 
political dissidents do not have the world support. Their names are not 
widely known, and while some Americans and other officials have brought 
them up during talks with Chinese leaders, in general the outside world 
treats Beijing officials with deference due business partners.
  Today Mr. Wei suffers from life-threatening heart disease. Because of 
a neck problem he cannot even lift his head. All indications are that 
he has not seen a doctor in more than a year. He is due to be released 
in the year 2009, if he lives that long.
  Mr. Speaker, it is my belief that we in the West must stop allowing 
our insatiable desire for greater commerce and larger market shares to 
compromise any further our commitment to freedom of speech, freedom 
from religious persecution, and freedom from the dehumanizing 
repression that has brutalized Chinese dissidents for years now.

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