[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 62 (Tuesday, May 13, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4377-S4378]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE COURAGE TO STAND ALONE

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I rise today to bring to the attention of my colleagues 
the publication of ``The Courage to Stand Alone,'' the letters of Wei 
Jingsheng, a fearless and outspoken dissident currently imprisoned by 
the People's Republic of China. For two decades Wei Jingsheng has been 
a leader in the struggle for democracy in China, as well as a 
passionate advocate of human rights for the people of Tibet.
  Among the many crimes for which Wei has spent the last 18 years in 
prison, perhaps none is so onerous to his persecutors as his 
presumption to hold the totalitarian regime of the People's Republic of 
China to its own standard of law. As Andrew J. Nathan writes in his 
Foreword:

       Wei's powerful statement of self-defense [at his 1979 
     trial] exposes how little difference there is between the new 
     legal system and the old absence of a legal system. The 
     prosecutors and judges search for a crime and find none, but 
     they obey orders. They sentence Wei to fifteen years.
       The outside world is outraged, but most Chinese at the time 
     are wiser. They see Wei as the victim of his own naivete. He 
     failed to appreciate the unwritten limits to free speech and 
     legal reform. He committed the greatest offense in a 
     dictatorship: taking words at face value.


[[Page S4378]]


  The Courage to Stand Alone serves as a testament of resistance to the 
totalitarian phenomenon so brilliantly dissected in our century by the 
likes of Hannah Arendt and George Orwell. Wei's letters stand as the 
literary equivalent of the famous photograph of the lone Chinese 
individual confronting a column of tanks during the 1989 Tiananmen 
Square massacre.
  In his letter of June 15, 1991 Wei writes:

       It is precisely because human rights are independent of the 
     will of the government, and even independent of the will of 
     all mankind, that people fight for the realization and 
     expansion of human rights as a natural and unprovoked matter 
     of course. They gradually come to the realization that the 
     more widespread and reliable the protection of human rights 
     is, the more their own human rights are protected. Just as 
     man's understanding of objective truths and objective laws is 
     a gradual process, man's understanding and comprehension of 
     human rights is a gradual process. Just as man's grasp and 
     utilization of objective laws is a progressive process, man's 
     protection of the theory and practice of human rights is a 
     progressive process.

  Wei Jingsheng--by his words and conduct--has done much to advance our 
understanding of human rights in China and throughout the world. I 
commend ``The Courage to Stand Alone'' to all Senators, and I look 
forward to the day when Wei Jingsheng will again be free to stand 
together with other Chinese dissidents who struggle to bring a measure 
of democracy to their ancient and long-suffering homeland.

                          ____________________