[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 5 (Monday, January 31, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S134-S135]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              YONGYI SONG

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I want to say a few words about a 
distinguished Pennsylvanian, the librarian from Dickinson College in 
Carlisle, PA, Mr. Yongyi Song, who was greeted tumultuously in 
Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon when he returned from the People's 
Republic of China after having been held in custody there since August 
7.
  Mr. Yongyi Song came to the United States some 10 years ago and has 
become a world-renowned scholar on the Cultural Revolution. In addition 
to his regular duties at Dickinson College, he has published 
extensively on the Cultural Revolution.
  Last August, he and his wife Helen made a trip to the People's 
Republic of China so that he could continue his research. While there, 
he was taken into custody on August 7. Thereafter, his wife was 
released, but on Christmas Eve he was charged with transmitting state 
secrets.
  A careful analysis of the case raises very severe questions as to 
whether there was ever any substance to the charges. A campaign was 
waged by scholars and academicians and by colleges and universities 
across the land to obtain his release. Dickinson College retained a 
very distinguished attorney, Jerome Cohen, an expert in Chinese 
affairs, who took up the cause.
  A resolution was submitted last Wednesday by this Senator with quite 
a number of cosponsors--Senator Biden, the ranking member on the 
Foreign Relations Committee, being the principal cosponsor; in 
addition, Senator Santorum and others.
  After consultation with Secretary of State Albright and others in the 
State Department, I sought a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador, which 
I had last Friday late in the morning.
  Before going to the meeting, I heard rumors that Yongyi Song might be 
released. While I met with the Chinese Ambassador, I was delighted to 
find that he handed me a piece of paper announcing Mr. Song's release, 
and gave me the word that Mr. Song would soon be on a Northwest 
airliner headed for Detroit, and ultimately for Philadelphia.
  We thank the People's Republic of China and we thank the Chinese 
Ambassador for Mr. Yongyi Song's release. We regret that he ever was 
taken into custody. But when he returned and commented to the news 
media, on a galaxy of cameras--both television and still cameras--and 
to many newspaper reporters, Mr. Song commented that he was not 
physically abused. He said he was subjected to a good bit of mental 
torture. He disputed the representations by the People's Republic of 
China that he had confessed or implicated others. But as Shakespeare 
would say, ``All's well that ends well.''
  It has been reported that this is the first time there has been a 
release of anybody who was charged with stealing state secrets. It is 
my hope that this is a significant step forward for the People's 
Republic of China to recognize human rights. In an era when the 
People's Republic of China is seeking permanent most-favored-nation 
status and seeking entry into the World Trade Organization, it is my 
hope that they will accept at least minimal norms for due process, so 
that if someone is taken into custody, that person is entitled to 
confer with counsel, should be entitled to notice of the charges, 
should be entitled to an open trial, and should have the requirement 
that evidence be presented in an open forum before any determination of 
guilt.
  The detention of Mr. Yongyi Song from August 7 until January 28, in 
my judgment, was excessive. But we are glad to have Yongyi Song back at 
his duties at Dickinson College and glad this has ended favorably. We 
do hope this is a first step in a continuing recognition by the 
People's Republic of China to give appropriate consideration to human 
rights.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the article 
entitled ``Scholar Back in U.S. After China Detention'' from The New 
York Times be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 30, 2000]

               Scholar Back in U.S. After China Detention

                           (By Philip Shenon)

       Philadelphia, Jan. 29--An American-based Chinese scholar 
     who had been jailed in China for nearly six months returned 
     to the United States today to say that he had been ``mentally 
     tortured'' by Chinese security agents who demanded that he 
     confess to espionage and implicate others.
       ``They didn't torture me physically, but I should say that 
     they mentally tortured me,'' the scholar, Song Yongyi, a 
     research librarian at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., 
     said after he was reunited with his wife in a tearful scene 
     at Philadelphia's international airport. ``It was very 
     ruthless.''
       ``When I come back to the United States, I really feel at 
     home now,'' said Mr. Song, who was taken into custody by the 
     Chinese last summer, only weeks before he had been scheduled 
     to be sworn in as an American citizen. ``Even though China 
     gave me birth, the United States gave me spirit.''
       In an airport news conference and in a separate interview, 
     the 50-year-old librarian, a specialist in the documents of 
     the murderous decade from 1966 to 1976 known as the Cultural 
     Revolution, denied a claim by the Chinese government that he 
     was freed after he confessed to spying.
       ``I did not confess to anything,'' he said, crediting his 
     release to pressure on Beijing from members of Congress who 
     threatened to hold up vital trade legislation, and from 
     Western scholars who campaigned for his freedom.

[[Page S135]]

       Scholars had warned that his arrest threatened to 
     jeopardize academic exchange programs that China had 
     carefully cultivated with the United States and other Western 
     countries since the late 1970's.
       ``I say thank you to all the American people, because 
     without them I cannot get released,'' Mr. Song said, his eyes 
     brimming with tears, which he said were among the first he 
     had shed since childhood. ``During the past 30 years, I never 
     cry, but last night I cry all night.''
       He was met at the airport by his wife, Helen Yao, a jewelry 
     designer, and Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania 
     Republican who introduced legislation demanding Mr. Song's 
     release and granting him immediate American citizenship. He 
     also threatened to block legislation intended to make way for 
     China's entry into the World Trade Organization.
       Mr. Song and his wife, who is also Chinese-born, were 
     detained in August in Beijing, where he had been gathering 
     yellowing Communist Party newspapers and handbills published 
     during the Cultural Revolution, about which he has written 
     two books and several articles. Ms. Yao was released in 
     November and forced to leave China without her husband.
       Mr. Song said today that the documents he had been 
     gathering were published by the radicals known as the Red 
     Guards and that they were available at the time to virtually 
     everyone in China. He said there was nothing secret about 
     them.
       ``You can purchase all those in public markets,'' he said. 
     ``You can purchase those in some book stores. This is not 
     national security.''
       He said he argued the point with his guards over and over 
     again. ``I strongly argue that,'' he said in his sometimes 
     broken English. ``My question is: If you say this is a secret 
     and I'm leaking the secret, then you should first say all the 
     Chinese people are spies. Because they all touched those. 
     They all know this, not only me.''
       The Cultural Revolution, in which millions of Chinese were 
     persecuted as Mao tried to consolidate his power and 
     ``purify'' the Communist Party, remains a subject of extreme 
     sensitivity to Beijing, which continues to restrict access to 
     official archives of the period.
       During his early interrogations, Mr. Song said, his guards 
     tried to coerce him with lies. He said they told him that his 
     wife, who was being held in a separate detention center, was 
     gravely ill, but that she could be freed for medical 
     treatment if he confessed to spying.
       ``That was the worst moment of all,'' he said. ``They say 
     my wife is so sick and so weak, that I should think about my 
     wife and how she could return home quickly.''
       When that did not work, he said, the guards tried to 
     convince him that his wife had implicated him in spying and 
     other crimes against the government. ``Every time they 
     question me, they say, your wife says such-and-such, your 
     wife identifies such-and-such,'' Mr. Song said.
       At one point, he said, security agents told him that his 
     wife had identified him as a member of Falun Gong, the 
     spiritual group that has been the subject of a vicious crack-
     down recently, and that he had smuggled its literature into 
     China.
       ``I know nothing about Falun Gong,'' Mr. Song said, ``I 
     say, I believe this is not true. I say, bring my wife in. But 
     then they become suddenly silent. They said, O.K., we move on 
     to the next topic.''
       He said the experience of the last several months was far 
     worse than his experience during the Cultural Revolution, 
     when he was arrested and branded a counterrevolutionary.
       ``In the 1970's, I was beaten, I was tortured,'' he said. 
     ``But this was worse. With physical torture, they torture 
     only you. This time, they arrest, and they try to mentally 
     torture my wife. As a man, you feel so bad.''
       Mr. Song, who has bladder cancer that is in remission, said 
     that he had repeatedly asked to see a doctor, but that his 
     guards refused without explanation. ``My health condition is 
     not very good, and I asked them several times if I could get 
     doctors to examine me, but they wouldn't,'' he said ``As soon 
     as I get home, I should see a doctor and get a full body 
     examination.''
       As he set off from the airport after the news conference, 
     Mr. Song was asked what he would do when he arrived home in 
     Carlisle. He did not hesitate. ``I think he will have some 
     sweet talk with my wife,'' he said, his arm tightly around 
     her shoulder.
       He said Ms. Yao's confinement in China had changed her. 
     ``My wife became a very brave woman, so I'm very proud of 
     her,'' he said. ``Actually this is not her typical 
     characteristic. The Chinese government, the Chinese national 
     security police, they make a weak woman into a brave 
     soldier.''

  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair and my distinguished colleague from 
Iowa.
  Mr. President, in the absence of any other Senator seeking 
recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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