[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 47 (Wednesday, April 26, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E608-E609]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: IMPROVING OR DETERIORATING CONDITIONS?

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 26, 2006

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, on April 19, the day before 
Chinese President Hu Jintao's official visit to President George Bush, 
I held a hearing of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and 
International Operations to examine China's human rights record. The 
hearing focused on such areas as China's censorship of the internet, 
implementation of the right of Chinese citizens to worship freely, 
protection of minority rights, compliance with international labor 
standards, China's barbaric practice of organ harvesting, and the 
destructive effects on Chinese society--especially on women--of its 
government's coercive one-child policy.
  Over the years, I have held more than 25 hearings on human rights 
abuses in China. While China's economy has improved somewhat, the human 
rights situation remains abysmal. So-called economic reform has utterly 
failed to result in the protection of freedom of speech, expression, or 
assembly.
  President Hu Jintao' visit to the United States provided the U.S. 
Congress and people an opportunity to bring to the attention of U.S. 
policy makers and the world community the terrible human rights 
situation as it exists in China today. It also helped provide the vital 
context for any relationship we should have with China. And it conveyed 
our unshakeable regard and commitment to press Beijing for serious, 
measurable and durable reform. The people of China deserve no less. It 
is our moral duty to stand with the oppressed, not with the oppressor.
  State Department human rights reports and the consistent reporting 
from very reputable NGOs indicate that Chinese government repression of 
its citizens continues. In fact, the current Chinese regime is one of 
the very worst violators of human rights in the world, and continues to 
commit every single day egregious crimes against its own citizens. 
China was first named a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) by the 
State Department in 1999 for ongoing, egregious and systemic violations 
of religious freedom, and has been a CPC every year since. Few if any 
nations can even begin to match China's unseemly record, from the 
systematic denial of political freedom and use of torture to 
interference in the most private matters of family and conscience. At a 
rough count, the most recent State Department Human Rights Report for 
China ran to about 45,000 words. Before it even gets down to details, 
the report lists 22 major human rights problems:

       Denial of the right to change the government;
       Physical abuse resulting in deaths in custody;
       Torture and coerced confessions of prisoners;
       Harassment, detention, and imprisonment of those perceived 
     as threatening to party and government authority;
       Arbitrary arrest and detention, including nonjudicial 
     administrative detention, reeducation-through-labor, 
     psychiatric detention, and extended or incommunicado pretrial 
     detention;
       A politically controlled judiciary and a lack of due 
     process in certain cases, especially those involving 
     dissidents;
       Detention of political prisoners, including those convicted 
     of disclosing state secrets and subversion, those convicted 
     under the now-abolished crime of counterrevolution, and those 
     jailed in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations;
       House arrest and other non-judicially approved surveillance 
     and detention of dissidents;
       Monitoring of citizens' mail, telephone and electronic 
     communications;
       Use of a coercive birth limitation policy, in some cases 
     resulting in forced abortion and sterilization;
       Increased restrictions on freedom of speech and the press; 
     closure of newspapers and journals; banning of politically 
     sensitive books, periodicals, and films; and jamming of some 
     broadcast signals;
       Restrictions on the freedom of assembly, including 
     detention and abuse of demonstrators and petitioners;
       Restrictions on religious freedom, control of religious 
     groups, and harassment and detention of unregistered 
     religious groups;
       Restrictions on the freedom of travel, especially for 
     politically sensitive and underground religious figures;
       Forcible repatriation of North Koreans and inadequate 
     protection of many refugees;
       Severe government corruption;
       Increased scrutiny, harassment and restrictions on 
     independent domestic and foreign nongovernmental organization 
     (NGO) operations;
       Trafficking in women and children;
       Societal discrimination against women, minorities, and 
     persons with disabilities;
       Cultural and religious repression of minorities in Tibetan 
     areas and Muslim areas of Xinjiang;
       Restriction of labor rights, including freedom of 
     association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, 
     and worker health and safety; and
       Forced labor, including prison labor).

  Beijing has increasingly viewed the information available on the 
internet as a potential threat to the Party's ability to control the 
population and monopolize political power. It has turned China into one 
of the most internet restrictive countries in the world. It is 
important to note that the freedoms that we enjoy in America allow 
individuals to publish information and news on the Web unfiltered. 
Those freedoms do not exist in China. Individuals who attempt to speak 
freely are imprisoned and even tortured. At the very least, U.S. 
corporations should not be aiding and abetting that process. Yet at 
a February hearing I chaired on the Internet in China, we learned in 
greater--and disturbing--detail, how some of the biggest corporations 
in America have partnered with the much-hated Chinese secret police to 
find, apprehend, convict and jail religious believers and pro-democracy 
advocates.

  Yahoo told us at the hearing how profoundly they regret sending Shi 
Tao to prison for 10 years but they couldn't tell us--and didn't seem 
to know--how many others were condemned to jail and torture because of 
Yahoo's complicity with the secret police. When I asked under what 
terms and conditions--court order, police demand, a fishing trip--Yahoo 
surrenders emails and address files, Yahoo told us that they couldn't 
reveal this information to us because it would break Chinese law.
  Google, for its part, created an exclusively Chinese search engine 
that only a Joseph Goebbels could love. Type in any number of vile 
words like human rights, or Tian An Men Square massacre, or Falun Gong, 
and you will get rerouted to government propaganda--much of it heavily 
anti-American and anti- President George Bush, and filled with hate, 
especially for the Falun Gong. How did Google respond to our deep 
concern about their enabling a dictatorship to expand its hate message? 
According to the New York Times report of late March, they hired big-
time Washington lobbying firms like Podesta-Mattoon and the DCI group 
to put a good face on it all--and presumably kill my pending 
legislation, the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006,
  Amazingly, Cisco showed no seller's remorse whatsoever that its 
technology--especially ``Policenet''--a tool for good in the hands of 
honest cops and legitimate law enforcement, but a tool of repression in 
the hands of Chinese police has now effectively linked and 
exponentially expanded the capabilities of the Chinese police.
  Microsoft also censors and shuts down blogs that ``Big Brother 
objects to. You can be sure that no serious discussion on human

[[Page E609]]

rights was on the agenda at President Hu visit with Bill Gates at 
Microsoft.
  China's continued repression of religion is among the most despotic 
in the world. In February, the BBC reported that China had warned Hong 
Kong's newly-appointed Cardinal, Joseph Zen, a well-known critic of 
China's suppression of religious freedoms, to remain quiet on political 
issues. Citizens practicing a faith other than officially sanctioned 
religions are often subjected to torture, imprisonment, and death, at 
which time prisoner organs are frequently harvested to meet demand. 
Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, and Muslim Uyghurs are all being 
persecuted for their faith. Today, numerous underground Roman Catholic 
priests and bishops and Protestant pastors languish in the Lao Gai, 
China's infamous concentration camps, simply proclaiming the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ.
  In the early 90's I meet with Bishop Su Zhimin of Baoding Province--a 
gentle and kind man who celebrated Mass for our small delegation. I was 
deeply inspired by his faith (he had recently been let out of jail) and 
by his compassion for those who had jailed and mistreated him. He had 
no animosity for them--only compassion and forgiveness. What kind of 
regime incarcerates a truly noble man like this? Soon after our visit, 
he was re-arrested on false charges, released, and re-arrested and 
jailed again. He has now spent at least 27 years of his life in jail--
for loving God. What kind of barbaric regime hurts a man like this?
  And then there is the special hate Beijing pours out on the Falun 
Gong. Nearly seven years ago the Chinese government began its brutal 
campaign to completely eradicate Falun Gong through whatever means 
necessary. Many Party Members and Army officials had begun to practice 
Falun Gong. Like all dictators and totalitarian terror systems, the PRC 
fears and hates what it cannot control. So it decided to destroy and 
intimidate those who practice Falun Gong. We see before us a Stalinist 
nightmare revived for the 21st century--hundreds, perhaps thousands, 
dead as a result of torture; tens of thousands jailed without trial, 
held in labor camps, prisons, and mental hospitals, where they are 
forced to endure torture brainwashing sessions.

  Just over a year ago Beijing finally released the renowned human 
rights activist, Rebiya Kadeer, from prison, where she had been held 
for years on trumped up charges for defending the rights of her fellow 
Uyghur Muslims in China. We had hoped this signaled some sort of 
genuine improvement in Beijing's treatment of human rights, but now we 
know better: since Rebiya, who is now living in America, has continued 
to campaign for the recognition of the legitimate rights of her fellow 
Uyghurs, her relatives and business associates still in China are being 
subjected to renewed harassment by the authorities. Rebiya is with us 
here today to testify about China's continuing campaign against her 
peoples.
  Coercive family-planning policy in China has slaughtered more 
innocent children than any war in human history. Coercive family 
planning has wounded Chinese women by the millions and the physical 
consequence is that 500 women commit suicide every day. China's one-
child per couple policy, decreed in 1979, has killed hundreds of 
millions of babies by imposing Draconian fines--up to ten times annual 
salaries--on their parents to force them to abort. In China today 
brothers and sisters are illegal. Sex selection abortions--a direct 
consequence of allowing only one baby per couple, has led to 
gendercide--approximately 100 million girls are missing--in China. One 
Chinese demographer has admitted that by 2020, forty million Chinese 
men won't be able to find wives because Beijing's weapon of mass 
destruction--population control--destroyed the girls.
  There is no recourse for millions of Chinese laborers trapped in poor 
working conditions. Those who protest unjust wage and labor practices 
outside of the government-controlled labor union are arrested and 
imprisoned. Chinese citizens are often persecuted just for going to 
court to secure rights which even current Chinese law, as restrictive 
as it is, guarantees them. And the lawyers who seek to help them are 
threatened, harassed, beaten, disbarred and jailed for doing their 
simple duty. They join countless prisoners of conscience in China's 
modern day concentration camps. These are found everywhere in China--
more than 1,100 by one count.
  Finally, we heard testimony about China's barbaric policy of 
harvesting human organs for sale and transplant. China admits it does 
this. According to China's Ministry of Health, since 1993, there have 
been over 65,000 transplant procedures performed in China. China's 
Deputy Health Minister recently stated that 95 percent of the organs 
for organ transplants performed in China are from executed Chinese 
prisoners. Of course it claims it only harvests the organs of executed 
prisoners, and only if they or their families consent. But what value 
can such a statement have in a country where the death penalty is 
virtually an assembly line process? Where according to the Department 
of State's Human Rights Report for 2005, foreign experts estimate 
between five and twelve thousand people are executed every year? 
Chinese courts hand down the death sentence for an ever-expanding range 
of crimes, including nonviolent and political crimes. Appeals are 
conducted hastily, if at all. In an effort to boost profits, it is 
reported that some provincial or local officials in China have begun to 
allow mobile medical vans at execution sites to facilitate the ease and 
efficiency with which prisoners' organs may be harvested. We have all 
heard the recent horrific stories that China is now targeting the 
thousands of innocent Falun Gong prisoners it holds for organ 
harvesting, and perhaps not even waiting until they are dead. The State 
Department and the UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Manfred Nowak, 
have been investigating. They must get to the truth of these blood-
curdling stories, and do everything to stop this shameful practice.

  Human rights are everyone's rights. Governments are instituted to 
secure, protect and safeguard those rights. Human rights aren't 
privileges. Human rights are worth fighting for, even when they are 
costly, and even when it is inconvenient. Our witnesses, Mr. Ethan 
Gutmann, author of Losing the New China: a Story of American Commerce, 
Desire and Betrayal; Ms. Rebiya Kadeer, Human Rights Activist, Former 
Political Prisoner, and President of the International Uyghur Human 
Rights and Democracy Foundation; Mr. Joseph Kung, Director, Cardinal 
Kung Foundation; Ms. Thea Lee, Director of Public Policy, AFL-CIO; Mr. 
Steven Mosher, President Population Research Institute; Mr. Harry Wu; 
Executive Director, Laogai Research Foundation; and Mr. Lu Decheng, 
1989 Tiananmen Square Protestor, who spent 9 years in jail, all 
provided vitally useful testimony today.

                          ____________________