[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 137 (Monday, September 17, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H10393-H10395]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CALLING ON GOVERNMENT OF PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA TO RELEASE CERTAIN
PRISONERS AND END SUPPRESSION OF UYGHUR PEOPLE
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree
to the resolution (H. Res. 497) expressing the sense of the House of
Representatives that the Government of the People's Republic of China
should immediately release from custody the children of Rebiya Kadeer
and Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil and should refrain from further
engaging in acts of cultural, linguistic, and religious suppression
directed against the Uyghur people, and for other purposes.
The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
The text of the resolution is as follows:
H. Res. 497
Whereas the protection of the human rights of minority
groups is consistent with the actions of a responsible
stakeholder in the international community and with the role
of a host of a major international event such as the Olympic
Games;
Whereas recent actions taken against the Uyghur minority by
authorities in the People's Republic of China and,
specifically, by local officials in the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region, have included major violations of human
rights and acts of cultural suppression;
Whereas the authorities of the People's Republic of China
have manipulated the strategic objectives of the
international war on terror to increase their cultural and
religious oppression of the Muslim population residing in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region;
Whereas an official campaign to encourage Han Chinese
migration into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has
resulted in the Uyghur population becoming a minority in
their traditional homeland and has placed immense pressure on
those who are seeking to preserve the linguistic, cultural,
and religious traditions of the Uyghur people;
Whereas the House of Representatives has a particular
interest in the fate of Uyghur human rights leader Rebiya
Kadeer, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and her family as Ms.
Kadeer was first arrested in August 1999 while she was en
route to meet with a delegation from the Congressional
Research Service and was held in prison on spurious charges
until her release and exile to the United States in the
spring of 2005;
Whereas upon her release, Ms. Kadeer was warned by her
Chinese jailors not to advocate for human rights in Xinjiang
and throughout China while in the United States or elsewhere,
and was reminded that she had several family members residing
in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region;
Whereas while residing in the United States, Ms. Kadeer
founded the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy
Foundation and was elected President of the Uyghur American
Association and President of the World Uyghur Congress in
Munich, Germany;
Whereas two of Ms. Kadeer's sons were detained and beaten
and one of her daughters was placed under house arrest in
June 2006;
Whereas President George W. Bush recognized the importance
of Ms. Kadeer's human rights work in a June 5, 2007, speech
in Prague, Czech Republic, when he stated: ``Another
dissident I will meet here is Rebiyah Kadeer of China, whose
sons have been jailed in what we believe is an act of
retaliation for her human rights activities. The talent of
men and women like Rebiyah is the greatest resource of their
nations, far more valuable than the weapons of their army or
their oil under the ground.'';
Whereas Kahar Abdureyim, Ms. Kadeer's eldest son, was fined
$12,500 for tax evasion and another son, Alim Abdureyim, was
sentenced to seven years in prison and fined $62,500 for tax
evasion in a blatant attempt by local authorities to take
control of the Kadeer family's remaining business assets in
the People's Republic of China;
Whereas another of Ms. Kadeer's sons, Ablikim Abdureyim,
was beaten by local police to the point of requiring medical
attention in June 2006 and has been subjected to continued
physical abuse and torture while being held incommunicado in
custody since that time;
Whereas Ablikim Abdureyim was also convicted by a kangaroo
court on April 17, 2007, for ``instigating and engaging in
secessionist'' activities and was sentenced to nine years of
imprisonment, this trial being held in secrecy and Mr.
Abdureyim reportedly being denied the right to legal
representation;
Whereas two days later, on April 19, 2007, another court in
Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,
sentenced Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil to life in prison
for ``splittism'' and also for ``being party to a terrorist
organization'' after having successfully sought his
extradition from Uzbekistan where he was visiting relatives;
Whereas Chinese authorities have continued to refuse to
recognize Mr. Celil's Canadian citizenship, although he was
naturalized in 2005, denied Canadian diplomats access to the
courtroom when Mr. Celil was sentenced, and have refused to
grant consular access to Mr. Celil in prison;
Whereas a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson publicly
warned Canada ``not to interfere in China's domestic
affairs'' after Mr. Celil's sentencing; and
Whereas Mr. Celil's case was a major topic of conversation
in a recent Beijing meeting between the Canadian and Chinese
Foreign Ministers: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of
Representatives that the Government of the People's Republic
of China--
(1) should recognize, and seek to ensure, the linguistic,
cultural, and religious rights of the Uyghur people of the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region;
(2) should immediately release the children of Rebiya
Kadeer from both incarceration and house arrest and cease
harassment and intimidation of the Kadeer family members; and
(3) should immediately release Canadian citizen Huseyin
Celil and allow him to rejoin his family in Canada.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from
American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega) and the gentleman from New Jersey
(Mr. Smith) each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from American Samoa.
[[Page H10394]]
General Leave
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous material on H. Res. 497.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from America Samoa?
There was no objection.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this
resolution, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to first thank again my colleague from New Jersey
for his participation in managing the other side of the aisle on this
proposed legislation. I thank the chairman of the Foreign Affairs
Committee, the gentleman from California, Mr. Tom Lantos, for his
leadership and for his support of this legislation. Especially I want
to thank my good friend and colleague, the distinguished senior ranking
member, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, for her authorship of this human rights
resolution.
With passage of this measure, Congress will shine its spotlight on
the brutal suppression of the Muslim Uyghur people by the Chinese
Government, and the despicable retaliatory actions of the Chinese
Government against the leading Uyghur human rights voice, Rebiya
Kadeer.
Similar to the Tibetans, the Turkic Muslim Uyghur have long sought to
protect their cultural survival in the face of the Chinese Government-
supported migration of the Han Chinese to the Uyghur homeland. Chinese
authorities severely restrict economic and educational freedoms for the
Uyghurs, regularly destroying books and closing places of worship.
Most trials of Uyghur prisoners are held in secret and many political
prisoners are routinely executed without the knowledge of their
families. Thousands of Uyghur political prisoners are held without
charge or even trial and are routinely abused or tortured.
Mr. Speaker, the People's Republic of China continues to brutally
suppress even the slightest attempts of peaceful political, religious
and cultural expression of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Province. After
the attacks in the U.S. on September 11, the People's Republic of China
has used the pretext of the war on terrorism to justify these severe
human rights violations in Xinjiang and routinely labels the Uyghurs as
terrorists and as splitists.
When the Uyghur people found their human rights voice in Rebiya
Kadeer, the Chinese Government immediately moved against her and
sentenced her to 8 years in prison. They arrested her while she was on
her way to meet representatives of our Congressional Research Service.
After international lobbying efforts, the Chinese Government finally
released her from prison. They told her that her children would pay a
steep price if she continued to lobby for human rights in Xinjiang.
When you carry the hopes and dreams of your entire people on your
shoulders, it is impossible to be quiet in the face of such brutal
oppression. Upon arriving in the United States, Rebiya continued her
human rights work through the International Human Rights and Democracy
Foundation and as president of the Uyghur American Association and the
World Uyghur Congress in Munich, Germany.
Mr. Speaker, the Chinese Government held to their word and arrested
her sons in Xinjiang. Her daughter was placed under house arrest. Using
the pretext of a tax investigation to strip the family of all the
remaining possessions and business interests, one son was fined $12,500
for tax evasion. Another was sentenced to 7 years in prison and fined
$62,500. Yet another was sentenced to 9 years in prison on April 17,
2007, for secessionism.
The Ros-Lehtinen resolution before us, Mr. Speaker, also raises the
human rights of Uyghur Canadian Huseyin Celil. He was recently
convicted by a Chinese court to life imprisonment on bogus charges. The
Canadian Government has been denied access to him throughout his trial.
The blatant refusal to accept even the most basic norms of diplomatic
conduct and refusing Canadian embassy officials to visit Mr. Celil not
only flies in the face of long-established diplomatic norms and
standards, but it is a flagrant violation of Mr. Celil's
internationally recognized human rights.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to join me in supporting this
resolution and in sending the Chinese Government a strong message that
it needs to respect the minority rights of the Uyghur people, that it
needs to immediately release the children of Rebiya Kadeer and cease
all harassment of her family members, and set free Mr. Celil so he can
return to Canada to be reunited with his family.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong support of this resolution offered
by Ms. Ros-Lehtinen that asks the Chinese Government to recognize the
rights of the Uyghur people and to free the children of Rebiya Kadeer,
an extraordinary human rights activist and Uyghur spokeswoman.
At turning points in history, Mr. Speaker, of oppressed peoples, one
honest and courageous man or woman often comes to represent the entire
people in the eyes of the world. In the United States, on matters
related to civil rights, it was the Reverend Martin Luther King. In
Burma, it is Aung San Suu Kyi. In India, it was Gandhi. For Chinese
Catholics, it was Cardinal Kung. In Poland, it was Lech Walesa and John
Paul II. For Tibetans, it is his Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
For the Uyghur people, deprived of their religious freedom, robbed of
their cultural and linguistic rights and marginalized in their own
homeland by the government-organized Han Chinese migration, it is
Rebiya Kadeer.
For years, Ms. Kadeer was a voice crying in the wilderness, asking
the serial human rights abusers in Beijing to recognize the rights of
the Uyghur people. In 1999, the Chinese Government imprisoned her. In
2005, it released her into exile into the United States, warning her
not to advocate for her people. Her husband and several children were
already in exile here. Others remained behind. In 2000, while she was
in prison, one of her daughters testified at a human rights hearing
that I chaired on the Uyghurs, and she was very powerful in her
statement on behalf of her mom.
Even though some of her children still lived in China, this
incredibly brave woman established a Uyghur human rights foundation.
Now she has become the quintessential symbol of Uyghur aspirations and
hopes. She is a recognized leader in the Uyghur exile and human rights
communities, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and a friend of President
Bush after their meeting in Prague this past summer.
Mr. Speaker, we all want Beijing to act like a responsible
stakeholder in the world. I make no secret of my conviction that
Beijing has a very long way to go. The list of serious human rights
abuses committed by the Chinese Government is long. It includes the
persuasive systematic exploitation of women and the murder of their
children through forced abortion as part of its coercive one-child-per-
couple policy. Against the Uyghurs, it is used as a means of genocide,
of trying to destroy an entire race and ethnic group of people because
of their ethnicity. The imprisonment of democratic dissidents and
religious believers remains a serious and pervasive problem in the PRC,
as does the marginalization of the Tibetans in their homeland on the
roof of the world.
The extensive use of torture has been documented time and time again.
Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur for the United Nations, went to
China and came back, and his report is literally an indictment. If you
are arrested, if a Han Chinese, a Uyghur or anyone is arrested, the way
they get a conviction is they torture you. Eventually you sign on the
bottom line and you admit your so-called crimes. They have also
forcibly repatriated North Korean refugees. Again, there is abuse after
abuse after abuse, and the Uyghurs are at the brunt of it.
The oppression of the Uyghurs in their homeland along the Silk Road
must be included, Mr. Speaker, on any list of Chinese Government's most
serious abuses. In the United States, Ms. Kadeer has ensured that the
world does not forget the oppression of the Uyghur
[[Page H10395]]
people, and the Chinese Government has retaliated now, as they have in
the past, by harassing her children who live in the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region by placing them under house arrest, by incarcerating
them and by beating them.
Today, Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives, both Republicans
and Democrats alike, ask that Beijing end this campaign of retaliation
against the Kadeer family. We join the voice of those who care for
those kids, an anguished mother who cries, ``let my children go.''
{time} 1545
We also ask that Beijing immediately release Hussein Celil, an ethnic
Uyghur who is a citizen of Canada, so he can rejoin his family living
in that country.
Finally, in the darkness of the political oppression of the Uyghur
people, Rebiya Kadeer stands out as a beacon of light and hope. Let us
honor her and her family and her work by enthusiastically supporting
this resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend and thank my good
friend from New Jersey. I call him the champion of human rights all
over the world. Wherever there is violation of human rights, he is
there; and I commend him for his efforts all these years that I have
been privileged to work closely with him on these issues.
Mr. Speaker, I recall years ago Mr. Mandela was accused by a former
Prime Minister of Great Britain as being a terrorist. Of course, having
served in prison for 29 years, all he was trying to say was that
something was wrong in South Africa. They call it apartheid. If that
isn't a human rights violation, I don't know what is.
But the fact that these two people, the lady and her children and
this Canadian citizen, whether it is 2 or 3 or 3 million, our
government and this Congress should give every attention as far as to
the needs of those people as far as human rights violations are
concerned.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support
of H. Res. 497, expressing the sense of the House of Representatives
that the Government of the People's Republic of China should
immediately release from custody the children of Rebiya Kadeer and
Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil and should refrain from further engaging
in acts of cultural, linguistic, and religious suppression directed
against the Uyghur people, and for other purposes. I want to
congratulate my good friend and colleague, the distinguished ranking
member of this Committee, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, for this important human
rights resolution. It is the responsibility of the Congress to remind
the government of the People's Republic of China of their obligations
to live up to international standards to protect ethnic cultural
identities and minority rights.
Mr. Speaker, not only does the People's Republic of China
systemically abuse the basic human rights of its minority citizens, but
its repressive tactics extend to the members of politically active
human rights advocates' families. Furthermore, the government has
manipulated the international war on terrorism to justify its
repressive treatment of the Muslim population living in Xinjiang, as
well as encouraging Chinese migration into the region in an attempt to
purify the region of its traditional Uyghur occupants.
It is extremely important that the United States hold the government
of the People's Republic of China responsible to international
standards regarding political as well as basic human rights. The
government brutally suppresses even the slightest attempts of peaceful
political, religious, and cultural expression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
As a member of Congress, I feel particularly responsible to Uyghur
human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer, who was arrested while she was on
her way to meet representatives of our Congressional Research Service.
While she was released from prison following international lobbying
efforts, deemed a prisoner of consciousness by Amnesty International,
upon resumption of her human rights advocacy abroad, her sons in
Xinjiang were arrested and remain imprisoned to this day.
This resolution also raises the human rights issues of Huseyin Cecil,
a Uyghur Canadian who was recently convicted in a kangaroo court to
life imprisonment on ``bogus'' charges. The Canadian government and
Embassy Officials have been refused access to their citizen throughout
the process, and the Chinese government has blatantly refused to accept
even the most basic norms of diplomatic conduct.
By supporting this resolution, the United States will alert the
Chinese government that it must respect the minority rights of the
Uyghur people as well as the rights of human rights advocates. The
resolution requires the immediate release of the children of Rebiya
Kadeer as well as Mr. Cecil so that they might all return to their
families.
I strongly urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important
resolution.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the
gentleman from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega) that the House suspend
the rules and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 497.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the
rules were suspended and the resolution was agreed to.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
____________________