[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 100 (Wednesday, June 30, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H5275-H5277]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PERMANENT RADIO FREE ASIA AUTHORIZATION ACT
Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the
bill (S. 3104) to permanently authorize Radio Free Asia, and for other
purposes.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
S. 3104
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) Radio Free Asia (referred to in this Act as ``RFA'')--
(A) was authorized under section 309 of the United States
International Broadcasting Act of 1994 (22 U.S.C. 6208);
(B) was incorporated as a private, non-profit corporation
in March 1996 in the hope that its operations would soon be
obviated by the global advancement of democracy; and
(C) is headquartered in Washington, DC, with additional
offices in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Phnom Penh, Seoul, Ankara, and
Taipei.
(2) RFA broadcasts serve as substitutes for indigenous free
media in regions lacking free media outlets.
(3) The mission of RFA is ``to provide accurate and timely
news and information to Asian countries whose governments
prohibit access to a free press'' in order to enable informed
decisionmaking by the people within Asia.
(4) RFA provides daily broadcasts of news, commentary,
analysis, and cultural programming to Asian countries in
several languages, including--
(A) 12 hours per day in Mandarin;
(B) 8 hours per day in 3 Tibetan dialects, Uke, Kham, and
Amdo;
(C) 4 hours per day in Korean and Burmese;
(D) 2 hours per day in Cantonese, Vietnamese, Laotian,
Khmer (Cambodian), and Uyghur; and
(E) 1\1/2\ hours per week in Wu (local Shanghai dialect).
(5) The governments of the countries targeted for these
broadcasts have consistently denied and blocked attempts at
Medium Wave and FM transmissions into their countries,
forcing RFA to rely on Shortwave broadcasts and the Internet.
(6) RFA has provided continuous online news to its Asian
audiences since 2004, although some countries--
(A) routinely and aggressively block RFA's website;
(B) monitor access to RFA's website; and
(C) discourage online users by making it illegal to access
RFA's website.
(7) Despite these attempts, RFA has successfully managed to
reach its online audiences through proxies, cutting-edge
software, and active republication and repostings by its
audience.
(8) RFA also provides forums for local opinions and
experiences through message boards, podcasts, web logs
(blogs), cell phone-distributed newscasts, and new media,
including Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube.
(9) Freedom House has documented that freedom of the press
is in decline in nearly every region of the world,
particularly in Asia, where none of the countries served by
RFA have increased their freedom of the press during the past
5 years.
(10) In fiscal year 2010, RFA is operating on a $37,000,000
budget, less than $400,000 of which is available to fund
Internet censorship circumvention.
(11) Congress currently provides grant funding for RFA's
operations on a fiscal year basis.
SEC. 2. SENSE OF THE SENATE.
It is the sense of the Senate that--
(1) public access to timely, uncensored, and accurate
information is imperative for promoting government
accountability and the protection of human rights;
(2) Radio Free Asia provides a vital voice to people in
Asia;
(3) some of the governments in Asia spend millions of
dollars each year to jam RFA's shortwave, block its Internet
sites;
(4) Congress should provide additional funding to RFA and
the other entities overseen by the Broadcasting Board of
Governors for--
(A) Internet censorship circumvention; and
(B) enhancement of their cyber security efforts; and
(5) permanently authorizing funding for Radio Free Asia
would--
(A) reflect the concern that media censorship and press
restrictions in the countries served by RFA have increased
since RFA was established; and
(B) send a powerful signal of our Nation's support for free
press in Asia and throughout the world.
SEC. 3. PERMANENT AUTHORIZATION FOR RADIO FREE ASIA.
Section 309 of the United States International Broadcasting
Act of 1994 (22 U.S.C. 6208) is amended--
(1) in subsection (c)(2), by striking ``, and shall further
specify that funds to carry out the activities of Radio Free
Asia may not be available after September 30, 2010'';
(2) by striking subsection (f);
(3) by redesignating subsections (g) and (h) as subsection
(f) and (g), respectively; and
(4) in subsection (f), as redesignated--
(A) by striking ``The Board'' and inserting the following:
``(1) Notification.--The Board'';
(B) by striking ``before entering'' and inserting the
following: ``before--
``(A) entering'';
(C) by striking ``Radio Free Asia.'' and inserting the
following: ``Radio Free Asia; or
``(B) entering into any agreements in regard to the
utilization of Radio Free Asia transmitters, equipment, or
other resources that will significantly reduce the
broadcasting activities of Radio Free Asia.'';
(D) by striking ``The Chairman'' and inserting the
following:
``(2) Consultation.--The Chairman''; and
(E) by inserting ``or Radio Free Asia broadcasting
activities'' before the period at the end.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Watson) and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-
Lehtinen) each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from California.
General Leave
Ms. WATSON. 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 the resolution under consideration.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from California?
There was no objection.
Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, this bill, which passed the Senate last week
by unanimous consent, would amend the International Broadcasting Act of
1994
[[Page H5276]]
to permanently authorize Radio Free Asia. Radio Free Asia, or RFA, was
established by Congress in 1994 and began its operations in 1996. As a
private, nonprofit corporation, its mission is to provide accurate and
timely news to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a
free press.
Today, RFA broadcasts news and information in nine languages:
Burmese, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Khmer, Laotian, Tibetan,
Uyghur, and Vietnamese. RFA also maintains a vibrant Internet presence,
providing information through podcasts, blogs, message boards, and
YouTube.
Because RFA is guided by the principles of free expression and
opinion and serves its Asian listeners by providing information
critical for informed decisionmaking, the governments of the countries
that RFA targets have actively sought to block RFA's transmissions and
access to its Web site. These repressive governments are clearly
concerned that public access to the timely, uncensored, and accurate
information provided by RFA will lead to greater demands for democracy,
respect for fundamental human rights, and government accountability.
A winner of numerous human rights and broadcast journalism awards,
RFA has played a vital role in providing information in some of the
most oppressed societies in Asia. For example, RFA broke the news of
the peaceful protest by Tibetan monks in the capital of Tibet in 2008
and provided extensive coverage, used by major international media
outlets, of the Chinese crackdown on the monks.
By permanently authorizing RFA, we will enhance the efficiency of the
RFA's operations and send a powerful signal of our country's support
for a free press in Asia and throughout the world.
According to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
``everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.''
RFA's mission is to do just that, to bring news and information about
their own countries to populations denied the benefits of freedom of
information by their governments. RFA's broadcasts, through the radio
and the Internet, are devoted to that very idea, to that notion of
enlightenment.
Radio Free Asia provides a vital voice to hundreds of millions of
people in Asia, and I strongly urge my colleagues to support this
legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to
the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce), the ranking member on the
Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade,
and the author of the House companion to this bill.
Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, this program, Radio Free Asia, was due to
expire, under existing law, in September. And I am delighted here, for
several reasons, that the legislation is before us. One is because, on
a strategic level, if you have this sunset and you have authoritarian
regimes presuming that at the end of the year RFA's broadcasts are
going to be discontinued, it implies that it does not have the full
support of the U.S. Government or our people here in the United States.
And in some countries there's even been talk of RFA going out of
business. This sends the message that that just isn't so because now
RFA will permanently be in business.
And from a practical standpoint, what does that mean? If you're
running a station, it means that you've got the ability now to contract
effectively in long-range leases. You get the capital agreements that
you need. You are better able, less expensively, to run these
operations.
It's not that these operations are expensive. As my friend, John
Kasich, former chairman of the Budget Committee once said, the price of
this is the price of a fuel cap on a B-52. But, oh, how effective, oh,
how effective this strategy has been over the years, because what we
provide here is surrogate news. We provide the kind of information that
people would be hearing if they actually had a free radio station, if
they could actually listen to the voice of a news reporter on issues
such as the corruption of a local official, let's say, or what is
actually happening in their city, what is happening in their country.
That is provided now through RFA.
And I wanted to share with you just a couple of observations. Many of
us have heard the words of Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, Eastern
Europeans who were very moved by the broadcasts into their own
countries by Radio Free Europe. And whether it's a crackdown on workers
at a local factory or news and information about ideas like tolerance,
political pluralism, the fact is these messages were heard.
And I remember in the former Yugoslavia talking to a Croatian
journalist who had tears in his eyes, and he said there was one country
in Eastern Europe where we did not broadcast with Radio Free Europe.
That was Yugoslavia.
{time} 2030
And as a result, he told me, we watched what happened in
Czechoslovakia as Vaclav Havel was able to do a plebiscite, and the
Czech Republic went one way and Slovakia went the other. And the reason
he was crying was because he said not one human life was lost in that,
and Vaclav Havel had said he had listened to those broadcasts about the
importance of political pluralism and self-determination and tolerance,
whereas he as a Croatian was listening to Croatian hate radio and
Serbian hate radio, and indeed hate radio from every single ethnic
group in that country.
And during his time as a reporter covering those wars, he watched the
war with Slovenia spin out of control, and then Croatia, and Bosnia,
and the Kosovo war. He watched each of these tragedies, with their tens
of thousands of human lives lost. And he said to me something I will
never forget. ``If only we had had the broadcasts here to better
prepare us for what was to come.'' That is why this work is so
important.
And today we do this work in Burma, we do this work in North Korea,
in Vietnam, and in China, in all the major dialects. And many of these
governments actively work, of course, to try to block RFA transmissions
and information into their society. But still the information manages
to get in. Maybe not into the main cities at times, but into the rural
areas and into the suburban areas.
And frankly, Freedom House, which ranks all of these countries not
free, attests to the ability of this information to get through. As one
observer has noted, this type of broadcasting irritates authoritarian
regimes, inspires democrats, and creates greater space for civil
society. So it's no wonder that China attempts to block RFA
transmissions, or that Vietnam has heavily jammed the station since its
first day.
But RFA has been chipping away at authoritarian regimes. And I will
just mention Kim Jong Il and his grip on information in North Korea. I
mention it because Congresswoman Diane Watson and I went into North
Korea. And according to experts today, that grip is not as strong as it
once was. And this is one of the reasons. The information cordon that
once encircled North Korea, I am going to quote this observer, is now
in tatters as information is getting in. And that is backed up by a
survey by a prominent think tank which interviews hundreds of North
Korean refugees every year. And it finds an ever-increasing percentage,
now more than half who fled since 2006, had listened to foreign news
regularly, including RFA.
I remember a report we had of one of the Politburo members who said
in debate, ``If you are not listening to the radio broadcasts, you are
like a frog in the well who does not know what is going on in the
outside world.'' And so the harsher the regime, the more the attempt to
control information, the more diligent we find our reporters and
stringers are at RFA in trying to counter the propaganda that comes
from the state.
And with this legislation, Radio Free Asia can better focus its long-
term mission of bringing its message of some modicum of humanity,
freedom, democracy, respect for the rule of law, creating a space for
civil society where it can flourish under the Asian continent's
oppressive regimes such as China. And I think if we continue this good
effort, and I have listened in and participated in some of the
broadcasts
[[Page H5277]]
into China, we have a tremendous opportunity to reach a young
generation of people who are in desperate need of another side of the
story. And those reporters are providing it with RFA.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
I thank my good friend from California (Mr. Royce), the author of the
House companion of this bill, for his leadership on this issue.
Today I rise in strong support of the Senate bill, S. 3104, a
bipartisan bill that deserves our prompt approval. I want to thank the
gentleman from California, who has been working on this issue for a
number of years. And as we know, Mr. Speaker, an unfettered and
independent press is so vital to the maintenance of liberty that its
protection was enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution.
Tyranny cannot abide dissent. And the repressive regimes know that
they cannot afford to allow the unregulated dissemination of
information and ideas. People accustomed to thinking freely and
speaking freely cannot be deterred from also living freely. These are
the realities that drive our Nation's longstanding commitment to
surrogate broadcasting, providing to oppressed societies the kind of
news and information that local journalists would supply if they were
allowed to operate freely.
We can all recall the important role that Radio Free Europe played in
helping us to end the Cold War. For the past 14 years, its younger
sibling, Radio Free Asia, has provided critical broadcasting in a
neighborhood that contains some of the world's most antidemocratic
regimes: North Korea, Burma, China, Vietnam, and Laos. It also
broadcasts in important minority languages such as Uyghur, Cantonese,
Wu, and dialects of Tibet.
Among all of the freedom broadcasting services of the United States,
RFA, Radio Free Asia, is the only one whose authorizing legislation
contained a sunset date, which Congress has repeatedly extended. It is
high time to remove that sunset and make Radio Free Asia's
authorization permanent.
Sadly, the need for Radio Free Asia is not going to end any time
soon, Mr. Speaker. Making the authorization permanent, therefore, is an
important signal of the United States' commitment, putting those
regimes who try so extremely hard to block the Radio Free Asia
broadcasts on notice that they cannot wait out our resolve to support
freedom of the press in Asia.
In addition, permanent authority makes operational sense, as the
recurring sunset has complicated Radio Free Asia's ability to hire
long-term staff, to negotiate cost-effective leases and capital
agreements. For these reasons, Mr. Speaker, this measure before us
deserves our unanimous support.
Let us stand today with the long-suffering people of China, of Tibet,
of North Korea, of Burma, of Vietnam, of Cambodia, and Laos, and
against regime-sponsored attempts to restrict the information they
receive.
Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of S.
3140, a bill to permanently authorize Radio Free Asia, and for other
purposes. I thank my colleague Senator Lugar for introducing this
important bill that reasserts our commitment to a free press and
freedom of speech in Asia and throughout the world.
Freedom of the press is one of our most cherished values and
enshrined in our first amendment. ``Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances.'' I believe it is one of the
most valuable and fundamental rights written in the Constitution, as it
grants us as people the ability to speak truth to tyranny. In the
United States we often take this freedom for granted, but in many
countries throughout the world it does not exist at all, or exists only
on paper and not in practice.
Thus the United States has long sought to expand this freedom
throughout the world, promoting free speech and freedom of information
in places where governments have strangled their people's ability to
speak their minds. Most notably during the Cold War, Radio Free Europe
was one of the many tools the United States used to try and reach out
to those behind the Iron Curtain, who were deprived of information and
whose right to speak their minds freely was severely curtailed. Radio
Free Asia, RFA, attempts to do the same for the people of Asia whose
freedom of speech and press, particularly in China and North Korea, has
been stifled by increasingly restrictive government policies.
The consistent and continued attempts on behalf of these governments
to block and jam RFA's broadcasts are a testament to their value and
effectiveness. Like a cool breeze drafting through a hot, stifled room,
RFA is a breath of fresh air to those who are deprived of information
and afraid to speak freely. Creatively using shortwave broadcasts and
the Internet, RFA has been able to circumvent many of the restrictive
tactics of oppressive governments, often relying on the ingenuity and
intelligence of local listeners themselves to spread the word.
But RFA needs more time and more resources to do its job right. It is
of paramount importance that Radio Free Asia continue its broadcasts in
the future, until its implementation is made obsolete by its own
success in promoting freedom of information in the countries it
currently serves. According to Freedom House, freedom of the press is
in decline almost everywhere in the world, making Radio Free Asia's
services that much more vital in reaffirming this Congress' concern for
the freedom of people around the globe. I am glad that the Congress has
decided to continue the important work of the RFA and to promote
freedom to our oppressed brethren in Asia.
Ms.ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time,
and I yield back the balance of my time
Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson) that the House suspend the
rules and pass the bill, S. 3104.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the
rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
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