[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.

                          ____________________