[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 173 (Wednesday, December 22, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2252]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   EMPTY CHAIR IN OSLO FOR LIU XIAOBO

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, December 22, 2010

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, in the theatrical adaptation 
of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Marius sings a haunting song--Empty 
Chairs and Empty Tables--an expression of agony at the loss of his 
idealistic comrades, gunned down on a barricade.
  ``There's a grief that can't be spoken,'' he sings, ``there's a pain 
that goes on and on. Empty chairs and empty tables, now my friends are 
dead and gone . . . .''
  ``Here it was they lit the flame . . . Here they sang about tomorrow 
and tomorrow never came . . . from the table in the corner they could 
see a world reborn . . . And they rose with voices ringing. I can hear 
them now . . . Empty chairs and empty tables, where my friends will 
meet no more . . . .''
  When prisoner of conscience Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize winner for 
2010, learned that he was selected, he wept and dedicated his prize to 
the martyrs of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
  Throughout China today, families and friends know heartbreaking loss 
and the agony of empty chairs and empty tables--where young, brave, 
idealistic democracy activists were gunned down, bayoneted, or beaten 
to death by Chinese government troops and secret police. Both before 
and since Tiananmen, Chinese men and women have sacrificed their 
freedom--even their lives--in the struggle for faith and liberty. Yet 
the struggle for freedom, rule of law, and respect for human rights 
continues despite the enormous cost to individual Chinese men and 
women.
  At Oslo a couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of witnessing the 
conferring of the Nobel Peace Prize on Liu Xiaobo's empty chair--empty 
because this courageous nonviolent man of principle languishes in a 
lonely prison cell, serving an eleven-year sentence for promoting 
democracy in China, most recently through Charter 08, a human rights 
manifesto. In a stunning revelation of Beijing's weakness, fear, and 
moral deficiency, even Liu's wife and friends were barred from 
attending the Nobel ceremony.
  Amazingly, at his government show trial in 2009, Liu expressed 
absolutely no malice toward the dictatorship that so cruelly mistreats 
him--and millions of others like him.
  He said, ``I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who 
monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who 
indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies . . . 
Hatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience. Enemy 
mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal 
struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity and hinder a 
nation's progress toward freedom and democracy. That is why I hope to 
be able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our 
nation's development and social change, to counter the regime's 
hostility with utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love.''
  The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony has come and gone. And, I would note 
parenthetically, it was an honor to join you in Oslo, Madam Speaker, as 
well as Representative David Wu and numerous Tiananmen Square alumnae--
Chinese men and women who peacefully demonstrated for freedom in 1989--
including Yang Jianli, Chai Ling, Bob Fu, Fang Zheng, and Kaixi Wuer. 
It is now more important than ever that all of us who treasure freedom, 
democracy and human rights empathize more, pray more and do more to 
expose and combat the cruelty and the crimes committed on a daily basis 
by Beijing.
  The brutality and violence that were witnessed by all the world in 
1989 at Tiananmen continues unabated today, especially in the gulags--
laogai--and detention centers throughout China, where people are 
systematically tortured, sometimes to death, particularly Falun Gong 
practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Christians, and democracy activists.
  The brutality and violence of unrestrained dictatorship has--and 
continues to be--unleashed against hundreds of millions of Chinese 
women and children--victims of the barbaric one child per couple 
policy, a cruel policy that has made brothers and sisters illegal and 
relies on forced abortion--a crime categorized as a ``crime against 
humanity'' at the Nazi war crime trial at Nuremberg.
  As a result of the one child per couple policy, an estimated 100 
million girls are missing--dead through sex-selective abortion--which 
is a gender crime of unimaginable depravity and has made China a magnet 
for sex trafficking. Chai Ling--one of the heroes of Tiananmen--has 
launched All Girls Allowed--an NGO that appeals to Beijing, the world, 
and especially mothers in China to protect the girl child in the womb.
  And finally, even the Internet has been turned into a tool of 
repression and surveillance by the secret police.
  The selection of Liu Xiaobo as the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate 
obliges us to undertake sustained scrutiny and meaningful action.
  Indifference or silence or feigned ignorance concerning the Chinese 
government's appalling and massive human rights violations simply isn't 
an option.

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