[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 178 (Monday, December 16, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1874-E1875]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   FIVE CHINESE DAUGHTERS TO BEIJING: PLEASE LET OUR FATHERS GO FREE

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, December 16, 2013

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, When China bullies, 
incarcerates, tortures--and even executes--a prisoner of conscience, 
their entire family and friends suffer an excruciating sense of loss, 
bewilderment, emotional pain and agony.
  Often members of the family are themselves subjected to 
interrogation, mistreatment and house arrest in order to amplify the 
hurt.
  In a very real sense, everyone close to a prisoner of conscience goes 
to jail and lives a seemingly unending nightmare. Every day, family and 
friends are left to wonder what terrible abuse awaits dad or mom or a 
brother or sister or child. Every day, the tears flow.
  The people who rule China today with an iron fist resort to these 
ugly methods of control in the mistaken assumption that the people--the 
masses--can't be trusted to govern themselves, practice their faith as 
they see fit or create a family. China's barbaric one child per couple 
population control policy in effect since 1979 continues unabated to 
make brothers and sisters illegal and relies on ruinous fines and 
penalties, forced abortion, and coercive sterilization--crimes against 
humanity--to

[[Page E1875]]

achieve its ends. And all ``news'' content and commentary in 
cyberspace, TV, radio or in print media continues to be strictly 
controlled and manipulated by the communist party.
  The Chinese government today is in the business of breaking minds, 
bodies and hearts. The repression is systematic, pervasive, unrelenting 
and unnecessary--the people of China love their nation and deserve 
better treatment. Even heroic persons like Chen Guangcheng, Wei 
Jingsheng, Rebiya Kadeer, Bishop Su, Harry Wu, and countless others who 
have demonstrated by their extraordinary perseverance an indomitable 
will to advance bedrock human rights principles regardless of cost 
carry the indelible scars of unspeakable mistreatment.
  The people who rule China today employ these ugly methods of control 
to prop up their own political power and increase their personal 
wealth. China, a great nation, deserves better.
  Far too many of us who live in freedom often fail to exert ourselves 
in a meaningful way to assist prisoners of conscience and their loved 
ones--in China and elsewhere.
  Far too many of us fail to empathize with their plight. Or to see 
what's just below the faccade of the purported harmonious society.
  How can it be that the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo 
remains in prison while his wife Liu Xia is forced to endure the 
extreme isolation of house arrest and is now reportedly experiencing 
severe depression?
  Perhaps we are uninformed or too busy or prefer to look askance. 
However, with so much preventable suffering being endured by so many 
prisoners of conscience and their families in China today, the time has 
surely come for a more serious and sustained defense of these heroic 
individuals and their noble causes.
  All of us--including the Chinese government--have a duty to protect.
  At a hearing that I held several weeks ago, we heard the cries for 
release and freedom from five remarkable daughters on behalf of their 
wrongly imprisoned fathers and from a dad on behalf of his unjustly 
jailed son. We also received expert testimony from a previously 
incarcerated Christian pastor who cares deeply for the vulnerable and 
at risk and another human rights activist who was detained in China 
after an attempt to visit a dissident.

                          ____________________