[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 122 (Thursday, July 2, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4177-S4178]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Hong Kong

  Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I rise today with a heaviness in my heart 
for what we have seen happening in the last 36 hours in Hong Kong.
  Freedom-loving people in Hong Kong for the last 23 years have known 
basic, fundamental human and natural rights, and we see the Communist 
Party of China coming in and trying to steal their dignity and to steal 
their freedom. They live in real and tangible fear of what is going to 
happen tonight and this weekend and next week.
  Yesterday was July 1. July 1 is the anniversary 23 years ago of Hong 
Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty under the Sino-British Joint 
Declaration. Under that agreement, the Communist Party of China made a 
pledge not just to Hongkongers and not just to the British but to the 
watching world, and they said that it would guarantee--they would 
guarantee--a certain level of autonomy and freedom to the Hong Kong 
community and that Hong Kong would not be forced to live under the kind 
of despotism that the mainland Chinese are forced to experience.
  The Communist Party announced to the world, in signing that 
declaration, that Hongkongers would be retaining a lot of freedom. 
Well, since that handover in 1997 and, especially since 2003, when 
there was another attempted national security law debated, the people 
of Hong Kong have been holding pro-democracy protests and celebrations 
every year on the July 1 holiday. Annually, on July 1, they have 
reminded the world of what the pledge was of the Communist Party in 
that agreement of July 1997.
  Yesterday, though, protesting and demanding basic human rights and 
freedoms in Hong Kong became a crime. Under the new national security 
law, to speak out, to exercise freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, 
or freedom of the press issues is considered an act of secession, 
subversion, and terrorism. That is what the new national security law 
that the Chinese have forced on Hong Kong stipulates.
  Thousands of people--thousands of brave freedom lovers--flooded into 
the streets anyway, and they celebrated yesterday that anniversary, and 
they demanded that their representatives who have sold them out to 
Beijing would continue to testify to the pledges that were made 23 
years ago yesterday. At the end of yesterday, several hundred of these 
freedom-loving protesters were arrested, and 10 of them were charged 
with suspected violations under the new national security law.
  Chinese Government officials now seem to be saying that these folks, 
these 10, are going to be extradited to mainland China and face their 
charges there. Remember, the protests that we have seen in Hong Kong 
over the last 15 or 16 months were specifically because of an 
extradition law where Hongkongers were facing the threat of being 
extradited to mainland China, and, supposedly, according to the 
government officials in Hong Kong, this rule, this intended legislation 
was going to be suspended. Well, instead, it looks like it is, in fact, 
connected to this new national security law.
  Yesterday really marks the beginning of a new reign of terror in Hong 
Kong. With the implementation of this national security law, it is 
abundantly clear that the Communist Party seeks to turn Hong Kong into 
a police state no different from Tibet or Xinjiang, and the Hong Kong 
Government no longer derives any power from the consent of the people 
who govern, but rather it seeks to rule solely by its cooperation with 
the CCP's security apparatus.
  We are witnessing the signs of the coming crackdown. Even before this 
law was signed, democracy activists and lawmakers, including Martin 
Lee, who is Hong Kong's father of democracy and the drafter of Hong 
Kong's basic law, had already been rounded up. Many are expecting the 
same fate for themselves in the coming days. Many folks have begun to 
say goodbye to their families in anticipation that they are going to be 
rounded up and hauled off into another one of the Chinese reeducation 
camps or whatever Orwellian euphemism we want say for the new and 
potentially coming Auschwitzes.
  Reading over the last several days, I am grieved over what are 
especially painful and tear-jerking farewell messages from many of 
these democracy activists in Hong Kong on social media heading up to 
midnight on June 30, before the new law took effect. My heart ached as 
I read Joshua Wong tweeting out from the Psalms, in particular Psalm 
23:4:

       I may walk through valleys as dark as death, but I won't be 
     afraid. You are with me, and your shepherd's rod makes me 
     feel safe.

  This was mere hours after announcing that he and other Demosisto 
members--a democracy political organization--would be closing down 
their organizations.
  Pro-democratic parties and pro-independence parties, like the Hong 
Kong National Front and Studentlocalism, have announced on social media 
that they, too, have disbanded and will try to continue their fight for 
freedom from abroad. But if you read the national security law that the 
Communist Party is imposing, it looks like they are going to try to 
claim extraterritorial powers over Hongkongers in exile regarding 
freedom-of-speech issues in other places in the world as also a 
violation of this new, tyrannical, Communist Party Chinese law.
  Videos of restaurant owners and cafe owners are up on social media. 
You can see them removing their pro-democracy posters, their signs 
celebrating the freedom that Hong Kong has known in the past. These 
folks are tearing down these signs in their own restaurants and in 
their places of assembly because they assume they are likely to be 
punished under the new national security law if they keep up signs that 
they have had in their places of business where they were communing and 
breaking bread over the past many, many years. This serves as a 
chilling reminder of how the CCP rules through fear, which it 
ultimately turns into self-censorship.
  Hong Kong-based Twitter accounts have been deleted en masse. 
Individuals fear for their safety if they continue to use the platform, 
and they fear retribution for previous tweets supporting democracy and 
accountable government, which is just a fundamental human thing to be 
able to say or do or talk about or plead for. Like in mainland China, 
Twitter will undoubtedly become a tool that is reserved only for the 
oppressors, no longer for the oppressed.
  I fear that Joshua's request--``If my voice will not be heard soon, I 
hope that the international community will continue to speak up for 
Hong Kong and step up concrete efforts to defend our last bit of 
freedom''--I fear that Joshua's request will be met with silence.
  I fear that we will fail Ronald Reagan's challenge to us that we 
would be ``staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the soul 
prerogative of the lucky few, but [rather, it is] the unalienable and 
universal right of all human beings.'' We are all created in God's 
image, and our rights come to us from God via nature, not because of 
the beneficence of some government.
  I fear that we in the United States and those in the international 
community will just simply move on from the kind of imminent crackdown 
in Hong Kong that we are going to see that is going to have echoes of 
what happened in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989 and that so many 
people just decide to allow the Chinese Government to whitewash and 
pretend never happened. We must not allow that to happen.
  I pray that we in this body will live up to our convictions and that 
we will speak out about what the Communist Party is going to do to the 
freedom-loving people of Hong Kong.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, let me make a comment about the 
remarks from my friend from Nebraska.
  It happens that I was in Hong Kong when that happened, and I saw the 
people, knowing what was going to happen to them after all the promises 
that were made. Everything that we suspected and dreaded has now 
happened.
  I appreciate the fact that there is somebody who cares enough to 
bring all of this to the American people.
  Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, if the chairman would yield for just one 
moment.
  Mr. INHOFE. Yes.
  Mr. SASSE. I would also like to praise the chairman for the work he

[[Page S4178]]

does. Flying around the world can be hard on bodies. When you have all 
the work you have to do at home and you go around the world and you 
encourage freedom-loving people--I know that many, many wonderful folks 
in Taiwan who are fearful because of what they see happening in Hong 
Kong know they have had an advocate in the chairman of the Armed 
Services Committee for many, many years.
  To the people in Taiwan who are also scared at this moment, Jim 
Inhofe is a heroic speaker. I just want to thank him for the work he 
has done there.
  Mr. INHOFE. Thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate that.
  It has been a tough time here. I would say that he has made my day