[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 212 (Wednesday, December 8, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H7507-H7509]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   CONDEMNING THE ONGOING GENOCIDE AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY BEING 
              COMMITTED BY THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

  Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the 
resolution (H. Res. 317) condemning the ongoing genocide and crimes 
against humanity being committed against Uyghurs and members of other 
religious and ethnic minority groups by the People's Republic of China, 
as amended.
  The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
  The text of the resolution is as follows:

                              H. Res. 317

       Whereas, on December 9, 1948, the United Nations General 
     Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Prevention 
     and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide 
     Convention) signifying a commitment in response to the 
     Holocaust and other crimes against humanity committed in the 
     first half of the twentieth century;
       Whereas the Genocide Convention entered into force on 
     January 12, 1951, and declares that all state parties 
     ``confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace 
     or in time of war, is a crime under international law which 
     they undertake to prevent and to punish'';
       Whereas the Genocide Convention defines genocide as ``any 
     of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in 
     whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious 
     group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing 
     serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) 
     Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life 
     calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole 
     or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births 
     within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the 
     group to another group'';
       Whereas the United States ratified the Genocide Convention 
     with the understanding that the commission of genocide 
     requires ``the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in 
     substantial part, a [protected] group as such'';
       Whereas the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a state 
     party to the Genocide Convention;
       Whereas, since 2017, the PRC Government, under the 
     direction and control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 
     has detained and sought to indoctrinate more than one million 
     Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority 
     groups;
       Whereas recent data indicate a significant drop in birth 
     rates among Uyghurs due to enforced sterilization, enforced 
     abortion, and more onerous birth quotas for Uyghurs compared 
     to Han;
       Whereas there are credible reports of PRC Government 
     campaigns to promote marriages between Uyghurs and Han and to 
     reduce birth rates among Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims;
       Whereas many Uyghurs reportedly have been assigned to 
     factory employment under conditions that indicate forced 
     labor, and some former detainees have reported food 
     deprivation, beatings, suppression of religious practices, 
     family separation, and sexual abuse;
       Whereas this is indicative of a systematic effort to 
     eradicate the ethnic and cultural identity and religious 
     beliefs, and prevent the births of, Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs 
     and Kyrgyz, and members of religious minority groups;
       Whereas the birth rate in the Xinjiang region fell by 24 
     percent in 2019 compared to a 4.2 percent decline nationwide;
       Whereas, on January 19, 2021, the Department of State 
     determined the PRC Government, under the direction and 
     control of the CCP, has committed crimes against humanity and 
     genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious 
     minority groups in Xinjiang;
       Whereas Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Former 
     Secretary of State Michael Pompeo have both stated that what 
     has taken place in Xinjiang is genocide and constitutes 
     crimes against humanity;
       Whereas Article VIII of the Genocide Convention provides, 
     ``Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of 
     the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of 
     the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the 
     prevention and suppression of acts of genocide'';
       Whereas the International Court of Justice has stated that 
     it is the obligation of all state parties to the Genocide 
     Convention to ``employ all means reasonably available to 
     them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible''; and
       Whereas the United States is a Permanent Member of the 
     United Nations Security Council: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
       (1) finds that the ongoing abuses against Uyghurs and 
     members of other ethnic and religious minority groups 
     constitute genocide as defined in the Genocide Convention and 
     crimes against humanity as understood under customary 
     international law;
       (2) attributes these atrocity crimes against Uyghurs and 
     members of other ethnic and religious minority groups to the 
     People's Republic of China, under the direction and control 
     of the Chinese Communist Party;
       (3) condemns this genocide and these crimes against 
     humanity in the strongest terms; and
       (4) calls upon the President to direct the United States 
     Permanent Representative to the United Nations to use the 
     voice, vote, and influence of the United States to--
       (A) refer the People's Republic of China's genocide and 
     crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and members of other 
     ethnic and religious minority groups to the competent organs 
     of the United Nations for investigation;
       (B) seize the United Nations Security Council of the 
     circumstances of this genocide and crimes against humanity 
     and lead efforts to invoke multilateral sanctions in response 
     to these ongoing atrocities; and
       (C) take all possible actions to bring this genocide and 
     these crimes against humanity to an end and hold the 
     perpetrators of these atrocities accountable under 
     international law.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Meeks) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. McCaul) each will 
control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York.

[[Page H7508]]

  



                             General Leave

  Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 
5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and 
include extraneous material on H. Res. 317, as amended.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from New York?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 317, as amended, 
condemning the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity being 
committed against Uyghurs and members of other religious and ethnic 
minority groups by the People's Republic of China. And I was proud to 
introduce this resolution alongside my good friend, Ranking Member 
McCaul, and working collectively with him.
  Mr. Speaker, I have said previously, and I will say this again, as an 
African American who has faced the brunt end of injustice for no reason 
other than the color of my skin and watched my parents suffer, I am 
very sensitive to the deep wounds of intolerance and oppression that 
many minority populations endure across the globe.
  Again, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said: ``Injustice 
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere'' and ``I refuse to be 
silent,'' another statement of Dr. King because silence can be 
complicity.
  Dr. King called us all to be champions of human rights, not just here 
in the United States, but wherever human rights are under threat.
  And we have seen grave human rights abuses in China. In Xinjiang, the 
Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minority groups are 
subjected to systematic human rights violations that amounts to a 
genocide and crimes against humanity as defined by the Geneva 
Convention.
  The crimes taking place against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities 
in Xinjiang are horrific in their scope and severity. And we know of 
these atrocities because many survivors began speaking out at great 
risk to their personal safety and that of their families. They provided 
firsthand accounts confirming China's targeted campaign of repression. 
Meanwhile, journalists, scholars, and activists who have tried to 
uncover what is happening have been targeted and expelled.
  The House Foreign Affairs Committee has heard harrowing accounts from 
survivors of mass internment, forced labor, torture, political 
indoctrination, suppression of religious practices, family separation, 
sexual abuse, and other inhumane practices.
  During a hearing on May 6 of this year, survivor Tursunay Ziyawudun 
ended her testimony by imploring the members of the House Foreign 
Affairs Committee and Congress to act. And we are here today to do just 
that.
  This resolution unequivocally declares that a genocide is taking 
place in the Uyghur region. I agree with that declaration and so do 
many others around the world.
  This resolution is a clarion call, not just to every nation in the 
world, but to every person on this planet that the United States 
Congress will not remain silent, no matter how powerful the 
perpetrator.
  We must continue to call out the government of the People's Republic 
of China for these atrocities and others all over the world and have 
them take all possible actions to bring this genocide and these crimes 
against humanity to an end.
  I say to the world, we are starting with China. We are going all over 
the world. Human rights are on the front burner in the United States 
House of Representatives and clearly on the Committee on Foreign 
Affairs.
  This is an important resolution. I close by saying I support and am 
glad to work with the ranking member, Mr. McCaul.
  Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution. I urge my colleagues to do 
the same, and I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McCAUL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Let me thank the chairman for bringing this measure with me here 
today. I also want to thank him for his passion on this issue. We talk 
about human rights, whether it was the African Americans who were 
enslaved in this Nation to the Native-American Indians who were 
mistreated by this Nation to the victims of the Holocaust where the 
Geneva Convention came out with the prevention and punishment of the 
crime of genocide and defined what genocide is after the atrocities of 
the concentration camps that were perpetrated by the Nazis--a war that 
my father fought in and bombed Nazi Germany, and I am proud for his 
service and the entire Greatest Generation.
  And it is clear, the language, it says: ``targeting members of an 
ethnic or religious minority group for death or serious bodily and 
mental harm or taking steps designed to destroy such a group 
constitutes genocide.'' That is precisely what the Chinese Communist 
Party has been doing.
  Since 2017, they have interned more than one million Uyghurs and 
members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in an effort to 
wipe out their culture, to wipe out their ability to carry down to 
other generations by sterilizing them.
  During their unjustified detainment, Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs and 
Kyrgyz and members of religious minority groups are forced to work in 
horrific conditions, they are deprived of food, and they are beaten. 
Their religious practices are suppressed. There are reports of families 
being separated and of sexual abuse, of forced sterilization, forced 
abortions, and even reports of killing to wipe them, quite simply, off 
the face of the Earth.
  It is horrific to imagine that this is happening in this day and 
time, in this time that we speak, in this age. Mr. Speaker, it is 
clearly a genocide under the Geneva Convention.

  These crimes are the moral test of our time and our generation. The 
world and certainly the Chinese Communist Party is watching. And that 
is why it is vital that we speak in a united voice with the current and 
prior administrations by calling these ongoing atrocities what they 
are, and that is genocide.
  Genocide is not to be taken lightly. It is a term we reserve for 
history's most serious crimes against humanity. It is essential we get 
our response right, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans, 
as freedom-loving Americans who stand up for human rights and against 
genocide. Because we have faced this test before, and we have not 
always passed.
  Our response to the Uyghur genocide should be an example of our 
character in this Congress, rather than a stain on our history.
  This humanitarian crisis is about more than just U.S. foreign policy 
toward the People's Republic of China. It is about the legitimacy of 
the post-World War system designed to stop these atrocities whenever 
and wherever they are being committed.
  And it is about how we stop the CCP from contaminating consumer 
supply chains with slave labor. It is about how we stop using cotton 
sourced by the Uyghur homeland and picked by those without a voice. It 
is about stopping shipments of hair. It is about how we convince our 
private sector to act morally, consistent with our American values.
  So let me just say, I, again, thank the chairman. This is probably 
one of the most important bills to come out of the committee this year. 
I am proud to have introduced it, and I am so proud to have the 
chairman's support. I thank him for cosponsoring this resolution and 
all of our colleagues on the committee who support our efforts to 
condemn these atrocities.
  I urge the entire House of Representatives on this vote, because 
China is watching and the Uyghur Muslims are watching, to join us as we 
speak in a united voice and condemn this genocide by supporting this 
measure.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

                              {time}  1445

  Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McCAUL: Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio 
(Mr. Chabot), ranking member of the Committee of Foreign Affairs' 
Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation.
  Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 317, legislation which 
condemns China's genocide against the Uyghurs.

[[Page H7509]]

As ranking member of the Committee of Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on 
Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation, I strongly support this 
legislation and I commend both the chairman of the committee, Mr. 
Meeks, and the ranking member, Mr. McCaul, for their leadership on this 
particular issue.
  They have been stressing this. They have been pushing this. They have 
been speaking out on this for quite some time now, and I am very 
pleased to see this come before the floor today. It is far beyond the 
time that action needs to be taken on this.
  Mr. Speaker, the consistent undermining of human rights, perhaps the 
Chinese Communist Party's most fundamental challenge to the free world. 
China's totalitarian government, they have no use for human rights. 
Their bloody history demonstrates that. Relative to political freedom 
in China, one sees abuses from Tiananmen Square to Hong Kong. Freedom 
of speech? The great firewall shuts that down. Freedom of religion? The 
CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, persecutes Christians; they persecute 
the Falun Gong; they persecute Tibetan Buddhists; and they even want to 
dictate who the next Dalai Lama will be.
  And the Chinese Communist Party has taken this campaign to a whole 
new level in Xinjiang where the Uyghurs are subject to forced labor, to 
torture, to sexual abuse, to religious persecution, and to onerous 
restrictions in every facet of their lives.
  Over a million people, the vast majority of them Uyghurs, are in 
concentration camps today currently. While we are here, they are in 
concentration camps in China. The hallmark of genocide is the intent to 
destroy, to eliminate an entire people, and that intent is clear here. 
The Chinese Communist Party is snatching Uyghur children from their 
parents, imposing severe birth quotas on Uyghurs. They are conducting 
forced abortions. They are sterilizing a sizable percentage of the 
population against their will, and up to 80 percent in some areas of 
Xinjiang forced sterilization is occurring right now.
  As a result of all this, the birth rate in Xinjiang fell by 24 
percent--one out of four--in 2019 alone. This is genocide, and it is 
high time that the world got serious with the PRC, the People's 
Republic of China, about what they are doing to the Uyghurs. They have 
been doing it to a whole range of groups for a long time, but it is 
particularly brutal when it comes to the Uyghurs, and American 
businesses have to make sure that they are not profiting by this 
essentially slave labor, whatever businesses those are.
  So there are things that we can do here in the United States but, 
ultimately, it is up to the PRC and it is up to the world to shine a 
light on this because this is happening right now. A million people or 
so are in these gulags right now.
  Mr. Speaker, I again thank our leadership, and this is bipartisan 
leadership. It is Republicans and Democrats actually working together 
on this, and it is good to see that happen.
  So again, I thank Mr. Meeks and Mr. McCaul for doing this.
  Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McCAUL. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself 
such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, let me say in closing, I again thank Chairman Meeks, my 
friend, who has been in strong support of this legislation. We pride 
our committee in doing what is right by the country. We try to take the 
politics out of it as much as we can. And as Eliot Engel often said, it 
stops at the water's edge, and this is no exception.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a historic day. Congress is rarely in vote or 
declared genocide on another people, but it is very appropriate today 
to do so. And the international community is watching, and China is 
watching this right now. They are watching this on C-SPAN, and the 
world knows that the United States stands for higher moral values, and 
we stand for human rights.
  And that is why this bill was introduced, and the lives of over a 
million people depend on it. Think about that. A million people in 
internment camps, concentration camps, being exterminated, depend on 
this legislation. We pass a lot of things in this Congress but it is 
very rare you can pass something like this that condemns this kind of 
moral atrocity and call it to the world so the entire world can see it 
for themselves what is, in fact, happening. And when Congress speaks, 
the world does listen. And when we speak as Americans in this Chamber, 
not as partisan politicians, they listen. And I know they are listening 
today.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, I, too, thank Mr. McCaul for his leadership. It is my 
pleasure to work with him on this bill to get this to the floor and to 
pass it on this floor, the people's House, in a bipartisan way, sending 
a strong message together. That is what this does. So I thank him for 
his friendship, and I thank him for standing up, as he does, and 
working together in a bipartisan way.
  Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 317, condemning the ongoing genocide and crimes 
against humanity being committed against the Uyghurs and members of 
other religious and ethnic minority groups by the People's Republic of 
China is critical to demonstrating to those suffering in Xinjiang that 
they haven't been forsaken. And to the government of Beijing, we will 
speak out when it tramples the universal rights that every human being 
deserves.
  It gives me hope that we are not the first parliamentary body that 
has deemed the PRC's action in Xinjiang a genocide. The parliaments of 
the U.K., of Canada, of Lithuania, among others, have already taken the 
right stand. We must support them. We must work with them and 
multilateral groups. We must encourage other nations and other people 
to speak out. But I am proud we are speaking out here today in the 
United States Congress, in the people's House. We will not be silent.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that all my colleagues will join me in supporting 
this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. PFLUGER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to shed light on the horrific 
genocide that Communist China is committing against Uyghurs and other 
ethnic and religious minorities.
  Right now, over one million Uyghurs are enslaved by the People's 
Republic of China in the Xinjiang region, where they are subjected to 
horrific human rights atrocities like forced sterilization and 
abortions, slave labor, and even execution.
  Communist China is actively attempting to wipe out an entire people 
group, and the United States must not allow it.
  A few months ago, I--and other members of the Foreign Affairs 
Committee--heard directly from Ms. Tursunay Ziyawudun, a survivor of a 
CCP's concentration camp. She told us harrowing stories of the horrific 
atrocities she suffered through.
  It was absolutely heartbreaking. I cannot imagine my wife or 
daughters being subjected to an environment like that.
  Today's resolution sends the message directly from the United States 
to the Chinese government, that they must immediately end their ongoing 
crimes.
  I applaud Republican Leader McCaul and Chairman Meeks for their work 
to address this heartbreaking atrocity.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks) that the House suspend the rules 
and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 317, as amended.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. CLYDE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to section 3(s) of House Resolution 
8, the yeas and nays are ordered.
  Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further proceedings on this motion 
are postponed.

                          ____________________