[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 19 (Monday, January 31, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S403-S405]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 China

  Mr. President, this is not only the anniversary of the military coup 
in Burma; it is also the week of the start of the Winter Olympic Games 
in China. On this Friday, February 4, the torch will be lit, signaling 
the start of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, and millions around the 
world will gather around TVs and smartphones and computers and iPads 
and every kind of device to watch the spectacle of the opening 
ceremonies as they unfold in Beijing. For 2 weeks, the audience will 
cheer as athletes from across the globe achieve the near impossible and 
join in the sorrow of defeat and the joy of victory.
  But while the world's attention focuses on the glamour of the Games, 
a thousand miles away in Xinjiang Province, millions of Uighurs will 
continue to suffer from acts of genocide; the people of Hong Kong will 
still be denied their rights and their freedoms; and untold numbers of 
political prisoners will languish behind bars in China, many for 
nothing more than exercising the most basic voice they have as human 
beings.
  Colleagues, we cannot allow the glitz and glamour of Olympic Gold and 
glory to blind us to the reality of the pain and persecution that so 
many are suffering under the Chinese Communist Party's authoritarian 
control--people like Mahire Yakup, an insurance saleswoman, a Mandarin 
tutor, the mother of three, who is currently serving a 6\1/2\-year 
sentence for ``funding terrorist activities.'' That sounds terrible. 
What has this mother of three done? What did she do? She sent money 
overseas to Australia to help her parents buy a house.
  Since first being taken into custody in March of 2018, Mahire has 
languished in detention. First, she was taken to a mass internment 
camp. Then she was moved to a pretrial detention center. She was 
released twice and taken back into custody twice before being sentenced 
in December of 2020 to 6\1/2\ years behind bars for the crime of 
helping her parents buy a house. But the whole world knows her real 
crime and why she is behind bars is she was born in the Uighur minority 
community.

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  Mirzat Taher is another member of the Uighur community imprisoned by 
the Chinese Government for actions that here in the United States 
people would say: Where is the crime? What have you done wrong?
  Years ago, he lived in Istanbul, Turkey, where he worked as a tour 
guide. In China, especially in Xinjiang Province, traveling abroad is a 
source of massive suspicion to Chinese officials. After about a year in 
Turkey, Mirzat moved back to Xinjiang Province. He met a young Uighur 
woman visiting from Australia. They fell in love. They got married and 
lived in Xinjiang for a year before they started hearing rumblings of 
people disappearing and the increased oppression of the Uighur 
community by the Chinese Communist Party, and they started to make 
plans to leave the country.
  This was in 2017, when China's crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim 
minorities was just starting to ramp up and a program of arbitrary mass 
detention was beginning. As an Australian citizen, his wife was able to 
get her husband Mirzat a visa, and they booked a flight to Melbourne, 
but 2 days before they were scheduled to leave, police knocked on the 
door in the middle of the night. Mirzat's passport was confiscated, and 
he was interrogated. Once they learned he had spent time in Turkey, the 
officers made him accompany them--leave his home--to the police 
station.
  He didn't come home that night or the next week or the next month or 
the next year. It would be 2 years before he saw his wife again. He was 
locked up in a detention center for 10 months, moved to a mass 
internment camp, where he and other detainees were subjected to 
political indoctrination and physical and mental abuse--including, at 
one point his arms were shackled to the top of a door for an entire day 
for the crime of speaking some Uighur words.
  In May of 2019, Mirzat was suddenly released, and he and his wife 
tried to get him to Australia, but twice more, the Chinese authorities 
detained him, until his most recent detention on September 26, 2020, 
for the alleged crime of ``organizing, leading, or participating in a 
terrorist organization.'' Last April, he was sentenced to 25 years in 
prison for charges related to ``terrorism'' or ``separatism,'' all 
because, as a young man, he traveled and lived in Turkey for a year.
  Go Sherab Gyatso--in fact, separatism is often a common, general-
purpose charge used by the Communist Party against those they think 
might become critical of the policies of the Communist Party.
  We take for granted our freedom of speech and our ability to be 
critical of each other's ideas or support those ideas or those of our 
own President, but in China, any word or presence in which you might do 
something other than just praise the party, you may be treated as a 
criminal and imprisoned for a long period of time.
  That charge, separatism, is a charge you can throw around, accusing 
basically anyone--and in this case, a young man working as a tour guide 
or a Tibetan scholar and monk like Go Sherab Gyatso, who was sentenced 
in a closed trial last December to 10 years in prison.
  He was originally arrested in October of 2020 after traveling to 
Chengdu in southwestern China to act as a translator for an ill 
relative. It is the fourth time that he had been arrested by Chinese 
authorities. He is a monk. He is a scholar. He is a rights advocate. He 
has been sentenced with the same state security crime that is so 
frequently used against his fellow Tibetans of ``inciting separatism,'' 
simply for having the courage to speak out about protecting and 
preserving Tibet's environmental, religious, linguistic, and cultural 
heritage. And he faces a decade in prison.
  Separatism--it is the exact same charge that Rinchen Kyi was arrested 
on last August. She is former teacher, a fellow Tibetan. What was her 
crime? She expressed her displeasure that the private middle school 
where she was teaching, which was established to help educate those in 
the community without the means to receive a formal education--whether 
they be poor or orphaned children--had suddenly been shut down by the 
Chinese Government.

  No reason was given for the sudden shutdown, but it is believed from 
local sources that it was because the primary language used at the 
school was Tibetan--Tibetan language at a Tibetan school--and the 
school provided Tibetan culture-based learning.
  Rinchen Kyi was so disturbed by the closure of the school where she 
taught, she lost her appetite, basically stopped eating for 2 weeks. 
Her health deteriorated. She grew weaker. But before her family could 
get her help, the Chinese police knocked on her door, arresting her on 
charges of ``inciting separatism.''
  Rinchen Kyi was hospitalized for 2 days in another city hundreds of 
miles away from home. She was transferred to another undisclosed 
location and detained. Five months after she was arrested, her status 
and whereabouts are unknown. Her crime was trying to help educate the 
poorest children in her community, in their own language and discussing 
their culture.
  The challenges are not just happening in Tibet. The same kinds of 
efforts to silence voices and information that the Chinese Government 
doesn't want out in the world is happening right now in Hong Kong.
  Earlier this month, Chow Hang-tung, a pro-democracy activist, was 
sentenced to 15 months in prison for helping to organize a vigil 
commemorating the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. For 30 
years, this vigil has been held in Hong Kong on the anniversary of the 
bloody military crackdown.
  As the former vice-chairwoman of the Hong Kong Alliance, which held 
these vigils, she had helped organize them for many years, but in 2020, 
the government banned them, citing COVID-19 restrictions. In spite of 
that, her organization continued to plan for holding these vigils. They 
submitted the paperwork. They notified the government. They alerted the 
police of their intentions to hold the event, just as they had done 
year after year after year. Then the paperwork was rejected, so they 
formally appealed the decision, and their appeal failed.
  So Chow took to social media, calling on her fellow Hongkongers, who 
wouldn't be able to hold this gathering, to simply do this: Light a 
candle in remembrance of the anniversary. She didn't suggest they come 
to any specific place, didn't suggest they rally in person; just, in 
your home or wherever you are, light a candle in remembrance.
  She also wrote an article in the paper titled ``Candlelight carries 
the weight of conscience and the Hong Kong people persevere in telling 
the truth.'' Her article was used against her as evidence of 
``incitement to knowingly take part in an unauthorized assembly,'' even 
though she decided not to call for an assembly and just to ask someone, 
wherever they are, to light a candle in remembrance. She didn't ask 
anyone to assemble. She didn't ask anyone to gather. She didn't define 
a particular place.
  The Tiananmen Square massacre by the Chinese Government is perhaps 
the most censored issue in mainland China. Since China has broken their 
agreement with Great Britain over Hong Kong, their 50-year agreement, 
and wiped out the political rights of the people of Hong Kong, talking 
about Tiananmen in Hong Kong is cause for arrest--even the suggestion 
of simply lighting a candle.
  The Chinese Government tightens its grip on Hong Kong. It wants to 
erase all information or history related to it, just as they have done 
on the mainland--that is, in regard to Tiananmen Square--just as they 
want to suppress the voices of people in Tibet, just as they want to 
wipe out the Xinjiang Muslim community. They want to make sure that any 
form of potential resistance to the Beijing Government and their 
version of the world is silenced and, as we have seen far too many 
times over and over again, these folks who speak up against them in any 
way.
  This is Li Yuhan. She is 65. She was a human rights lawyer known in 
China's human rights community as ``big sister.'' She was held in 
custody for 4 years before getting a trial. She was charged with that 
obscure crime of ``picking quarrels and provoking trouble''--another 
catch-all phrase used to lock up anybody the Chinese Government sees as 
criticizing anything they do.
  Everyone in China has to live in immediate fear of being arrested 
should they voice their inner opinions on something going wrong in the 
country,

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something they want changed, something they want improved, something 
that disagrees with the official line of the Communist Party.
  She is in poor health, as indicated by the fact that when she was 
arrested, they had an ambulance outside. Actually, the ambulance was 
outside where the trial was held. She suffers from heart disease, 
hypertension, and hyperthyroidism, and her long time behind bars has 
made things worse. Staff at the detention center where she had been 
held reportedly instructed other inmates to urinate on her food, deny 
her hot water for showers, deny medical treatment, and threaten to beat 
her to death--because she was a human rights advocate.
  In March of 2018, almost 4 years ago, Li went on a hunger strike to 
protest her mistreatment, which led detention center officials to 
force-feed her.
  Like many others, Li Yuhan had the courage to stand up for what is 
right, and she is mercilessly persecuted for doing so.
  These various individuals and the way that they are treated are the 
kinds of abuses that will be going on at the same time as the Winter 
Olympic Games are held in China. Figure skaters fly across the ice, and 
while they do so, Li Yuhan will continue to suffer in custody for 
standing up for human rights. Bobsledders will careen down the track at 
lightning-fast speeds; Chow Hang-tung will continue to be punished for 
trying to ensure his cultural history is remembered. As skiers race 
down the slalom slopes, Go Sherab Gyatso and Rinchen Kyi will still be 
locked up for sharing and defending their culture.
  As athlete after athlete climbs the podium to have beautiful bronze, 
silver, and gold medals around their necks, Mahire Yakup and Mirzat 
Taher will go on languishing in prison cells for the crime of being 
born in the Uighur community.
  That is the backdrop of this year's Beijing Olympic Games--human 
rights abuses, genocide, the destruction of freedom and democracy. And 
we cannot allow that to be ignored or overshadowed. We cannot allow for 
that to be forgotten in the glitz and glamour of Olympic Gold. We 
cannot let these names and these faces and countless, countless others 
who have faced the same be lost in the shadows of the flames of the 
Olympic torch.
  The world must join together to say to the International Olympic 
Committee that never again can the perpetrators of human rights abuses 
be allowed to host a treasured event like the Olympic Games. Never 
again can the athletes of the world ask to be essentially conspirators 
in the glitz and glamour of covering up genocide.
  And, for all of us, we need to remind the world throughout these 
games of what is going on in China. Do not let the Chinese Government 
succeed in having the world forget about their massive human rights 
violations--their genocide, their torture, their elimination, their 
imprisonment, their complete crushing of the rights of people of Tibet 
and Hong Kong, the complete destruction of the right to speech and the 
right to religion within their country, the complete obliteration of 
the human spirit. We cannot allow all that to be forgotten during these 
Olympic Games.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

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