[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 13173-13174]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 13173]]

                     BEIJING'S BID FOR THE OLYMPICS

  Mr. WELLSTONE. The International Olympic Committee is going to 
announce tomorrow which country will


host the 2008 summer games. The competition is fierce. Toronto and 
Paris are serious contenders. Yet it seems likely that Beijing will get 
the prize.
  I will speak briefly about this decision because I think there should 
be some discussion on the Senate floor and the implications. I believe 
China's authoritarian and oppressive government should not be granted 
the privilege of hosting the 2008 games. The current Government in 
Beijing does not deserve the international legitimacy and the spotlight 
that this honor bestows. Its chronic failure to respect human rights 
violates the fundamental spirit of the Games, and I think it should 
disqualify Beijing.
  Many of my colleagues argue that human rights should never be a 
consideration in determining our trade relations with other countries. 
I don't agree. I do think a government's record on human rights should 
not be ignored with respect to choosing the site for the Olympics which 
confers enormous prestige on the host government and which is intended 
to celebrate human dignity and achievement.
  I have a sense-of-the-Senate amendment because the feeling was it 
would be inappropriate to do it on an appropriations bill. I do not 
believe doing it that way gets the support that it deserves. I know 
there are Senators who argue that to say the Olympics should not be in 
China is to politicize this question. If we are silent about this and 
Beijing hosts the Olympics, we are making a political statement. The 
political statement we are making is their violation of human rights 
does not matter.
  Either way, it is a political statement. I prefer to speak out for 
human rights. The Olympics are first and foremost about sports and the 
joy of athletic competition, but human rights and dignity are also 
central to the Olympic ideal. The Olympic charter makes clear ``respect 
for universal fundamental ethical principles'' are central to the 
Olympic ideal.
  Look at the State Department report. China's Government record has 
worsened as it committed ``numerous serious abuses" from raiding home 
churches, imprisoning Tibetan monks and nuns, locking up Internet 
entrepreneurs, silencing democracy activists, and cracking down on 
Falun Gong.''
  The Chinese Government continues to hold a number of American 
scholars on suspicious charges of spying. Dr. Gao Zhan has not been 
allowed to contact her husband, her 5-year-old child, both American 
citizens, or her lawyer or the State Department.
  This doesn't matter? Moreover, hundreds of thousands of people 
languish in jails and prison camps merely because they dared to 
practice their Christian or Buddhist or Islamic faith. These are the 
facts. Respected international human rights organizations have 
documented hundreds of thousands of cases of arbitrary imprisonment, 
torture, house arrest, or death at the hands of the Government. That is 
a fact.
  What they have done, the brutal crackdown on the Falun Gong is 
unbelievable. This is a harmless Buddhist sect. According to 
international media reports, approximately 50,000 of these 
practitioners have been arrested and detained, more than 5,000 have 
been sentenced to labor camps without a trial, and hundreds have 
received prison sentences after sham trials, show trials. Detainees 
have often been tortured and scores of practitioners of this faith have 
died in Government custody. These are facts. This is the empirical 
evidence. Millions of others have been persecuted for so-called crimes 
such as, if you are ready, advocating for political pluralism and the 
ideals of democracy. Hundreds continue to languish in jail under a 
``counterrevolutionary'' law which the Government repealed 3 years ago. 
Some of them are survivors of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
  While China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political 
Rights--I remember the Clinton administration has made such a big deal 
of this--the Chinese Government has not ratified it. Instead, it 
stepped up its repression of individuals seeking to exercise the very 
rights the covenant is designed to protect. And we do not speak out 
about this.
  We make the argument, to grant this country the honor of hosting the 
Olympics, we should not raise questions about this because to raise 
questions would be to make a political statement about the Olympics. 
Isn't it also making a political statement about the Olympics not to 
raise questions, to legitimize and validate this repression?
  Chinese courts have sentenced members of the Chinese Democracy Party, 
an open opposition party, to terms of 11, 12, and 13 years for 
``conspiring to subvert state power.'' This is a fact.
  Charges against these political activists--do you know what they are? 
They included this: They organized a party--wound up in prison. They 
received funds from abroad promoting independent trade unions--they 
wound up in prison. They used e-mails to distribute materials abroad--
they wound up in prison. And they gave interviews to foreign 
reporters--they wound up in prison.
  Here is where the Olympics is going to go. Without a word from our 
Government? Without a word from the Senate?
  Chinese officials have also ruthlessly suppressed dissent from ethnic 
minorities, including Xinjiang and Tibet. According to a report by 
Amnesty International, the Chinese Government has reportedly committed 
gross violations, including widespread use of torture to exact 
confessions, lengthy prison sentences, and numerous executions. Are we 
not going to speak up about a government that tortures its citizens and 
that executes its citizens for no other reason than they have had the 
courage to speak up for democracy or to try to practice their religion?
  In an apparent attempt to stop the flow of information overseas about 
this crackdown, Chinese security officials continue to detain a 
prominent businesswoman, Ms. Rebiya Kadeer, in the Province of 
Xinjiang. Her husband is a U.S. resident who broadcasts on Radio Free 
Asia and the Voice of America, championing the cause of people. She was 
arrested by the Chinese security forces on her way to meet with members 
of a visiting Congressional staff delegation.
  For years, the same Ms. Kadeer has been praised by the Chinese 
Government for her efforts to promote economic development, including a 
project to help women own their own businesses. She has also been 
praised in the Wall Street Journal for her business savvy. She owned a 
department store in a provincial capital, as well as a profitable 
trading company. But now she has been put out of business, charged 
with--here is the charge, Mr. President--``illegally offering state 
secrets across the border,'' and sentenced to 8 years of hard labor. 
Her son and her secretary were also detained and sent to a labor camp.
  Given this horrendous record, I do not believe China should be 
rewarded for this sort of repression. I am not a cold war warrior. I am 
not trying to resurrect the cold war. My father was born in Odessa, 
Ukraine. Then, to stay ahead of Czarist Russia, he was a Jewish 
immigrant. They moved to Habarovsk in the Far East, Siberia, and then 
Harbin, and lived in Pakeen, lived in China, and he came to the United 
States of America at age 17, in 1914. I am an internationalist.
  I look forward to the day that Beijing hosts the Olympic games. The 
Chinese people are some of the most extraordinary, talented, and 
resourceful people on the planet. I do not for a moment want to bash or 
overgeneralize. I dream of a day when I can come to the Senate floor 
and I can celebrate the idea of China hosting the Olympic games. But 
not now. Not with the persecution, not with the torture, not with the 
murder of innocent citizens, not with the political oppression, not 
with the religious persecution, not with what they have done to the 
country of Tibet, the people of Tibet.
  I believe strongly China's authoritarian, repressive Government 
should not be granted the privilege of hosting the 2008 games. It does 
not deserve the international legitimacy and spotlight that this honor 
bestows. Instead, this Government's chronic failure to respect human 
rights, I believe, violates

[[Page 13174]]

the fundamental spirit of the Olympic games and should disqualify 
Beijing.
  This is perhaps my morning for tilting at windmills because I believe 
the international committee will probably give China the Olympic Games, 
but sometimes it is important just to make that statement on the floor 
of the Senate. I believe others should speak out as well.

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