[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 17351-17352]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           ASSESSING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, July 9, 2009

  Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, a May 5 Washington Post article opened with 
these words: ``The Obama administration has backed away from overt 
expressions of support for human rights and democracy in favor of a 
more subtle approach, worrying advocates who say that the issues are 
being given short shrift as President Obama seeks to rebuild relations 
with allies and reach out to adversaries.''
  I join the ranks of those who are deeply troubled by the trajectory 
of this administration on human rights.
  In a February visit to Asia, Secretary of State Clinton plainly 
indicated that human rights would not be a priority in her engagement 
with China. She said, ``We pretty much know what they [the Chinese 
government] are going to say'' on human rights issues.
  With that logic, the administration will rarely find it advisable to 
raise human rights concerns with any country, particularly the worst 
offenders.
  Clinton went on, ``We have to continue to press them. But our 
pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic 
crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.''
  Human rights organizations were dismayed. How had impassioned 
advocacy for the dignity of every person been relegated to a position 
of mere interference? And this in spite of Obama campaign promises to 
``be frank with the Chinese'' and ``press them to respect human 
rights.''
  Following Secretary Clinton's Asia comments and subsequent remarks 
during a visit to the Middle East where she indicated that Egypt's 
abuses would not negatively affect our bilateral relations, the 
Washington Post editorialized on March 11, ``Ms. Clinton is doing a 
disservice to her own department--and sending the wrong message to 
rulers around the world that their abuses won't be taken seriously by 
this U.S. administration.''
  Against this backdrop, President Obama in April moved to lift 
restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban Americans absent any 
commitment by the Castro brothers to release even one of the hundreds 
of political prisoners who languish in jails.
  Frank Calzon of the Center for a Free Cuba cautioned, ``Lifting the 
travel ban means the most hostile elements of the Cuban government will 
get an injection of our currency . . . The tourist industry is 
controlled and staffed by the Cuban government. If Washington wants to 
transfer dollars to the Cuban military, that's one way of doing it.''
  Cuba is still characterized by our own State Department as a 
``totalitarian state.'' This year's National Endowment for Democracy's 
(NED) annual Democracy Award recently went to five courageous leaders 
of Cuba's pro-democracy movement. The Washington Post editorial page on 
June 25 pointed out that in both the Bush and Clinton administrations, 
NED awardees were given either an audience with the president or a 
statement of support. Not so this year.
  According to the Post, the White House issued a ``hastily drafted 
statement'' only after the paper inquired about the president's 
silence. These brave Cuban democracy activists are, in the words of the 
Post's editorial page, ``hoping that the American president will focus 
his policy on supporting them. Yet for now, Mr. Obama's diplomacy is 
clearly centered on their oppressors.''
  Or consider Sudan. During the campaign, when asked about Darfur, 
Barack Obama said, ``We can't say 'never again' and then allow it to 
happen again. And, as President of the United States, I don't intend to 
. . . turn a blind eye to slaughter.'' He also spoke of ``ratcheting up 
sanctions.''
  Now, almost six months into the administration, the State Department 
is still conducting a much vaunted ``comprehensive review'' of U.S.-
Sudan policy. Nothing concrete has emerged. The little that has leaked 
out in press reports is disturbing.
  The administration appears divided at the highest levels over whether 
genocide is even still taking place in Darfur. Furthermore, they are 
making overtures to Khartoum which are, at best, naive.
  As recently as June 18, The Post reported that Special Envoy Gration 
``has advocated easing some American sanctions and upgrading U.S. 
diplomatic relations with Sudan's government to induce cooperation.''
  And more recently on the Iranian elections, while the president's 
tone has toughened a bit in the face of increased pressure and 
bloodshed, his initial response was painfully muted. Asked about 
whether there was ``any red line'' his administration wouldn't cross 
where the ``offer [to talk to Iran's leaders] will be shut off,'' the 
president simply replied, ``We're waiting to see how it plays itself 
out.''
  A July 6 National Review Online posting on the plight of seven 
imprisoned Baha'i leaders set to go on trial later this week, pointed 
out that a ``restrained approach'' to human rights advocacy ``may not 
work for the seven imprisoned Baha'i in Iran, who face trial on July 
11. The Iranian regime needs to understand that such blatant religious 
persecution has consequences. Silence may convince the Iranian 
leadership that they can get away with murder.''
  The Baha'is are not the only minority faith in the region under 
duress. In the president's much anticipated Cairo speech, he only made 
fleeting reference to Egypt's Coptic Christians, saying that 
``religious diversity must be upheld.'' But far more than diversity is 
at stake.
  A June 26 press release by the bipartisan U.S. Commission on 
International Religious Freedom following recent reported attacks on 
Egyptian Copts describes the pattern of persecution endured by this 
community. The commission indicated that ``initial reports say that 
state security services did little to prevent the violence from 
occurring. This repeats the established pattern that security services 
do not adequately protect Christian citizens in many localities. For 
all Christians in Egypt, government permission is required to build a 
new church or repair an existing one, and the approval process for 
church construction is time-consuming and inflexible. Even some permits 
that have been approved cannot be acted upon because of interference by 
the state security services at both the local and national levels.''
  A May 7 Washington Post editorial described the Obama administration 
as rushing to ``embrace Egypt's 81-year-old strongman,'' in reference 
to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The editorial went on to say that 
the administration is retreating from raising human rights abuses and 
that ``the pullback is not only rhetorical.'' Funding for democracy 
promotion in Egypt, reportedly at the request of the U.S. ambassador to 
Egypt, was initially cut from $50 million to $20 million this year. 
That number has since been bumped by $5 million as the funding bill has 
moved through the committee process--but even with that increase, the 
funding amounts to half of the previous year's figure. Given that 
millions of dollars in unconditioned foreign aid has gone to the 
Egyptian government in the years following the Camp David accords, this 
slash in civil society funding is an embarrassment.

[[Page 17352]]

  One of the darkest places on the globe is North Korea. More than 
200,000 North Koreans--including children--are being held in political 
prison camps. It is estimated that between 400,000 and one million 
people have died in these camps, having been worked to death or starved 
to death.
  A June 16 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal featured a quote from a 
North Korean refugee woman who said, ``If I had a chance to meet with 
President Obama, I would first like to tell him how North Korean women 
are being sold like livestock in China and, second, to know that North 
Korean labor camps are hell on earth.''
  Even in the face of North Korea's nuclear ambitions it is inexcusable 
for their abhorrent human rights record to not just be relegated to the 
back burner, but seemingly removed from the agenda altogether. Unlike 
past administrations, this administration had nothing to say, no public 
statement, acknowledging North Korea Human Rights Week this April, and 
Secretary Clinton, who was in town, could not find time in her schedule 
to meet with any of the 30 brave North Korean defectors in the nation's 
capital to mark the occasion.
  Or consider Vietnam. In its 2009 annual report, the U.S. Commission 
on International Religious Freedom found that, ``Individuals continue 
to be imprisoned or detained for reasons related to their religious 
activity or religious freedom advocacy; police and government officials 
are not held fully accountable for abuses; independent religious 
activity remains illegal; and legal protections for government-approved 
religious organizations are both vague and subject to arbitrary or 
discriminatory interpretations based on political factors.'' The 
commission recommended that Vietnam be placed back on the State 
Department's Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list, a list 
reserved for the world's worst offenders of religious freedom.
  But a June 25 Washington Times article reported that ``U.S. 
Ambassador to Vietnam Michael W. Michalak recently rejected calls by 
the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to put 
Vietnam back on the CPC watch list. He cited that there was not enough 
evidence of religious persecution.''
  This is the same ambassador who recently gave a 4th of July speech in 
which he cited the timeless words of our own Declaration of 
Independence, but then had nothing to say about the oppression and lack 
of freedom in Vietnam. It is worth noting that Ambassador Michalak is a 
career foreign service officer who has been in his current position 
since the last years of the Bush administration. He is well acquainted 
with my concerns regarding his apparent disregard for human rights in 
Vietnam and his failure to make the U.S. embassy an island of freedom.
  I was quick to criticize the Bush administration when it seemed that 
they were missing opportunities to be a voice for the voiceless. Too 
often in the previous administration the public rhetoric failed to 
match action. But in this new, young administration, even the rhetoric 
is absent.
  Reports of the President's trip to Russia quote a top National 
Security Council adviser as saying the Obama administration ``came to 
the conclusion that us waving our fingers around the world is a 
strategy that hasn't worked very well in the past.'' This same adviser 
later conceded to Politico that human rights were never raised in 
Obama's meeting with Russian President Putin.
  It seems this administration could learn a lesson from history . . . 
from another Russian in fact.
  The year was 1975. Famed Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was 
set to visit Washington. The city's foreign policy establishment, among 
them Henry Kissinger, sought to obstruct him at every turn. He was 
refused a meeting with President Ford, who declined to meet with him 
fearing it would sour an upcoming meeting with Soviet leader Brezhnev. 
When Solzhenitsyn delivered a major speech at the AFL-CIO, State 
Department employees were forbidden from attending.
  Ronald Reagan, former governor of California, was angered at the snub 
and wrote a column which appeared in papers across the country exposing 
the White House's motives for refusing an audience with this renowned 
dissident, author of Gulag Archipelago. Reagan wrote, ``the real reason 
for the snub surfaced: a visit with Solzhenitsyn would violate the 
'spirit of detente.''
  Fast forward eight years. Now president, Mr. Reagan delivers an 
electrifying speech where he refers to the Soviet Union as the ``evil 
empire.''
  Another Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky, wrote in his book of how 
word of that speech penetrated the gulag. ``Tapping on walls and 
talking through toilets, word of Reagan's `provocation' quickly spread 
through the prison. The dissidents were ecstatic. Finally the leader of 
the free world had spoken the truth--a truth that burned inside the 
heart of each and every one of us.''
  Nearly 30 years later, much has changed, but much remains the same. 
Speaking truth to power will always place America on the right side of 
history. Speaking out for those who have no voice will always be a 
source of hope for people in the darkest corners of the globe.
  This President and this Secretary of State need to remember that the 
surest way to accomplish their stated goal of bolstering America's 
standing in the world is to find common cause not with oppressors, but 
with those they repress.

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