Congressmen and activists join for press conference. |
U.S. advocacy for human rights “cannot interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis,” announced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her mid-February 2009 trip to China. Clinton had already sent a signal to this effect when she met with Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders, but did not make any attempt to meet with any dissidents. The Secretary of State’s de-prioritizing of human rights shocked human rights groups, who expressed immediately their concern.
On Thursday, February 26, 2009, U.S. Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Joseph Pitts (R-PA), and Mike Pence (R-IN) hosted a press conference on human rights in China. They were joined on the terrace of the Cannon House Office Building by a group of Chinese activists and former political prisoners including some of the most admired and respected opponents of the Chinese regime. The members of Congress pledged their continued support for human rights in China, in light of what Mr. Smith called Secretary Clinton’s signal that human rights “will be a talking point at the bottom of the diplomatic agenda.”
Members of Congress Speak Out for Human Rights
U.S. Representative Chris Smith opened the press conference saying that Secretary Clinton had “made it clear . . . that the Obama Administration has chosen to peddle U.S. debt to the largest dictatorship in the world over defending the Chinese people.” Smith questioned why Clinton believed that human rights were disconnected from and irrelevant to other foreign policy issues.
Within days of Clinton’s ““airy dismissal of human rights,” the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights was released, concluding that human rights violations in China worsened in 2008, said Smith. The congressman condemned the Chinese government’s policies of torture, forced labor, religious persecution, and genocide. Smith, primary sponsor of groundbreaking legislation to protect victims of human trafficking, also mentioned China’s human sex trafficking, as well as the egregious policy of forced abortion. He declared that forced abortion was the one human rights abuse that “the Democratic Congressional leadership appears determined to fund with U.S. taxpayer money,” referring to President Obama’s decision to provide the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which “systematically aids and abets the Chinese government’s one child per couple forced abortion policy” with $50 million.
U.S. Representative Frank Wolf described his and Mr. Smith’s visit to China just before the Beijing Olympics to assess the human rights situation. They wanted to meet with dissidents, worship with house churches, and press for the release of political prisoners. But, Wolf said, they were closely monitored and every dissident but one that they tried to meet with was somehow detained. He added that since their visit, the known number of detained or imprisoned political prisoners “has sky-rocketed from 734 to over 1000.” “This is the environment into which Secretary Clinton traveled just last week and amazingly failed to put even cursory pressure on the Chinese government to end its ongoing, widespread human rights abuses,” Wolf exclaimed.
“Words have power . . . to inspire, or deflate; . . .to give vision or to stifle hope,” Wolf continued. “But for words to inspire the hope for a day when the Chinese people can worship freely, where the press is not censored, where political dissent is permitted – they must first be spoken.”
Wolf was followed by U.S. Representative Joseph Pitts who said that Clinton’s comments sent a shameful message to the victims of human rights abuses such as those perpetrated by the Chinese government. He spoke of Chinese human rights defender Gao Zhinsheng, who had released an open letter describing the brutal torture he endured for 50 days. “This is the kind of behavior Secretary Clinton is describing as a mere interference in negotiations on other issues,” he said.
“For 200 years, people living in oppression around the world have looked to the United States for inspiration and support . . . We should not abandon this tradition because we are in a recession,” Pitts exclaimed. Pitts urged Secretary Clinton to “repair the damage she has done” by expressing the importance of human rights in U.S. relations with all nations, “especially China.”
The final member of Congress to speak was U.S. Representative Mike Pence, who said, “People around the world continue to fight against ruthless oppression and cry out for help. It is imperative that the United States, and the rest of the free world, do all that they can to deliver hope to those fighting for freedom.” Pence, like the others, said that he was “deeply troubled” by Secretary Clinton’s comments. He noted China’s long history of forcing the deaths of millions of unborn children, quoting Ronald Reagan, who said, “We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life – the unborn – without diminishing the value of all human life.”
“The United States has a responsibility to speak truth to power, and to speak with one voice that these actions are unacceptable. We must not allow our economic challenges to undermine our moral courage,” said Pence. He called upon Secretary Clinton and President Obama to “renew our nation’s longstanding commitment to personal and political freedom for the people of China.”
The Witness of Courageous Dissidents and Activists
Following the speeches by the members of Congress, courageous dissidents and activists provided their perspective on the importance of U.S. advocacy for human rights in China.
The first to speak was Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese prison labor camp or “laogai.” He founded the Laogai Research Foundation in 1992 to gather information and spread public awareness on China’s egregious human rights violations. Mr. Wu spoke of the many abuses in China today, including the execution of thousands of prisoners each year and the harvesting of their organs, and the continuing crackdown against journalists and ordinary citizens who use the Internet to criticize the Chinese government. Wu expressed his concern that although Secretary Clinton called for “comprehensive dialogue” between the U.S. and China, human rights were “relegated . . . to the sidelines.” He ended by urging the Obama administration to demonstrate, with concrete actions, its commitment to human rights in China.
Wei Jingsheng, the next speaker, survived 17 years in the Chinese Communist prison system. He became an overseas activist and leader of the Chinese Democracy Movement. His book The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings, includes letters to his family, to government officials, and even to Deng Xiaoping. Showing the same courage and forthrightness towards the U.S. government that he had shown to the Chinese, Wei wrote to Secretary Clinton that he had expected her to “re-emphasize the human rights issue in China,” but it seemed that this was not going to be the case. “Using the words of the Chinese Communist government’s internet agents,” said Wei, “the human rights diplomacy of the USA has come to its end.”
The founder and president of human rights organization China Aid, Bob Fu, was one of the leaders of the student democracy movement that ended in the Tiananmen Square Massacre. After becoming a Christian, he and his wife, Cai Bochun (Heidi), ran a Bible school until it was discovered by the authorities and they were arrested. Fu declared, “It is distressing that during her visit to China, Secretary Clinton seemed to discount a primary ‘resource’ for stability and overcoming crises: China’s own people – not just the ruling elite but the minorities, the house church Christians, the human rights defense lawyers, others. Perhaps they seem like ‘small potatoes;’ yet, the small potatoes are often the best seed for the next crop.”
Fu reported that human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng was still missing, three weeks after he had been kidnapped from his home by Chinese authorities. He also spoke of Alimujiang Yimiti, a Christian Uyghur, in prison for more than a year, yet not convicted of any crime. Clinton said that the U.S. and China “will rise and fall together, ” Fu said. “Will we fall with a deceptive regime who continues to terrorize innocent citizens . . .? Or will we rise with a nation with whom we promote human rights as part of holistic dialogue?” he demanded.
Alim Seytoff, director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, gave a sobering message. “When the United States does not aggressively pressure China and defend the rights of all who suffer under Chinese rule, then the people have no defender left in the world.” The Uyghurs, suffering under Chinese rule, are a Muslim ethnic group living in the area of Central Asia known as East Turkestan. The area has been referred to by the Chinese authorities since 1955 as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Although the Uyghurs are the largest Turkic-speaking ethnic group in the area, they are struggling for cultural survival in the face of a government-supported influx of ethnic Chinese migrants.
Lobsang Choephel, a representative from Radio Free Asia, testified to Tibet’s repression and persecution since 1950. March 10, 2009 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising, when Tibetans took up armed resistance against the Chinese government. An estimated 86,000 Tibetans died in the incidents around the uprising. In a letter sent to Clinton before her trip, the International Campaign for Tibet and others that Clinton’s time in China would be “the crucial moment to signal to the Chinese government that the quality of its relationship with the United States will depend in part on whether it lives by universally accepted human rights norms in its domestic and foreign policies.” “The Chinese government and people take careful note when the US is silent,” they had warned.
On March 11, 2009, Secretary of State Clinton received a return visit from Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. The visit was in preparation for President Obama’s meeting with Hu Jintao in London next month. This time, reported Voice of America News, Clinton said that she and Yang had discussed human rights issues. She affirmed that “promotion of human rights is an American core belief and an essential aspect of U.S. discourse with every other country.” It is the strong voices of those who hold that “core belief,” like Congressmen Smith, Wolf, Pitts, and Pence, and by heroic Chinese activists, that will ensure that the human rights remains an essential aspect of U.S. policy, and will ensure that those oppressed by China do have a defender in this world of turmoil and change.
| Bob Fu |
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