U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04) and other House Members and human rights organizations at a press conference today praised Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese political prisoner who will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Dec. 10 in Oslo.

    In February Smith led a bi-partisan group of lawmakers in nominating Liu for the prize—at the same time nominating two other persecuted human rights advocates, Chen Guangcheng and Gao Zhisheng, to be joint recipients—as part of an international tide of support for awarding the prize to Liu.

    “We’re here to call on the Chinese government to release Liu and all of its political and religious prisoners, and to begin the process of democratic reform. And we’re also here to call on the world to bring new light and fresh scrutiny to the Chinese government’s horrific record of  human rights abuses,” Smith said. (Click here to read Cong. Smith’s press conference statement)

    Smith’s resolution, H. Res. 1717, was debated on the House floor this afternoon. Speak Nancy Pelosi came to the floor and spoke in favor of the resolution, which highlights the struggles of the Tiananmen Square survivor and freedom activist now serving an 11-year prison term, and will be one of the strongest congressional resolution on China’s human rights abuses in the past decade. (Click here to read Smith’s floor statement)

    “In our nominating letter, we recognized Liu as “a visionary leader,’ remarkable for ‘his patriotism, his civic courage, and the generous tone of his work, which has never sought to divide his country or cause civil conflict, but always to raise the Chinese people’s awareness of its dignity and rights, and to call on his government to govern within… the international human rights agreements it has signed,’” Smith said. “In my resolution, Congress congratulates Liu Xiaobo and calls on the Chinese government to release him,” Smith said. “Moreover, in its frank language on political prisoners, media and Internet censorship, the Chinese government’s campaign of defamation against Liu Xiaobo, and its flat rejection of the Chinese government’s insistence that Liu’s imprisonment is a purely internal matter – this is one of the strongest resolutions the House has passed on human rights in China in many years.”

    Smith, a longtime human rights advocate in Congress, is the Ranking Member of both the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the Helsinki Commission, and Co-Founder and Executive Committee Member of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC). A member of Congress since 1981, he has chaired over 25 congressional hearings on human rights in China. At a press conference in the House Foreign Affairs Committee room in the  Rayburn House Office Building, Smith joined Reps. Frank Wolf and James P. McGovern (D-MA), TLHRC Co-Chairs; Joseph Pitts (R-PA), TLHRC Executive Committee Member; Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Member, House Foreign Affairs Committee; Rep. David Wu (D-WA), and other human rights leaders and groups including Harry Wu, former Chinese political prisoner and president of the Laogai Research Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, International Campaign for Tibet, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.