The Chinese government’s harsh oppression of its citizens’ basic human rights and its denial of the brutal repression of the Tiananmen Massacre 26 years ago this week was the focus of a hearing today held by Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04), chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC).
Along with Senator Marco Rubio, the CECC Co-Chair, Smith issued a public letter to China’s President Xi Jinping, asking him to lift the ban and censorship of public discussion of the Tiananmen massacre and to release prisoners of conscience, such as Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo and others. Such action, the Chairs said, will be a “tangible demonstration of the promises you made to build a China committed to the “rule of law”… [and], more than anything else you can do, [they will] improve China’s global reputation and be an important building block for a ‘new type’ of relationship between our two great nations.” Click here to read the letter.
“The Tiananmen massacre had a profound and lasting effect on U.S.-China relations and public discussions of the event are still censored in China,” said Smith. “In addition, individuals who hold commemorative events are detained or arrested, almost 144 last year. We remember Tiananmen each year because it is too important an event to forget and too dangerous to commemorate in China.” Click here to read Chairman Smith’s opening remarks at the hearing.
Witnesses at the hearing "China in 1989 & 2015: Tiananmen, Human Rights, and Democracy" testified about how the Tiananmen massacre shaped their advocacy for greater human rights and democracy in China, the Chinese government’s current efforts to silence and jail rights activists, and offered recommendations for U.S. policy. Witnesses included Dr. Yang Jianli and Ho Pin who witnessed the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 and Dr. Teng Biao and Lisa Peng, a human rights lawyer and a political prisoner advocate representing a new generation of rights advocates, respectively. Ms. Peng previously testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a 2013 subcommittee hearing Smith chaired about her father, imprisoned democracy activist Peng Ming. Witness statements and a webcast from the 2013 hearing can be found here.
In his testimony to the Commission, Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao posed a question to the U.S. government, given the lengths the Chinese government goes to stifle dissidents and jail thousands of prisoners of consciences: “History will require us to answer one question: Did we stand on the side of the ‘Tank Man’ or on the side of the tank?” –a reference to the famous picture of a protester singlehandedly facing down a column of tanks.
“The U.S. must be a leader, advocating for greater freedom and democracy, no other nation can assume that role with China,” said Smith. “U.S. policy must support Chinese advocates who promote human rights and political reform. Failure to do so only gives the Chinese government license to continue brutally silencing dissent.” “The U.S. must also send a strong message. Our two nations must work together on many issues, but the worst violators of the rights of the Chinese people, those who abuse universal freedoms with impunity, should not prosper from access to the U.S. and our economic or political freedoms.”
Smith introduced, with Representative Dan Lipinski (D-IL), the China Human Rights Protection Act of 2015, HR 2621. The bill would allow the President to deny U.S. entry visas and access to U.S. financial markets to any Chinese official who was responsible for torture, prolonged and arbitrary detention, forced abortions and sterilizations, psychiatric experimentation or organ harvesting from prisoners.
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China, established by the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000 as China prepared to enter the WTO, is mandated by law to monitor human rights, including worker rights, and the development of the rule of law in China. Its members are a bipartisan combination of Congressional and White House appointees.
Wednesday’s hearing can be viewed by clicking here.
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