The following are excerpts of remarks by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) for the virtual commemoration of the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre entitled "2021 Tiananmen Remembrance: A Virtual Commemoration Featuring Wang Xilin's Symphony No. 3":
Special thanks to Dr. Yang, Dr. Swett, Ambassador Bremberg for your extraordinary work and for providing this opportunity to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests and their violent suppression by the Chinese Communist Party.
We remember the Tiananmen Square Chinese Communist Party massacre each year—and profoundly honor the dead and wounded—because their dream was—and is—a noble one and because there has been no justice whatsoever for the victims.
We must never forget their extraordinary heroism in the face of tanks and bayonets—no matter how much the Chinese Communist Party wants the world to trivialize and ignore it.
We remember Tiananmen each year because it is too important to forget and too dangerous to recognize inside China.
The world owes the leaders and courageous activists of the Tiananmen protests a huge debt of gratitude for their sacrifice.
They demonstrated that democracy, liberty, respect for human rights and the rule of law are truly universal—and that the Chinese people deserve better than the cruel communist dictatorship they have been forced to endure.
The massacre of June 3rd and 4th, 1989 also showed the lengths to which the Communists will go to brutally suppress the dream of freedom to maintain their stranglehold on power.
While the Chinese Communist Party survived the seismic political shifts that brought down the Berlin Wall and Eastern European and Soviet communism, we must nevertheless recommit today—and for as long as it takes—to the freedom of every man, woman, and child living in China.
We must dare to hope, never grow weary in doing good and tenaciously work for that better day—utterly convinced that the Chinese Communist Party’s cruelty, depravity, and selfish governance need not be forever.
We will always stand with the oppressed—not the oppressor— no matter how long it takes.
As you all know, Xi Jinping’s dictatorship has unleashed a new brutal assault on religious freedom, human rights, ethnic minorities, and the suppression of Tibet and Hong Kong.
Millions of children have been killed and women irreparably harmed as a direct result of over 4 decades of coercive population control which relies on forced abortion and involuntary sterilization to achieve its nefarious goals.
Xi Jinping planned and is today committing a massive genocide against the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities.
Yet Xi also plans on hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics—a grim reminder of the 1936 Nazi Olympics. Thank you, Dr. Yang for your eloquent testimony a couple of weeks ago at my congressional hearing in opposition to the Beijing Genocide Olympics.
For its part, the United States must be a leader, advocating for greater freedom and democracy, levying sanctions for those complicit in corruption and abuses including expanded use of Magnitsky Act penalties.
A democratic China—one that respects human rights and is governed by the rule of law—poses no threat to its own people, the region, or the world.
I believe that someday China will be free.
And a nation of free Chinese men and women will honor and celebrate the heroes of Tiananmen and thank them in perpetuity for sacrificing so much, for so long, for freedom.