The following are excerpts of remarks made by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Ranking Member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, during today’s protest of the Beijing Genocide Olympics at the Chinese embassy:

          We are raising our voices in protest and prayer today outside the embassy of the People’s Republic of China.

          There is irony in this, as it is we who are representing the people, and speaking for those in China who are voiceless.  We stand with the oppressed people of China, and not the oppressor – the Chinese Communist Party.

          Behind those walls, are representatives of one of the most repressive regimes on the face of the earth, that of Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping.

          Today, they will hear the voices of the voiceless.

          They will hear voices raised on behalf of Guo Feixiong, a courageous lawyer who has been imprisoned by the Chinese Communists and who was denied a humanitarian request to allow him to leave to visit his wife, Zhang Qing, to bid her final farewell as she was dying of cancer.

          Voices are also raised on behalf of victims like Mihrigul Tursun, who at a 2018 congressional hearing I co-chaired,  recounted her ordeal of torture, sexual abuse and detention in one of China’s ‘mass internment camps’ in Xinjiang.   

          She broke down weeping telling us that she pleaded with God to end her life. Her Chinese jailers restrained her to a table, increased the electrical currents coursing through her body and mocked her belief in God. 

          She was tortured simply for being an ethnic Uyghur and a Muslim in China.

          Today, our voices are also raised on behalf of those jailed in defense of freedom of speech in that once great enclave of liberty, Hong Kong, where now journalists and democracy advocates are imprisoned for exercising their fundamental civil and political rights.

          But our voices are also raised in protest.

          Next week, we will see the ideals of the Olympics tarnished, trashed and torn.

          These are Xi Jinping’s Genocide Games, held in a nation that places its own people in concentration camps, forcing ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kirghiz to labor in slavery.

          Fortunately, Congress passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, of which I was the lead Republican sponsor.

          Now, the burden of proof shifts to those importing goods made in China – from sneakers to solar panels – to prove that they were not made by slave labor.

          But we must call out those who profit directly from these Genocide Games.

          We must call out sponsors like the Coca-Cola Company, which virtue signals when it comes to protesting common-sense laws designed to curb voter fraud in Georgia, but then turns a blind eye to the harvesting of organs of Uyghurs and Falun Gong practitioners.

          We must call out NBC, which will broadcast the Genocide Games but refuses to say whether it will cover those athletes who raise their voices in protest to the vile human rights abuses of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party.

          We must call out the IOC.  The IOC has not stood with the oppressed – they have stood with the oppressor. 

          The IOC suspends countries when their athletes fail doping tests, but turns a blind eye to genocide.  The IOC won’t even certify that the clothing worn by IOC personnel or sold at the Genocide Games aren’t made with slave labor.

          And we must call out those members of corporate America, like billionaire co-owner of the Golden State Warriors Chamath Palihapitiya, who callously proclaimed “no one cares” about the genocide against the predominantly-Muslim Uyghurs.

          Well, we care about the Uyghurs, and we also care about the Tibetans, and Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners who are treated with unspeakable cruelty and persecuted for their religious beliefs.

          Finally, our voices are raised in prayer. 

          We pray first and foremost, for the oppressed, those who languish in prison and labor in concentration camp factories.

          We pray for the young Uyghur woman, lying on a gurney in a hospital run by the People’s Liberation Army, alone and afraid, whose head has been shaved, her hair to be used for a hairpiece and whose organs are soon to be harvested while she is still alive.

          We pray for her family, wondering what happened to their daughter, their sister.

          And we pray that the evildoers repent.

          We pray for a change of heart among those in positions of power in the Chinese government, that they renounce the wickedness of Communism, and come to realize the meaning of true brotherhood and sisterhood.

          And we pray for Xi Jinping, who if he does not renounce his evil will one day need to account for every life that he ended, every torture he inflicted.

          Thank you, God bless you, and keep fighting the good fight.

PHOTO: Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) delivers remarks in front of the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. during the January 27th protest of the 2022 Beijing Genocide Olympics.

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