This week on Capitol Hill, Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), Co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) and member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, gave the keynote address at the “Ten Years After the 709 Crackdown” symposium, marking the CCP’s brutal campaign targeting human rights defenders and lawyers and calling for justice for Gao Zhisheng and all other persecuted defenders. Click here for Smith’s full remarks. 

  The event, sponsored by ChinaAid and IPK Media, brought together U.S. lawmakers, international legal experts, survivors of the crackdown, and religious freedom advocates to honor the courage of China’s rights defenders and to spotlight the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing repression of legal professionals and faith communities.

   Smith announced legislation he intends to introduce, the FREEDOM for Gao Zhisheng Act, which requires a State Department strategy to gain the release of political prisoners, including famed human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has not been seen or heard from since 2017.

   Smith also strongly urged the Senate to pass his Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act (H. R. 1503), highlighting the Chinese government’s unimaginably cruel and painful crimes against humanity, in which people are killed for their healthy organs. Smith’s bill passed the House earlier this year by a margin of 406 to 1.

   “Ten years ago, the Chinese Communist Party launched an unprecedented nationwide campaign targeting human rights lawyers and rights defenders,” Smith said. “Across 23 provinces, more than 300 lawyers, legal assistants, and activists were detained on fabricated charges. Many were forcibly disappeared for months, subjected to torture, and coerced into televised ‘confessions.’ At least ten were later sentenced to lengthy prison terms. This sweeping repression aimed to silence a generation of legal professionals who dared to seek justice for ordinary Chinese citizens.”

   Smith noted that the CCP’s assault on the legal profession has only intensified within the past ten years: “Lawyers who challenge official abuse or defend the poor and persecuted are punished, disbarred, or jailed. The regime has transformed the legal system into an extension of the Party apparatus, compelling lawyers to demonstrate fealty to the Communist Party and abandon cases deemed politically sensitive. This is the weaponization of law: turning instruments of justice into tools of repression.

   “Forced disappearances, torture in custody, denial of due process, and the absence of defense counsel—these practices violate China’s international obligations and contradict its own domestic legal standards,” said the leading human rights lawmaker, who has chaired 107 congressional hearings on human rights violations and other abuses in China.

   In addition to the 709 crackdown, Smith also condemned the CCP’s other notorious human rights atrocities, such as the targeting of the Uyghurs and Tibetans, the disappearance of civil liberties in Hong Kong, and the gruesome forced organ harvesting of Uyghurs and Falun Gong practitioners.

   Highlighting the extra-brutal practice of forced organ harvesting, Smith said, “Every year under General Secretary Xi Jinping, tens of thousands of young women and men—average age 28—are murdered in cold blood to steal their internal organs for profit or to be transplanted into communist party members and leaders. There is an organized, State-sanctioned system of culling members of undesirable, vulnerable groups to collect their vital organs.

   “Between 2 to 6 internal organs per victim are extracted. It is murder masquerading as medicine,” asserted Smith.

   “Over the years I have chaired several hearings on this barbaric abuse and two years ago—on March 27, 2023—the House passed my Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, 413 to 2; and two months ago on May 7th, (H. R. 1503) again passed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, 406 to 1. Join me in working to get the Senate to pass it now.”

   Regarding his newly announced legislation, the FREEDOM for Gao Zhisheng Act, Rep. Smith declared, “Most importantly, this legislation reaffirms our commitment to Gao Zhisheng—and to all those who have sacrificed everything in the pursuit of justice and truth. Their voices may be silenced in China, but they are heard here. Let us recall that tyranny thrives in darkness. We answer with light.”

   Rep. Smith reiterated the U. S. House of Representatives’ and the entire United States’ commitment to standing with the victims of the CCP’s oppression and condemning the Chinese government’s egregious human rights violations: “We will continue to stand with and pray for Gao Zhisheng and those lawyers he represents. We will honor the families who endure this suffering. We will share their stories. And we will ensure that U.S. policy toward China is shaped not only by economic interests—but by moral leadership and an unwavering commitment to human dignity and freedom.”

   This week’s conference also featured two expert panels, the second of which Smith joined after his keynote speech. The first panel emphasized the 709 Crackdown’s impact on the rule of law in China and featured former Ambassador Nathan Sales, Professor Terrence Halliday of the American Bar Foundation, the famed “Barefoot Lawyer” Chen Guangcheng, CECC staff director Piero Tozzi, and Sophie Luo, the wife of imprisoned human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi.

   The second panel, which Rep. Smith participated in, focused on religious freedom concerns, and additionally included ChinaAid’s Bob Fu, US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Commissioner Maureen Ferguson, former USCIRF Commissioner and Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, human rights expert Sophie Richardson, Hong Kong activist Frances Hui and Uyghur Human Rights Project’s Zubayra Shamseden.

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Contact:
Teagan Gambert
202-225-3765