[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CHEN GUANGCHENG AND GAO ZHISHENG: HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 9, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-53
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
TREY RADEL, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
TED S. YOHO, Florida JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Chen Guangcheng, Chinese human rights activist............... 7
Pastor Bob Fu, founder and president, ChinaAid Association....... 15
Ms. Geng He, wife of Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng.... 31
Mr. Jared Genser, founder, Freedom Now........................... 35
Mr. T. Kumar, director of International Advocacy, Amnesty
International.................................................. 43
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. Chen Guangcheng: Prepared statement.......................... 11
Pastor Bob Fu: Prepared statement................................ 20
Ms. Geng He: Prepared statement.................................. 33
Mr. Jared Genser: Prepared statement............................. 39
Mr. T. Kumar: Prepared statement................................. 46
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 76
Hearing minutes.................................................. 77
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International
Organizations: Statement of the Honorable Frank Wolf, a
Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Virginia... 78
Mr. Chen Guangcheng: List of persecutors of Mr. Chen Guangcheng
and his family since 2005...................................... 80
Pastor Bob Fu: 2012 Annual Report, Chinese Government Persecution
of Christians Churches in Mainland China....................... 84
CHEN GUANGCHENG AND GAO ZHISHENG: HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA
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TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 2013
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o'clock
p.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon.
Christopher H. Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will come to order, and I want
to welcome all of you to this extremely important hearing.
Today we are here to listen and learn from the brave men and
women from China who have been and are at the forefront of
advocating for freedom and human rights and against the tyranny
and oppression of the state. Today we seek advice and counsel
as to what can and must be done by the Congress, by the
President, the American people, and all people of goodwill
worldwide to mitigate the hate and gross mistreatment meted out
by the Government of China against its own citizens.
Today we appeal to Beijing, ease up, respect fundamental
human rights and the sanctity of human life, and honor your
commitments and the rule of law. Chen Guangcheng and his
equally courageous wife Yuan Weijing have paid and continue to
pay an extraordinarily high price for their benign defiance of
a dictatorship that violates human rights with impunity and
crushes human dignity. Not only have the Chens endured numbing
isolation and unspeakable torture over the course of several
years, but now as we all know in a pathetic display of PRC
governmental revenge, Chen's nephew, Chen Kegui, languishes in
a Chinese prison while other members remain at risk.
Shockingly, young Chen Kegui has been brutally tortured and
threatened, as Guangcheng notes today in his testimony, with
life imprisonment if he appeals his conviction. Undeterred, Mr.
Chen Guangcheng continues to gently raise his clear and
consistent voice on behalf of all victims while pushing
systemic reform of egregiously flawed political institutions
and people who persecute and repress.
Blind since childhood, Mr. Chen bore all the burdens and
disadvantages that a disabled person faces in rural China.
Confronted with the denial of his rights, he developed an
intense interest in law and challenged the local government,
winning his case. Hearing of Mr. Chen's success, other
individuals in Shandong Province were inspired to seek his
legal assistance in securing redress and vindication. Almost
everywhere corrupt officials made and continue to make life
miserable for those struggling to survive. Mr. Chen informed
many of their rights and helped them seek durable remedies. He
helped many of them see that the rule of just and compassionate
law wasn't just for the privileged few but for everyone.
Victimized, yet unbroken by beatings and torture, 51 months of
nightmarish incarceration preceded by house arrest and followed
by 18 more months of house arrest, cut short only by his
escape, Chen Guangcheng tenaciously defended Chinese women and
babies oppressed by China's draconian one-child policy. Mr.
Chen's brilliant mind, his indomitable spirit and unimaginable
courage exposed pervasive forced abortion, deemed a crime
against humanity at the Nuremberg Nazi war crimes tribunal and
was relentless in using his self-taught legal skills to protect
the innocent, especially women. Unfazed by both the difficulty
of the task or the inherent risks, Mr. Chen employed legal
strategies to combat this insidious government cruelty toward
women and children and argued that his clients in Linyi, and
all women in China for that matter, have rights that prohibit
such violence, that they, indeed, deserve better.
Chen in China became and remains their hero. It took a
blind man to really see the injustice of a population control
program that makes most brothers and sisters illegal and to
hear the desperate cries of Chinese women. It took a blind man,
the great Chen Guangcheng, to open the eyes of a blind world to
these human rights violations systematically inflicted on
Chinese women.
Mr. Chen's daring escape to the U.S. Embassy, his
miraculous evasion of China's ubiquitous secret police en
route, is the stuff of legend and superheroes. He offered
dramatic testimony by telephone from hospital to two emergency
hearings that I chaired and if it wasn't for Bob Fu, we would
have never gotten through to him. Bob placed those calls during
the course of a couple days, finally got through, and we heard
Chen's voice right here in this room speak out and ask for
freedom and ask to come to the United States.
Geng He is here today to remind us and the world of another
brave and extraordinary hero, her husband Gao Zhisheng. With
great love and a broken heart, this remarkable woman has worked
unceasingly to secure the freedom of her husband. Gao Zhisheng
is an attorney who played a leading role among Chinese human
rights lawyers that defended those that the Chinese Government
persecutes most harshly, conducting their defense by demanding
that the prosecution conform to law. Mr. Gao is a
quintessential example of a human rights defender. In 2005
after he took on politically sensitive cases, Mr. Gao wrote
open letters to both the National People's Congress and the
leadership of the Chinese Communist Party calling for an end to
the torture of members of persecuted religious groups. Mr.
Gao's license to practice law was subsequently revoked, his law
firm shut down, and his family placed under police
surveillance. In August 2006, Mr. Gao was apprehended and then
charged with ``inciting subversion.'' He was convicted and
given a suspended 3-year sentence with 5 years probation,
effectively placing him under house arrest.
In September 2007, Mr. Gao wrote an open letter to the
United States Congress in which he described widespread human
rights abuses in China in which he called China's birth control
policy the largest genocide in the history of mankind and
related the government's harsh treatment of him and his family.
He was consequently detained and tortured for 50 days. His
captors called him a traitor, and they warned him that he would
be killed if he told anyone about being abducted and tortured.
In February 2009, Mr. Gao was forcibly taken away from his
home in Shaanxi Province by public security personnel. He
briefly resurfaced only in late March 2010, more than a year
later. During his brief reappearance, however, Mr. Gao gave
several interviews to foreign media, disclosing the details of
his torture. The next month he disappeared again.
In testimony at a Congressional-Executive Commission on
China hearing that I chaired last February, Geng He said that
for her daughter Grace, Gao Zhisheng's absence has caused her
severe emotional anguish. She often dreams that her father is
dead. She said, my son has tears in his eyes on Father's Day.
We were forced to endure rumors that the guards had tortured
Zhisheng to death.
In late 2011, Gao was secretly transferred to a distant
Shaya County prison in the Aksu district of Xinjiang. He has
seen his family only twice in 16 months and for only 30 minutes
each visit. Police have prohibited family members from asking
him any information about him, but again, in the account of Mr.
Gao's torture that was made public by the Associated Press in
January 2011, he disclosed to the reporter the excruciating
details of his detention and said, in part, that the police
stripped him bare and pummeled him with handguns in holsters.
For 2 days and nights they took turns beating him and doing
things he refused to describe. He recalled that for 48 hours
his life hung by a thread. Authorities reportedly threatened to
kill Mr. Gao and to dump his body in a river and authorities
taunted him by saying, ``You must forget that you are human.''
Well, we don't forget, and to President Xi, we will not forget
Gao Zhisheng, not now, not ever, and we appeal to you to
release him, to ease up, and respect fundamental human rights.
I now yield to my friend and colleague Ms. Bass for any
opening comments she may have.
Ms. Bass. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
convening today's hearing on a topic of utmost importance. You
continue to demonstrate your commitment to human rights issues,
particularly in China. I want to offer my gratitude to today's
witnesses for your testimony. I am particularly pleased that
Mr. Chen was able to join us, and I hope that you found some
level of peace during your stay here. Mr. Chen, I don't have to
remind you that at this time last year we all watched news
reports of your situation with deep interest. While you are
safely with us today, your extended family and fellow
countrymen and women experience terrible human rights
violations that remind us that there is still work left to do.
The current human rights situation in China is precarious.
An increasing number of individuals and organizations risk
police monitoring, detention, and arrest simply for seeking an
open, free, and just society. Internet and press censorship are
widespread, corruption continues to run rampant, and minority
social groups often lack access to legal redress. The measure
and health of a society is based on the treatment of its
citizens, and it is my hope that as China continues to expand
its global presence that it will openly and honestly address
human rights as a top government priority. It is the
responsibilities of governments everywhere to uphold the basic
rights of liberty, life, and justice. Whether we are American,
Chinese, or otherwise, it is our duty as representatives of
government to ensure that our citizens never have to suffer
persecution or censure for what they believe.
International compacts such as the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights share a vision of a free world in which every
man, woman, and child can practice their beliefs openly,
freely, openly call for transparent and responsible government,
and have access to justice systems that uphold the rule of law
for all parties. Such compacts must guide us in ensuring that
the rights of all people are upheld. One critical way to
promote global human rights is by investing in the United
Nations. I am strongly committed to ensuring and preserving
this participation.
It is my hope that our witnesses will not only give us a
better understanding of the situation in China but will also
offer constructive ways that we can move toward the vision of
an open, free, and just global society. Thank you, and I look
forward to today's testimony.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Bass, thank you very much for your eloquent
statement. I would like to now yield to Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, for holding
this hearing, and truly for each one of you to show up and
testify and to illuminate this very disturbing trend. As we
have a global economy, it is so important for us to look at the
global situation as it relates to human rights. We can remember
back in the 1700s there was a theologian and someone fighting
against human rights violation of slavery in England, back then
by the name of John Newton, and he penned a hymn called Amazing
Grace which says I was blind but now I see. How fitting it is
today to have someone who is blind who is helping us see the
atrocities that are happening even today in this global
economy, and I just want to thank you for your boldness, for
your courage to stand up and make sure that those who have no
voice have a voice today, and I look forward to your testimony.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Bera?
Mr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
calling this hearing. I share your concern over human rights
abuses as well as your commitment to fight these abuses
worldwide, and one fundamental right is freedom over one's own
body and the right of women to control their own reproductive
decisions. That is an issue of individual liberty. As a doctor,
this issue is particularly important to me. I took an oath to
answer my patients' questions, to provide them with various
options, to explain the risks and benefits of these choices,
and then empower them to make the best decision that fits with
their own faith, family, and personal circumstances. This is
fundamental to the doctor-patient relationship. That is why I
have concerns about China's one-child policy. It goes against
the fundamental value of individual liberty and freedom. While
forced abortions and sterilization are illegal in China, they
still happen with frequency, and the one-child policy
perpetuates these practices. All champions of human rights
should openly condemn China's one-child policy and the illegal
practices of forced abortion and coerced birth control reported
in some localities. The continued oppression of Chinese
families through coercive reproductive policies must end, but
claiming that the U.N. Population Fund supports these coercive
practices and using the claim to oppose U.S. support of
international family planning programs is disingenuous,
unmerited in valid global health policy. In fact, the best way
to promote the basic human right of individual choice is to
invest in programs like the United Nations Population Fund.
UNFPA's programs save and improve the lives of millions of
women and men worldwide. They enable couples to voluntarily
determine the timing, number, and spacing of their children and
voluntary birth control. Independent experts have confirmed
that UNFPA does not support the one-child policy in China, nor
does it support forced sterilization. UNFPA supports increased
access to reproductive health services, improved approaches to
adolescent reproductive health, and safe pregnancy and
delivery. Its programs have reduced maternal mortality,
provided emergency assistance in refugee situations, and
prevented and treated HIV and AIDS. As a doctor and public
health expert, this is good public health policy.
The U.S. should remain a strong supporter and leader within
the global community in order to best promote women's rights
and the freedom of every woman to make personal decisions about
her health and her future. Individual liberty and freedom are
American values that are worth fighting for, both here
domestically and throughout the world.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. I would like to now yield to Mr.
Stockman.
Mr. Stockman. Mr. Chairman, I just want to briefly say that
I saw firsthand a clip of a late term abortion in China which
was forced against the mother's will, and you can't watch this
clip. One day I hope we can introduce it as evidence without
weeping and crying. The mother was heartbroken. She wanted the
child. And then they threw the dead baby on to the bed because
they weren't allowed to pay for the burial and threw it on her
bed and said you have to pay for it.
I am so honored that we are having this hearing and thank
you, Mr. Chairman, for opening it up for many of the people. I
hope the United States will tune in and listen to what is going
on in China. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Stockman.
Mr. Weber.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have a lot to
add except to say thank you to Mr. Chen. Helen Keller once said
that there is none so blind as he who will not see, and I do
appreciate and echo my colleague Mark Meadows' comments about
we are glad he is here to help us see. We look forward to the
testimony and I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. I would like to now yield
to the co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
but also the chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice,
Science, and Related Agencies of the House Appropriations
Committee, Congressman Frank Wolf, who has been a long-time
leader in the area of human rights, especially as it relates to
China.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will just submit my
statement. I thank you for having the hearing, and I want to
thank Mr. Chen and the rest of the witnesses for being here,
and I look forward to hearing what they have to say. I yield
back. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Chairman Wolf.
Let me introduce our witnesses in the order that I would
ask them to present their testimony, beginning first with Chen
Guangcheng. As we all know, blind from an early age and self-
taught in law, Mr. Chen is frequently described as a barefoot
lawyer who advocates for the victims of forced abortion and
sterilization and the welfare of women, the poor, and for those
who are disabled.
On April 22, 2012, Mr. Chen escaped house arrest and fled
to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. After negotiations with the
Chinese Government, he left the Embassy for medical treatment
on May 2, and on May 19, Mr. Chen and his wife and children
were granted U.S. visas and departed Beijing on a commercial
flight, arriving in New York City on the same day. He currently
resides in New York City with his family and is a huge giant
when it comes to human rights advocacy, as we all recognize
around the world.
We will then hear from Pastor Bob Fu, who is one of the
leading voices in the world for the persecuted church in China.
He was born and raised on mainland China, he graduated from the
School of International Relations of People's University in
Beijing. He later taught English to Communist Party officials
at the Beijing Administrative College and Beijing Party School
of the Chinese Communist Party from 1993 to 1996. He pastored a
house church in Beijing until he and his wife were jailed for 2
months for what was called illegal evangelism in 1996. Mr. Fu
and his wife Heidi fled to the United States as religious
refugees in 1997. Mr. Fu founded the ChinaAid Association in
order to draw attention, international attention to China's
gross human rights violations against house church Christians.
Pastor Fu is a research Ph.D. candidate at Durham University,
and he has been awarded a number of important citations for his
work on behalf of human rights.
We will then hear from Geng He, who is the wife of human
rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng. Ms. Geng completed her university
studies in accounting in China. She and Gao married in August
1990. Between 2000 and 2006 she worked as a paralegal and
accountant at a Beijing law firm, a law firm founded and
directed by her husband. In March 2009, a month after Chinese
officials reportedly detained her husband, Ms. Geng escaped
from China with their two kids. Since arriving in the U.S., she
has advocated tenaciously on behalf of her husband and other
victims of human rights violations in China through interviews,
appeals, and appeared before the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China last February. So thank you for coming back
to again appeal for your husband.
We will then hear from Jared Genser, who is the founder of
Freedom Now, an independent nonprofit organization that works
to free prisoners of conscience worldwide. Mr. Genser has
taught semester-long seminars on the U.N. Security Council at
the Georgetown University Law Center and the University of
Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania Law Schools. His
pro bono clients have included former Czech Republic President
Vaclav Havel and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi,
Liu Xiaobo, Desmond Tutu, and Elie Wiesel. Mr. Genser holds a
BS from Cornell and an MPP from Harvard's John F. Kennedy
School of Government, and a JD, cum laude, from the University
of Michigan Law School. He is also a member of the Council of
Foreign Relations and is also representing Mr. Chen's nephew as
well as Gao Zhisheng.
We will then hear from a man who is no stranger to this
committee, a good friend, T. Kumar, who is the director for
International Advocacy at Amnesty International USA. Mr. Kumar
has served as a human rights monitor and as a director of
refugee camps around the world. He often testifies before the
Congress and lectures at the Foreign Service Institute, where
U.S. diplomats are trained. He has also served as a professor
at Washington College of Law's Humanitarian and Human Rights
Academy. He has monitored elections with former President
Carter around the world and served as judge of elections in
Philadelphia. He also served as a consultant to the U.N. Quaker
Mission. Mr. Kumar was a political prisoner for over 5 years in
Sri Lanka for his peaceful human rights activities. He started
his legal studies in prison and eventually became an attorney
at law and devoted his entire practice to defending political
prisoners.
The floor is yours, Chen Guangcheng.
STATEMENT OF MR. CHEN GUANGCHENG, CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Mr. Chen. The Honorable Chairman Smith, honorable members
of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, ladies and gentlemen,
friends, greetings. This room makes, helps me remember things
from the past. I am very grateful that this year I am actually
here. I request to include this list of names of persecutors to
be excluded from entering the United States and be reinforced.
The names are--[holding up paper with names listed]. The
officials whose name are on this list have continuously, have
continuously in the past persecuted me and my family.
These corrupt officials, they have this blood on their
hands in all these forced abortions, 130,000.
Last year around this time my entire family was in the
midst of grave danger. At the end of April 2012 I escaped from
the valley of the shadow of death and after multiple twists and
turns, I fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to seek emergency
refuge from danger.
On May 2, after Sino-U.S. negotiation had reached an
agreement to guarantee my safety, I left the U.S. Embassy in
Beijing. At that time the U.S. officials taking part in the
negotiations told me that the agreement they had reached would
be written down in Sino-U.S. diplomatic documents.
My main requests were contained both in my letter to then
Premier Wen Jiabao and in my prerecorded video that was
released to the public. The requests in short were this: An
immediate end to all illegal acts of persecution against me, my
family members, and my supporters, protection of all our civil
rights, and a thorough investigation into the illegal and
criminal acts of persecution by the Shandong authorities over
many years against me and my family and a public resolution to
the matter.
Regardless of how high ranking these officials involved
were or how many officials were involved, if they had committed
a crime, they must be held accountable. And compensation should
be made for the losses incurred. Regrettably, to date, not only
has the Chinese central government not honored its commitment
to the U.S. Government, it has instead illegally detained and
put on trial my nephew Chen Kegui and on November 30, 2012,
convicted Chen Kegui on the charge of so-called intentionally
inflicting injuries and sentenced him to a prison term of 3
years and 3 months. Moreover, Chen Kegui has been sent to the
same prison in Linyi City where I was tortured when I was
illegally sentenced on trumped-up charges in 2006.
On April 26, 2012, at midnight, after local government
officials discovered that I had escaped, the deputy Communist
Party secretary Zhang Jian of Shuanghou who was in charge of
politics and law led a few dozen club wielding men in climbing
over the courtyard wall of my elder brother's home. They broke
the lock of the courtyard gate from inside and letting in more
men and broke down all the doors in the house. They let in more
men after they broke the lock. They dragged my elder brother,
who was still in his pajamas, from his bed, put a black hood
over his head and twisted his arm and stuffed him into a
vehicle and took him to the criminal police section of the
Yinan County Public Security Bureau. No legal procedures were
enforced. They tortured him for several dozen hours. According
to the accounts of some residents in the vicinity of the police
station, they overheard my elder brother's screams as they
tortured him that night. They were still looting my elder
brother's home at the time. They beat Chen Kegui and his mother
Ren Zongju in different rooms and they grabbed Ren Zongju's
hair and beat her so badly. Kegui was beaten in so many places
and there were bruises over his body.
As a last resort he, in order to protect himself, Chen
Kegui grabbed a knife in order to protect himself against the
persecutors. Kegui was not actually attacking them. He was
simply telling them that if you continue to beat me, I will
have to counter attack, but Zhang Jian, the head of the
Security Bureau, told the men around him to contain Kegui at
the time. The club-wielding men attacked Kegui and tried to hit
his head. Instead they missed him and then the club actually
hit the table with a TV on it. The TV was smashed. In this kind
of a situation Kegui responded and reacted and then scratched
some of the men that were in the house with a knife. Kegui
reported this incident to the police but the police never came.
Later on they also beat up Kegui's mother, who was actually
taking care of her grandson who was having a fever. They
grabbed her by her hair and grabbed her all the way to the
floor and started beating her. My sister-in-law was beaten to a
point, she yelled, ``Help, help'' and this man said, ``So what
does it do that you scream help?'' The guards, since then the
guards just continued to stay in the house. They stay on the
sofa, on the bed, and they were not letting any citizens in the
village to come in. There were thugs everywhere with clubs in
their hands. The trumped-up charges were changed from
attempting murder to intentionally inflicting injuries. He was
cruelly tortured during this time, and while he was in prison
he lost around more than 20 kilograms. Ma Chenlian and Yi
Chuandong, the leader of the Security Bureau, threatened Chen
Kegui many times while he was in prison. If you appeal you will
be sentenced to life in prison, but if you listen to me, your
sentence may be lighter and the lives of your children and your
parents are in our hands. If you don't listen to us, once you
are released from prison, you may never see them again. In
light of this scenario, Chen Kegui decided not to appeal. The
parents, Kegui's parents were contained in the National
Security Bureau's car, vehicle, and they were not allowed to
leave the vehicle. The pretext was that they were witnesses and
they are not supposed to leave the vehicle, but later on they
were not actually allowed to testify as witnesses. Up until now
Chen Kegui is still under the threat that if he appeals he will
be sentenced to life in prison.
In February, Chen Kegui told the world about what had
happened to him and then he was threatened. On March 7 an
official from the local family planning office, Xu Xicai, was
asked by the local party committee leaders to go to the local
kindergarten to remove Chen Kegui's 4-year-old son. Fortunately
on that day, Kegui's father, which is my eldest brother Chen
Guangfu, was one step ahead of him. When the principal of the
school went, when they went to ask Xu Xicai who did this, Xu
Xicai said it was the Communist Party secretary who asked him
to do it.
On the morning of March 11, if I remember correctly, my
brother Guangfu was taking the child to the school. They were
followed by a man in a helmet. This is probably what they meant
when they said that their lives are in their hands, my family's
members' lives are in the hands of the authorities. Another
child of a legal defender was also taken away about 9 days
after my brother's son was almost taken. As you can see from
the case of my brother, Gao Zhisheng's child being taken, and
various other rights defenders children being taken, you can
see that this is actually a planned incident. It was planned by
authorities.
We cannot continue to tolerate the Chinese Communist
authorities in continuing to go back on their words and
deceiving the international community at will. When the Chinese
Communist Central Party Committee can act like this in breaking
its promises to me, to the United States, and to the whole
world, and when it can willfully break agreements in a case
that has attracted the world's attention, how can we expect it
to improve the human rights situations in other areas and to
take up its international responsibilities and obligations? The
Chinese leaders, they have the title as leaders, but in fact
they are thieves and robbers. We cannot--as Chinese citizens,
we cannot tolerate they kidnap the country anymore. They
restrict freedom of speech, they restrict freedom of movement.
We should break down the wall that the Chinese Communist
Government has erected.
I hereby request, Mr. Chairman, the House Committee on
Foreign Affairs, the House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform, and other related committees to formally
obtain from the relevant departments of the administrative
authorities and publish the written and oral diplomatic
agreements between China and the United States with regard to
this incident of mine, including my letter to Premier Wen
Jiabao that I wrote while I was in the U.S. Embassy. I hereby
urge the U.S. Government to solemnly demand that the Chinese
Communist leaders do as they promised. Mr. Chairman, I hereby
request that this testimony and other written documents I
provided be entered into congressional records. Thank you very
much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Chen follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chen, thank you very much for your
extraordinarily powerful and historic testimony. I can assure
you we will follow up on your request and do everything
possible to get the administration to be forthcoming and to
provide those documents about your, as you called it, your
incident, and again thank you for, and I hope the press will
convey this to the world, including the American public, this
retaliation against families and against children. Not only are
children deemed disposable via the one-child-per-couple policy,
but the way that the Communist dictatorship hurts the
dissidents the most is by hurting their families, and you have
in a very powerful way reminded us of that with very specific
examples of your own family, including your nephew. So thank
you.
I would like to now yield to Pastor Fu.
STATEMENT OF PASTOR BOB FU, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, CHINAAID
ASSOCIATION
Pastor Fu. Mr. Chairman and honorable members of this
committee, thank you for conducting this important hearing. My
friend Mr. Chen Guangcheng just recalled what had happened
barely a year ago while he was hearing the desperate cries from
the Chaoyang Hospital. The first night Mr. Chen walked out of
the U.S. Embassy and the next morning I was here in this
hearing room testifying with a cell phone that enabled Mr. Chen
to speak to you and this committee and to the American people
and to the world about his real intention.
The overall situation in mainland China in the past 3
months has been worrying, from the serious air pollution in the
capital city of Beijing, the large number of dead pigs that
polluted the Yangtze River, and other incidents highlighting
the rapid deterioration of China's natural environment to the
situation for freedom of religion, the rule of law, and basic
human rights that continues to present a grim picture. They all
indicate that the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao political agenda still
persists, dominating everything. This being the case, even
though Xi Jinping's administration now holds political power in
China, people still have reason to worry, do we have to wait
another 10 years before seeing progress in China's human rights
record and the rule of law?
The wretched state of freedom of religion and the rule of
law and the basic human rights. First of all, the persecution
suffered by house churches in China is just one example. In the
past 3 months there has been a troubling series of persecution
cases. They occurred in over 10 provinces and two
municipalities directly under central government jurisdiction,
including Beijing, Shanghai, Heilongjiang, et cetera. One of
the cases is Beijing's Shouwang Church, now going into its
third year of being forced to hold outdoor worship services,
which it began doing on April 10, 2011. Shouwang believers have
been arrested more than 1,000 times and there have been more
than 800 short-term detentions. Their senior pastor, Pastor Jin
Tianming, and some church leaders have been under long-term
house arrest since April 2011 without stop. In 2011 the Chinese
Government issued two important secret documents aimed at
attacking the Christian faith that were directly responsible
for the systematic escalation in the persecution of churches
that has continued to this day. In September 2011 at the so-
called Patriots in Christian Circles training class held by the
State Administration for Religious Affairs, a secret document
jointly issued by the State Administration for Religious
Affairs and the Ministries of Public Security and Civil Affairs
was circulated that detailed a plan to eradicate house churches
in 10 years. Of course, as we all know, even the most
conservative estimate on the number of Chinese Christians is
more than 18 million. I don't think they will be successful. Of
course, they are going to try anyway.
Last year China Aid Association obtained the so-called
suggestions for doing a good job of resisting foreign use of
religion to infiltrate institutes of higher education and
preventing campus religious activities, the so-called Document
No. 18, jointly issued on May 15, 2011, by six ministries of
the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee. The purpose of
this secret document was to prevent and attack the spread of
the Christian faith on campuses. At the same time, the Chinese
Government continues to employ strict control measures over
Catholicism, continuing to ordain clergymen without Vatican
approval, which is a serious interference in the internal
religious affairs of the Vatican.
In 2012 the government forced Bishop Ma Daqin, the Bishop
of Shanghai, to disappear because he had openly expressed his
loyalty to the Vatican. His whereabouts to date remain unknown.
In addition, the tragedy of the self-immolation of Tibetan
lamas and nuns continues to play out, demonstrating the
persistent worsening of religious freedom in Tibet.
On the rule of law, in accordance with the principle held
by the Hu-Wen administration that maintaining stability was of
paramount importance, the National People's Congress on March
14, 2012, passed an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law
that went into effect on January 1 this year. One of its
articles, Article 73, provides the legal basis for public
security agencies to secretly arrest and detain citizens under
the pretext of so-called residential surveillance. This is a
serious step backwards in the rule of law in China. In January
of this year the Public Security Ministry announced that it was
suspending the labor camp system. I hope that they will
practice what they said, not only suspending but to stop
immediately this evil system. In its treatment of petitioners,
a vulnerable group, the government continues to be as brutal as
ever, arresting them, locking them up in ``black'' jails,
beating them, implicating friends and relatives, and employing
other illegal measures. Furthermore the Internet freedom is
still harshly restricted. In March the SSH, representing the
security shell network protocol for secured data communication,
was blocked, and this is important evidence that freedom to use
the Internet has been further restricted. Mr. Chen repeatedly
called to push down Beijing's Internet Berlin Wall.
Unfortunately, I think Western democracies have done too little
and too late to counter the Internet circumvention. You can
read the latest article in The Economist magazine: Instead of
becoming a tool for freedom of information, the Communist
regime in China has used the Internet and its censorship to
build a wall to be a master of control. For every $1,000 in
China that was spent to censor the information on the Internet,
in the West, especially in the United States, we only spend $1,
$1 to $1,000. I think we certainly can do more to promote the
Internet freedom, along with my friend Mr. Chen and many
dissident friends, as well as the millions of Chinese people of
faith. When the Internet, China's Internet Berlin Wall falls, I
think that will be the day the freedom of expression, freedom
of religion, freedom of association will come, and I think the
democracy in China will come also very soon.
And the basic human rights on the bloody cases in China's
forced, forcefully enforced one-child family planning policy
and forced demolition of residential homes and relocation of
residents continue to take place. And on the forced family
planning, even in the last month, the ministry of public health
publicly announced the so-called achievements of the family
planning policy in the past 40 years. Three hundred and thirty
million abortions performed on Chinese women. What is really
distressing is that these bloody numbers continue to climb, and
that the majority of those abortions were forced on the women
by the government. In the United States, you can be pro-life,
pro-choice. As Congressman Mr. Bera said, you don't need to
agree on everything here. But one thing is very clear, forced
abortion is not a choice. On March 13, a woman in Henan
province who had had a forced abortion was found hanged at the
local family planning office with suspicious injuries all over
her body. And just this month, we just reported yesterday there
is woman called Shen Hongxia. She already had two children. And
when she went back for family visit from another work unit and
she was captured and then she was forced to do the forced
sterilization. And even though her doctors--and we have two
ultrasounds and various methodologies showed and warned the
family planning official who kidnapped her and told the family
planning official it will be deadly for her to endure this
forced sterilization.
They did it anyway that day on March 19. And a few hours
later she was found dead. And we have been advocating on behalf
of the following people whose cases have representative values,
besides the cases of attorney Gao Zhisheng and Mr. Chen Kegui.
And I want to mention another case. It is Mr. Zhu Yufu. At the
time of Arab Spring, Zhu Yufu, a Christian dissident based in
Hangzhou Zhejiang Province, wrote a poem and posted on the
Internet to encourage people to strengthen their thinking. As a
result, he was summoned by police on March 5, 2011, and
subsequently in April he was sentenced to 7 years for one poem
for the so-called inciting subversion of state power.
Mr. Chairman, today we have three of Mr. Zhu Yufu's family
members who just recently escaped from China because in their
last visit in November of last year, they saw their brother,
60-year old Mr. Zhu Yufu was dying. So they were racing to
rescue their family members by leaving everything behind in
China.
So I want you to recognize them. And they are sitting
behind me. Mr. Zhu Qiaofu, Mr. Zhu Xiaoyan, and Miss Zhu
Yanmin. They are three brothers and sisters of Mr. Zhu Yufu. So
I hope Members of Congress and the media could help. I made the
motion for immediate help. This is a life-and-death decision, a
moment of time. I have escorted them in the past few days,
talking with the staff of the Members of Congress. And the
horrible stories surrounding the family of this brave man, Mr.
Zhu Yufu has already spent 11 years imprisonment for his
democracy activities. And I also request that the addendum to
my written testimony be included.
And including, in addition to the above, there are three
other people worth our attention. Mr. Wang Bingzhang case and
Mr. Peng Ming were prominent dissident leaders who were both
kidnapped by the Chinese agents in Vietnam and in Burma in 2002
and 2005, respectively. Both of them are serving life in
prison.
A third person, of course, is the wife of Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Liu Xiaobo, Ms. Liu Xia, who has been under house
arrest since 2010 without any freedom of movement. And the
following other--the continuing arbitrary detention, the long-
time imprisonment of other prominent prisoners of conscience,
including Mr. Alimujiang Yimiti from Xinjiang, Mr. Liu Xianbin
from Sichuan, Ms. Yang Rongli from Shaanxi province, Professor
Guo Quan from Jiangsu province, Mr. Li Bifeng from Sichuan, Mr.
Chen Wei from Sichuan, and Mr. Chen Xi also from Sichuan.
I want to also point out we just received yesterday the
information from the wife of Mr. Chen Xi. She learned that her
husband, Mr. Chen Xi, also a prominent democracy activist, was
sentenced for 7 years during the Jasmine Revolution in 2011.
His blood was being drawn in his prison multiple times
recently, which is an indication, usually, of a possible forced
death. So we need to watch this case and Mr. Chen Xi very
carefully.
Finally, I want to also mention the persecution case of the
family member of one of my staff, Mark Shan and his brother
Randy Shan, simply for working with China Aid Association in
the United States. Randy Shan had been persecuted repeatedly
and had to flee out of China in the summer of 2012. The
security forces repeatedly threatening Mark Shan to stop, using
Randy as a hostage to force his brother to not work with China
Aid.
My appeal is that the situation for freedom religion, rule
of law, and human rights in China has continued to deteriorate
following the 18th party Congress last fall, especially during
the first 3 months of this year, which is a cause for continued
worries among the international community. The Xi Jinping
administration has between in full control over China for a
month already. And we have not seen any encouraging signs of
any immediate change.
And so we need to be alert to help China in the following
way from Western democracies. For the U.S. Government, we hope
that it will make more real progress in the next 4 years than
was the case in the last 4 years. The U.S. President and the
Secretary of the State ought to have the courage to urge the
Chinese Government publicly and in unequivocal terms to improve
its record on human rights and the rule of law. And to adopt a
standard that stresses the value of universal human rights.
The U.S. Embassy can officially request permission to visit
prisoners of conscience in prison and it can meet regularly
with the family members of these victims, not waiting for them
had to escape from China to come here to meet. And also to meet
with human rights defenders who are still active in society and
provide necessary help. In future human rights dialogues,
strategic and economic dialogues, and dialogues with experts in
the rule of law in other major diplomatic activities in the
coming months, the U.S. Government should grasp these
opportunities to unequivocally point out the problems in
China's human rights record and the rule of law and actively
assist the Chinese Government in implementing real reforms in
these areas. We harbor great hope for this.
And, finally, I ask that the committee to enter in the
record China Aid's 2012 Annual Report on the Chinese Government
persecution of Christians and churches in Mainland China. Thank
you very much.
[The prepared statement of Pastor Fu follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Mr. Fu, thank you very much. Without objection,
all of your full statements and materials you want added to the
record will be made a part of the record. And, again, I want to
thank you because without you, we would have never heard Chen
Guangcheng's voice when he was in a hospital room at the
hearing last year. So thank you so very much for your
leadership and your testimony, and again, for making that
possible.
I would like to now ask Geng He if she would provide her
testimony.
STATEMENT OF MS. GENG HE, WIFE OF CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER
GAO ZHISHENG
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Ms. Geng. Dear Congressman Smith, chairman of the
Congressional Human Rights Commission, members of Foreign
Affairs Committee and guests, greetings. Let me express my
thanks to the Congress forgiving me this opportunity at this
meeting to speak on behalf of my husband, Gao Zhisheng, a human
rights lawyer in China. Let me also express my thanks, my
gratitude to everyone here for showing concern to Gao
Zhisheng's case.
In 2005, Gao Zhisheng began to defend the persecuted
Christians, Falun Gong adherents, and other persecuted groups.
Because of this, the Chinese Communists shut down his law
office and revoked his lawyer's license.
One day in August 2006, the police illegally kidnapped him.
On December 22, 2006, they sentenced Gao Zhisheng to 3 years in
prison with also 5 years' probation on the charge of inciting
to subvert the state power. During the 5-year probation, Gao
Zhisheng was kidnapped and made to disappear by the Chinese
police at least six times. Among this, the longest
disappearance lasted 20 months. Each time he disappeared, he
suffered torture.
In September 2007, Gao Zhisheng wrote an open letter to the
U.S. Congress in which he exposed human rights abuses of the
Chinese Communist authorities. Because of this, the Communist
police put a black hood on Gao Zhisheng's head and kidnapped
him, making him disappear. And he was missing for 50 days. On
the same day they kidnapped him, this time they took him to a
room, stripped him naked, and brutally beat him. They also hit
him all over his body and his genitals with electric batons, so
much so that his body shook violently and the skin on his body
became black. The torture made him lose his consciousness, and
he had urine incontinence as a result.
At the time police smoked Gao Zhisheng's eyes with
cigarettes and inserted a toothpick into his penis. After that,
and lawyer Gao implored them to lock him in the prison to avoid
further torture, but the police officer said, ``Do you want to
go to prison? Do it in your dream. Whenever we want you to
disappear, we will do so.'' In fact, that is what they did.
Now Gao Zhisheng has been brutally persecuted for 7 years.
In this 7 years, the police have lived in my house to supervise
me and my children. They didn't allow my daughters to attend
school, and they even besieged me and my daughter--and beat
both of us.
I want my children to be able to go to school. I took them
with me and escaped from China to the U.S. in January 2009 with
the help of some friends. In February 2009, Gao Zhisheng was
again kidnapped.
In April 2010, 14 months after Gao Zhisheng disappeared,
the Chinese Government made an arrangement for him to accept an
interview with the Associated Press. During the interview, he
didn't talk as the Chinese Communist Government instructed him.
Instead, he exposed and described in detail how he suffered
torture. After that, the Chinese Communist police officers beat
him for 2 days and 2 nights with the handle of a pistol.
According to Gao Zhisheng, it was the most brutal torture that
he ever suffered till then, and his life hung thinly in the
air.
Just a few days after the interview with the Associated
Press, Gao Zhisheng again disappeared. In December 2011, 4 days
before Gao Zhisheng's 3-year probation was due, Xinhua News
Agency of the Chinese Communist party published the news, in
the next 3 years Gao Zhisheng would be locked up in the prison.
After that, at the end of 2011, Gao Zhisheng was secretly
transferred to the far away Shaya County Prison in Aksu
District of Xinjiang.
In the 1 year and 4 months Gao Zhisheng was detained in the
prison, family members have seen him only twice, and each time
the visit lasted only 30 minutes. There was a period of 10
months between the first visit and the second visit. During the
visit, the police prohibited the family members to ask any
information about him.
August 27, 2012, his elder brother authorized two lawyers,
Li Subin and Li Xiongbing, to meet with Gao Zhisheng, but their
request was rejected by the prison authorities. As you all
know, Gao Zhisheng has always been a political prisoner of
conscience under the strict control of Chinese Communist
authorities. I am very concerned that the torture and the long-
term detention pose a very serious threat to his life. I hereby
call on the international community to persist in paying
continuous attention to attorney Gao Zhisheng, as this is
probably the greatest protection it can offer to Gao.
Today, the Chinese tyrannical Communists are still brutally
persecuting the Chinese people. The miserable experience of Gao
Zhisheng, Hu Jia, Guo Feixiong, Guo Quan, Xu Wanping, Wang
Dengchao, and others is clear evidence of the persecution by
the Chinese Communists. These brutal facts have demonstrated
that the Chinese people don't have human rights, rule of law,
freedom, or democracy. I hope the international community can
rescue the above-mentioned people as it did to Guangcheng.
Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Geng He, thank you so much for your
testimony.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Geng He follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. And I think all of us will redouble our efforts.
We have never ceased. People on this panel, members of the
House and Senate. Certainly the administration has to do more
because your husband--your tenacious appeal on his behalf has
been stunning. And we thank you, I thank you on behalf of all
of us for that.
Mr. Genser.
STATEMENT OF MR. JARED GENSER, FOUNDER,
FREEDOM NOW
Mr. Genser. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Chairman
Smith, Ranking Member Bass, Congressman Weber, Chairman Wolf as
well. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about
the ongoing persecution of Chinese lawyers and their families
in China. The work of this subcommittee highlighting the plight
of individual victims of human rights abuses around the world
is absolutely essential. And I want to beginning by thanking
all of you for your principled support for prisoners of
conscience.
Mr. Chairman, I am particularly pleased to be here with my
friends, Pastor Fu and T. Kumar, and human rights heroes and
champions Geng He and Chen Guangcheng. They, unfortunately,
represent flip sides of the same coin. Geng He is here as the
wife of an imprisoned Chinese rights lawyer, while Chen
Guangcheng, himself a rights advocate and former prisoner of
conscience, is now advocating on behalf of his own family and
their ongoing persecution by Chinese authorities.
As founder of Freedom Now, a legal advocacy organization
that works to free prisoners of conscience around the world,
and as international pro bono counsel to both Chen Guangcheng
and Geng He, my testimony today will highlight briefly the ways
that China's ongoing persecution of both the two of them and
their family members violates international law. And, more
importantly, I am actually going to focus my testimony today on
what specifically the Obama administration can do and what more
the Congress can do to try to bring an end to the suffering of
these courageous people and their families.
As you know, Gao Zhisheng is one of the most prominent
rights lawyers in China. What he and Geng He have been through
has been absolutely horrific. I am not going to go into it in
much detail; it has been described in a lot of detail here. But
I want to highlight in particular the persecution that Geng He
and her children have been through. After Gao Zhisheng was
detained and disappeared and horrifically tortured, and then
released, his wife and children were persecuted extensively.
And this included persecuting their then 10-year-old daughter
Grace, who was taken to school every day by four or five
Chinese security officials who sat in her classroom every
single day, who insulted her in front of the class, who
followed her into the restroom and made her--a man made her--a
Chinese security official made a 10-year-old girl keep the door
open to the bathroom while she went to the bathroom, to
humiliate her. And told people in the class that if any of them
let her use their cell phone that they could go prison and
there is nothing that the school or their families would be
able to do for them.
Putting this kind of pressure on a 10-year-old girl as a
way to get after her father is not only beyond the pale, it is
horrific and inhumane in every sense of that word. This is the
reality of the Chinese Communists today, and this is the
reality of the fear that the Chinese Communist party and the
Chinese Government has of their own population, particularly
talented rights lawyers like Gao Zhisheng, who, despite losing
most of his cases, tenaciously stood up for human rights
victims and pressed incredibly hard for their rights to be
secured.
Chen Guangcheng's story is also well known. And what he has
been through and what his wife and child have been through is
also horrific. Living in rural China with no education to speak
of, he began as a rights advocate advocating initially on
behalf of local people with disabilities who were being taxed,
in violation of Chinese law. He then moved on, as has been
discussed extensively here, to advocating for women who were
victimized by China's one-child policy through forced abortion
and sterilization. And by exposing the horrors of the one-child
system and how it was implemented in China, he himself became a
target and has become a hero to the international community and
to anyone in China who knows what he has done to try to stop
the ongoing abuses of the one-child system. But the fact that
since he escaped to the U.S. Embassy and in the Chinese
Government's view, embarrassed them, that they then came into
his family compound where many of his family members live, this
was not--to be very clear, this was not the police. This was
government-sponsored thugs and local party officials who came
into their home, destroyed everything in front of them, looted
and stole things, beat up most of the people there. Initially,
took away his brother, who was only returned 24 hours later
after being tortured, and then came and arrest and came close
to killing his nephew, Chen Kegui, who reacted by grabbing a
knife for only the prospect of self-defense.
When you have five government-sponsored thugs in your
house, on your property, and several of them are yelling,
``Kill him, kill him,'' under those circumstances, what can
anybody do? What can anybody do? I am a human rights lawyer; I
believe in nonviolence. But under those circumstances, when you
have people yelling to kill you, and they are in your own home,
I don't know what else anyone can do but pick up a knife and
try to save their own lives. And he didn't even injure people
in any serious manner. Nobody was even hospitalized. One guy
had a scratch. But, I mean, at the end of the day, this was
clearly self-defense. And, of course, they wouldn't have even
shown up at the family compound but for the fact that 48 hours
earlier, Chen Guangcheng had courageously and extraordinarily
escaped from his home to Beijing.
It is an amazing, amazing story. But the striking feature
of these cases is that they demonstrate how Chinese authorities
act with impunity, violating the fundamental rights of their
citizens. As a country of 1.2 billion people, and a government
that is one of the most powerful governments on Earth, how can
a government that is so powerful feel so weak and so afraid
that they are afraid of people like Chen Guangcheng and Gao
Zhisheng? And what they need to do is they need to come down on
them with the full weight of the state, not only on them as
rights advocates, but on the backs of their families to crush
them. How can a government that claims to be so powerful be, in
fact, so weak?
And even worse, when human rights defenders seek help from
competent legal counsel in a country that claims to abide by
the rule of law, their own lawyers get targeted. Indeed, as
long as the government is not held accountable for the
continued detention and mistreatment of rights defenders and
their families, we can only expect these violations to
continue. When we consider the most important metric, the
freedom of Gao Zhisheng and Chen Kegui, one can only conclude
that the Obama administration's approach on Chinese human
rights has not achieved the results that these families
desperately deserve, and that its tactics have to change.
This family is especially striking because of the special
duty our country owes to both of them and their families
because they reside here in the United States and they are here
with the protection of the United States.
In the absence of progress on these cases, it is my view
that the Obama administration has to increase the pressure. For
example, we requested that President Obama personally meet with
Geng He and Chen Guangcheng during their visit to Washington.
In my view, such a meeting would send a clear, unequivocal
message that the continued of targeting of rights lawyers and
their families by Chinese authorities would no longer be
tolerated by the international community. I was disappointed,
frankly, to receive a response from the White House which
indicated to me that, instead of meeting at the White House, it
was recommended that we go to the State Department and meet
with officials at the State Department.
And my response to that reply from the White House was to
say that I didn't consider it to be a serious response. And the
reason I don't consider it to be a serious response is, to
their credit, the State Department has been pressing in a range
of ways on both of the cases in Chen Guangcheng and his nephew
as well as on Gao Zhisheng's case. Indeed, Secretary Clinton
raised Gao Zhisheng's case publicly, calling for his release.
Former Assistant Secretary Mike Posner was relentless on
Gao Zhisheng's case. Obviously, the State Department was able
to negotiate Chen Guangcheng's release, to its credit,
ultimately. But at the end of the day, it is quite clear and
very apparent, and very sad to say, that without executive
leadership from the President of the United States, I fear that
people like Chen Guangcheng and Geng He and their families will
not obtain the relief that they so desperately need. I wish I
could say that this was the only time I have been disappointed
with the White House. But, unfortunately, I have had similar
experiences on other cases. I serve as international counsel to
Liu Xiaobo, who won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. His wife, Liu
Xia, has been under house arrest for more than 2 years, since a
week after Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize.
This past December, we initiated a major action on their
behalf. We had 134 Nobel laureates, across all six disciplines,
reaching out to Xi Jinping, the incoming Chinese President at
this time--this was this past December 4. And saying to Xi
Jinping, you need to understand, we, these 134 Nobel laureates
across all six disciplines, the one commonality between us
all--we have all achieved extraordinary things in different
fields, but the one commonality among us all is that without
freedom of expression, without freedom of association, without
the creativity that a free society provides us, we could not
have achieved what we have achieved in our respective careers.
And we consider Liu Xiaobo one of us.
We asked President Obama to sign on to that letter. As you
will recall, he won the Nobel Peace Prize himself. And,
unfortunately, we never received a response from the White
House for that request. And the request that we had to the
White House to speak out publicly against Liu Xia's ongoing
house arrest has never been responded to as well.
At the end of the day, ultimately, without executive
leadership, I do not think that the Chinese will take our
concerns about Chinese human rights seriously. I understand we
have many important issues with the Chinese Government. I
understand that there are huge economic, social issues,
cultural issues, intellectual property, Iran, North Korea, I
could go on with a long list of concerns. But it seems to me
that even during the Soviet Union and the Helsinki process, we
were able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We were able
to talk about nuclear issues, economic issues, human rights
issues, and we were able to engage in all of those discussions
simultaneously with the Soviet Union.
And it seems to me that that is precisely what we need to
do with respect to the People's Republic of China. And until we
act consistently and unequivocally and repeatedly and publicly
to make clear our concerns about Chinese human rights, we will
not get the results that we want.
The last thing that I will note is that one of the other
ways that we could be more creative would be by working
multilaterally, something that we haven't seen. Working on
Chinese human rights issues, at least, up front and publicly we
haven't seen it.
As an illustration, Baroness Ashton of the European Union
is going to China at the end of this month to discuss a whole
range of issues. We have never seen any public statements from
President Obama and Baroness Ashton or President Obama and, for
instance, Francois Hollande, the French President, and David
Cameron, the British Prime Minister, publicly saying to the
Chinese Government, ``Release Liu Xiaobo, release Liu Xia,
release Gao Zhisheng, release Chen Kegui.'' It seems to me
that, at a minimum, we should at least be able to privately
engage in these conversations with the Chinese Government and
say, if we do not start to see the progress that we need, we
are going to have no choice but to speak publicly about these
issues. At least we can privately say that to the Chinese. But,
sadly, I have not seen an indication or a willingness of the
White House to be willing to even take those private actions.
So, in conclusion, it is my view that until a clear,
unequivocal, and consistent message on human rights is
delivered to the Chinese Government with benchmarks, timelines,
and consequences for inaction, we should not expect its
behavior to change. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Genser follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Genser. Excellent
comments and I look forward to asking some questions.
Mr. T. Kumar.
Mr. Kumar. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith. First of
all, I would like to insert our statement.
Mr. Smith. Without objection, so ordered.
STATEMENT OF MR. T. KUMAR, DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL ADVOCACY,
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Mr. Kumar. Thank you. Amnesty International is extremely
pleased to testify here. And we would like to recognize your
leadership, Congressman Smith, over the years on a number of
countries, not only in China. And today, one of your activism
produce results, and we are seeing Chen here. We strongly
believe that the hearing you had here where we also testified,
his testimony from the hospital bed, changed the tide.
Secretary Clinton was in China. It was not sure that the U.S.
would take the leadership in asking for his release and
bringing him here over to U.S. And the hearing you had made a
difference. So thank you, Congressman Smith.
We also like to express our appreciation to Congresswoman
Bass, and Amnesty International is looking forward to working
with you. And thank you for inviting us to testify. We can't
conclude this hearing without bipartisanship. We can't have
active human rights legislation or even pressure without having
bipartisan leadership. And we are glad to see it is working out
here.
Before I go into detail, I would like to summarize Amnesty
International's research over the years and what the current
situation in China is. First of all, there is a system called
``Reeducation Through Labor'' camps under which tens of
thousands of Chinese citizens have been imprisoned without
charge or trial. Simply at the whim of local police officers.
That particular system is encouraging police officers and
the government officials to silence critics and also silence
non-practitioners and others. So Amnesty International is
campaigning to ensure that that system is abolished, and we
want Congress to take the leadership as well. Because they have
not gone through any fair trial before they have been
imprisoned. They were just imprisoned without charge or trial.
And the labor conditions are extremely sad; 16 hours a day,
they have to work forced labor.
The second that relate to Chen is the treatment of human
rights defenders and lawyers. These are the human rights
defenders who get abused purely because they are standing up
for others' rights. In this case, more or less, it is for one-
child policy and they are trying to bring justice to the
victims. It is not only the human rights defenders have been
abused, their families have been targeted, which we heard here.
So it is a practice that Chinese have been taking on and going
after not only human rights defenders, but also their families.
Third is the death penalty. China executes more people than
the rest of the world combined, after unfair trials. As you are
aware, Congressman, we oppose death penalty everywhere,
including in this country. So we are having a major campaign
again around the world to abolish death penalty. Because more
so, it is the victims are poor and marginalized communities.
And then the other issue is the one-child policy, abuses
committed in one-child policy. We have document that women have
been forcibly aborted and forcibly sterilized purely because to
maintain that one-child policy quota. Even though the Chinese
Government has instructions, allegedly, instructions to say
that you should not forcibly abort or sterilize women, that
practice is going on.
We have never seen even one prosecution or one punishment
of a government official who was involved in forced abortion
and sterilization. That is a challenge everyone can put to the
Chinese, that if you are serious about stopping abuse,
prosecute people who have been involved in this practice, which
Amnesty International has documented years after years of
forced abortion and sterilization.
Then there is torture. People have died in prisons in
hundreds, mostly Falun Gong, as well as Tibetan and Uyghur,
mostly Uyghur from Xinjiang. And finally the plight of
religious minorities there, or religion, per se. Any religion
that is not been recognized by the government and any followers
have been abused, detained, and tortured. Catholic church
members who have connections to Vatican have been singled out
and abused. Then we have Tibetans, which we have seen years and
years.
Now the situation has come to such an end, over 100 people
have burned themselves, self-mutilated them, out of
desperation. What the Chinese Government is doing is trying to
contain the demonstrations coming out rather than addressing
the root causes of what the grievances there are in Tibet.
Then we have Uyghur, Uyghur Muslims. They were singled out
again. They have been called terrorists because, unfortunately,
they belong to--they practice a faith called Islam. Hundreds
have been detained. Even Rebiya Kadeer's son is still
imprisoned there. The only mistake he did was to born as a son
of Rebiya Kadeer.
So what can we do? Human rights organizations can report,
campaign, lobby. But in the U.S. there are two branches that
can be very active. One is a Congress, which we believe you are
doing the right thing, including this hearing. Then the other
one is the administration. There is a golden opportunity for
the administration that is going to come less than a week now.
Secretary Kerry is going to visit China this weekend. This is
his first visit as Secretary of State. He should make sure that
he sets the right tone about human rights while he is there. He
should speak up. He should mention to Chinese leaders, both
privately and publicly, that they should abide by the
international standards.
It is not the United States' standards, Chairman, they are
the international standards that U.S. should advocate. Failure
to do that will send the wrong message to the Chinese leaders
that United States and in exchange, the international community
is not concerned about the way Chinese Government treats its
own citizens. The U.S., as one of the five members of the
permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have a special
responsibility. And also China is a permanent member of the
Security Council. U.S. is a member of the Human Rights Council,
U.N. China is a member of the Human Rights Council.
So the U.S. have all the right to speak up and to put
markers there. We hope Secretary Kerry will not lose this
golden opportunity by speaking up. When he speaks up in China,
he is not only speaking up to the leaders of China, he is
speaking to the people of China. Human rights, by the end of
the day, it is about the people's rights. The only things that
we are asking Secretary Kerry to champion are the rights of the
people of China. One thing that we want to point out is that if
Secretary Kerry fails to speak up in a meaningful manner, he
will lose all his moral credibility to speak about human rights
in any other countries. So he should, and we expect him to
speak up. We will know in a week's time whether he is up to
that task. And he is the Secretary of State who can rise up to
the occasion and speak up about human rights abuse, not only
against the weak countries and poor countries, but also to the
powerful countries.
In conclusion, Amnesty International thank you again for
holding this hearing. And we believe these hearings will have
enormous impact in affecting U.S. foreign policy and also send
a strong message to countries around the world that U.S. values
human rights.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Kumar, thank you very much for those very
strong words. And, certainly, since you have been here on so
many other countries, your consistency is greatly appreciated.
So thank you so much for that.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kumar follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. I would like to just ask a few questions and
yield to my colleagues. I want to assure Mr. Chen that we will
follow up on your request to get all relevant data and
documents concerning your situation as it was in China. And we
will ask the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to do
likewise. But also the Foreign Affairs Committee. So thank you
for that request.
I do hope the press takes very keen note of this. Back in
1984, I offered the first amendment conditioning United States
contributions to organizations as to whether or not, if they
were involved with forced abortion or forced sterilization,
they would be precluded such funds. That morphed into what
became known as the Kemp-Kasten language, which is the current
law of the land.
Earlier in this hearing, one of my colleagues mentioned
that UNFPA had an unblemished record. I think the documentation
couldn't be more clear that we have aided and abetted, by
aiding and abetting an organization, it is on the ground,
implementing Chinese law, which is a one-child-per-couple
policy, which relies on what they euphemistically call social
compensation fees, huge, ruinous fines, up to 10 times both
husband and wife's salaries--no one can pay them--or bribes or
having a child on the run. Which some women are able to do.
The Financial Times did a report on March 15 pointing out
that there have been more abortions, and most of those are
forced, in China, than there are people in the United States of
American. Three hundred and thirty million.
Mr. Chen mentioned a moment ago about the 130,000 forced
abortions in his small area. I would--and your list which you
lifted up and held for our look, which will be made a part of
the record, we will send to the administration and ask them to
enforce the law. We have a law--I wrote it--in the year 2000
that says anyone who is complicit in forcing a woman to abort
her child, or a man or woman to undergo a sterilization, is
made inadmissible into the United States of America. You cannot
get a visa. We asked the Congressional Research Service to look
into it to see how many times it has been implemented, it is
less than 30.
So, Mr. Chen, your list becomes, I think, a blueprint for
action, an engraved invitation for the administration to look
at those individuals and bar entry into the United States of
anyone who has committed such violence against women and
children pursuant to the law. Just enforce United States law.
It is on the books; I know because I wrote it. So I would hope
that that would be the case. So I look forward to following up
with your list, Mr. Chen, to see if the administration will do
that.
Let me ask just a couple of things. You know, Mr. Genser,
you mentioned that we basically risked super power
confrontation with the Soviet Union by ensuring--and you, Mr.
Kumar, said it as well--that human rights were central, a main,
central pillar of U.S. foreign policy. All of us were greatly
chagrined when Hillary Clinton said in route, first trip to
Beijing, I am not going to let human rights, ``interfere with
global climate change and other issues.''
So as long as it is put askance or aside and
compartmentalized, human rights will not be seen by the Chinese
Government as being something we absolutely cherish and will
fight to the end for.
I would respectfully submit we would be working much closer
with the Chinese on North Korea had we insisted, as you pointed
out, clear consistent, unequivocal support for human rights,
Mr. Genser, we would have a greater partner in standing up to
the tyranny of the new leader, the new leader in Pyongyang.
Human rights pay dividends in far more ways than just
helping great individuals like Gao Zhisheng and Chen Guangcheng
and others who have suffered so much for freedom and human
rights. It has great positives in other areas as well.
We will follow up on all of these things as you have
recommended. Try anew with the administration. Hope springs
eternal. My hope is that they will grab this and run with it.
It is in the interest of the suffering people of China. It is
also in global interests. Because we have seen in Africa and
elsewhere, because this subcommittee covers Africa and human
rights globally, global human rights obviously applying to
China and everywhere else, but we have seen that the bad
governance model of China is being exported as well. People
like Bashir in Sudan love the Chinese model of dictatorship and
secret police; you don't have to worry about the messy details
of democracy and checks and balances.
So I would like to yield to Ms. Bass.
If you would like to comment on any of that, any of our
distinguished witnesses, or I will yield for some other
questions.
Ms. Bass. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have some questions.
But before I get there, though, I feel I must follow up in
terms of the testimony that was given by my colleague,
Congressman Bera. Because I believe what he was referring to
was, first of all, I think he very strongly articulated that he
was opposed to China's one-child policy and was opposed to
forced abortions under anybody's policy. But that he was
talking about support for the United Nations Population Fund.
And he was making a distinction by saying that no government
should intrude in the right of a woman to control her own body.
So I just want to state for the record that that is what he was
referring to.
Mr. Smith. The gentlelady would yield?
Ms. Bass. Sure.
Mr. Smith. Very briefly. But there have been findings
repeatedly, probably the most comprehensive one was done by
Secretary Negroponte back in 2008. And pursuant to Kemp-Kasten,
which very simply says that no funds for any organization that
supports or co-manages a coercive population control program,
that it couldn't have been more clear in their finding that the
U.N. Population Fund had so violated U.S. law and then,
therefore, was ineligible for U.S. funding. Because the UNFPA
at the end of the day enforces--is part of, it is integral
because they do also provide training to the one-child-per-
couple policy. And it relies, that policy, on coercion to
achieve its ends.
Ms. Bass. Okay. I, again, just want to state that I do
believe that my good colleague, who is a new member of the
House, was not in support of that policy, and I believe he made
that very clear.
Moving on, though, I did want to ask a few questions of Mr.
Genser. You know, you were talking about what the
administration should do, you know, in terms of being more
forceful. And I am also a relatively new Member of Congress, I
am in my second term. And I was wondering if maybe you could
talk about some past administrations in regard to China and
what they might have done. And so, twofold, I am asking about
past U.S. administrations, but I think you also reference
several other countries. And so if you look at other major
international powers, what have they done in regard to taking
on China and its policies?
Mr. Genser. Sure. Well, thank you, Ranking Member Bass for
the question. I think it is an important one. Let me respond to
the two parts in turn. The first is I have been at this as a
human rights lawyer for about a dozen years in Washington. For
me, not surprisingly, this is not a partisan question, this is
a human and human rights question. And what I try do is just
speak to it as I see it, as any administration goes, and as any
Republican or Democrat goes on human rights questions. So there
are champions on human rights in the House that are, of course,
Democrats and Republicans.
Ms. Bass. I am sorry, just--not human rights in general. I
am referring specifically to China's policies that we are
discussing today.
Mr. Genser. Understood. I think that all administrations,
all White Houses, in my experience, only goes back a couple of
White Houses, have some hesitance at advocating for human
rights. But I can speak based on personal experience,
particularly to the George W. Bush administration, the
difference in approach between the Bush administration and the
Obama administration. I represented for 5 years an imprisoned
Chinese dissident Yongchun Li. He was imprisoned for 5 years.
His wife and kids were American citizens. So it became a very
high profile case here in the Congress.
We had at one point 112 Members in Congress going on one
letter to George W. Bush asking him to raise the case to
Chinese President Hu Jintao. He did that. And it was announced
publicly that he had done that. And ultimately, although it
took a lot of work and a lot of time, Yongchun Li was released
from prison and is now back here in the United States with his
family. You know, I think that the optics from where I sit are
just different between different administrations.
I think that George W. Bush very much enjoyed meeting with
dissidents and having their views heard and speaking publicly
about what he experienced. Unfortunately, I haven't seen
President Obama take the same approach. He has, as far as I can
tell, and as far as I have observed over the last 5 years, one
meeting over the course of the last 5 years with about a dozen
dissidents at one time, on one occasion.
It seems to me that whenever the President travels abroad,
particularly when he is engaging with countries that are not
allies of the United States in every sense of that term, that
it is very important to send the view to the world that he
understands and is concerned about the suffering of the people
in that country, even thought the U.S. has very different kind
of interests associated with that country.
So I don't fault the President personally for saying, you
know, we have a lot of interests with China and we need to be
careful where we tread. And I do agree with Chairman Smith and
with those who would say that we need to be consistent and
coherent and deliver the message from all quarters of the
administration that China human rights matter and are
important.
And so what I would say is, you know, this administration's
record, in my view, is not as strong as the prior
administration on raising China human rights matters.
Ms. Bass. And other----
Mr. Genser. I don't think it is too late to change that----
Ms. Bass. Sure. Could you comment, because I want to move
on.
Mr. Genser. Of course.
Ms. Bass. Could you comment about other major powers what
you see them doing?
Mr. Genser. Sure. I think there are mixed messages, I
think, from other major powers. I mean, I think that, you know,
we will see what Baroness Ashton does at the end of the month.
But the EU has spoken up publicly about Liu Xiaobo and Liu
Xia's case and in my experience much more than the United
States has, as the European Union. And individual member states
of the EU, particularly, the United Kingdom have been outspoken
publicly.
I am not following every country in the world
simultaneously, of course, so I can't speak to a lot of
details. But I would just say that, you know, everybody can do
more. So my criticism is not lodged exclusively at the United
States. It is saying, if we want human rights to actually
matter and we want the Chinese Government to view human rights
as something that is actually a concern of ours, if we don't
deliver that message consistently, we are not going to get the
results that we want.
Ms. Bass. Thank you. I think this question--I am sorry. Go
right ahead, Mr. Kumar.
Mr. Kumar. Is that okay if I comment on that issue?
Ms. Bass. Sure.
Mr. Kumar. Amnesty International believes that U.S.
Government should incorporate human rights in all its
activities, all its interactions with Chinese Government. For
example, they have dialogued with the Commerce Department, the
Defense----
Ms. Bass. They dialogued with--I am sorry?
Mr. Kumar. Defense, Commerce, everyone should have a brief
on human rights. It is not only the Human Rights Bureau at the
State Department that should talk about human rights. Unless it
cuts across every department, they are not going to take it
seriously. They know this is kind of a--for the sake of doing,
U.S. doing.
And there is also innovation. There are two dialogues that
U.S. is having with China. One is U.S./China human rights
dialogue. Every year, they talk. The other one is U.S./China
economic and security dialogue. We are urging U.S. Government
for years to make sure, don't single out human rights, just
incorporate that human rights into economic and security
dialogue. So it should be called economic, security, and human
rights dialogue. Then only they will get the message. They are
not going to get the message it is only human rights dialogue.
So there are lots of things U.S. can do without getting
permission from China, without getting any concern about China.
Only from this end they can do, which they are not doing.
And the issue of major powers, it is a reality, U.S. is the
only superpower. And it is a reality that the only country that
can meaningfully pressure China is U.S. There are maybe a group
of countries like European Union that can ever put their act
together and come with a strong message. So U.S. has a special
responsibility when it comes to China. It may not be a special
responsibility if some other countries, the other countries can
take on. But we need to come to China, the U.S. should take the
leadership along with other countries. Again, it is not
lecturing China, it is about urging China to ensure, to respect
the internationally recognized human rights norms and
practices.
Ms. Bass. Thank you. You know, I know a reference had been
made to Secretary Clinton's trip over to China, and I think in
her tenure as Secretary of State she was certainly known for
her leadership on women, women's rights around the world, and I
certainly recall numerous times when she pointed out the abuses
in China, but moving on, I wanted to ask a couple of other
questions.
I believe Mr. Chen had made reference to the reeducation
through labor system, and I know that there are, there have
been some proposed reforms to that system, and I just wanted to
know if you--I believe it was you that was referencing that,
and I wanted to know if you thought the reforms had done
anything at all, I mean the fact that the labor camps exist, I
don't really know how you reform them. It seems like they would
need to be eliminated. But the Chinese Government have talked
about proposed reforms. What reforms were those supposed to be?
I am sorry, it was Pastor Fu that had mentioned that.
Pastor Fu. Thank you. The reeducation through labor system
is really the most extrajudicial evil law in the land of China,
and the Chinese Government is basically using that practice to
primarily target those so-called soft crimes, meaning political
dissidents, the members of the underground church, the Falun
Gong practitioners, and of course other democracy activists.
Basically, the Chinese security chief can make you lose freedom
up to 4 years without going through any judicial review, I mean
without going through any other branches, like the court or
prosecutors review. Of course, there is a mechanism that said
you can continue to appeal. Rarely you can win any of these
cases. Basically many people were sent to these labor camps and
forced to work sometimes up to 18 hours a day in these labor
camps. As you mentioned, the Chinese Government from this year
ironically the minister of public security, the former minister
was Mr. Meng Jianzhu made that announcement this year, the
beginning of this year by saying China actually will stop the
reeducation through labor system, but then the Chinese official
news reports actually corrected him by saying the Chinese
Government is seriously considering to reform the reeducation
through labor.
Ms. Bass. So they made him retract his statement?
Pastor Fu. Yes. And of course there are a few provinces
make the announcement by the provincial security heads, I
believe including Gui Zhou make that public that they will
suspend the practice, which means they were not using that
system to imply to the other, to those people subject for
reeducation through labor, and of course, you know, I am very,
very hopeful because this evil practice has been so long and
offended so many innocent people and has been--make so many
families suffering so much, I think the whole China, even those
Communist Party affiliated scholars and numerous legal
scholars, even some members of the People's Congress in the
judicial committee publicly advocate for abolition of this
system, and I hope this will happen in reality, and I also hope
the Communist Party, all the People's Congress by finally
suspending or abolishing this system would not find another
system to substitute for their extrajudicial activities for
targeting those people.
Thank you.
Ms. Bass. And then final question to Mr. Chen. I wanted to
know what your plans are when you return to China. How do you
expect to be treated and how is your family doing?
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Mr. Chen. I have not thought about that too much, and now
in the U.S., I just want to continue to push for human rights
in China. I just wanted to add that on the reeducation through
labor camp, before they actually added a clause to the law that
they could actually beat the people and then force them--they
could make the person disappear without notifying their
relatives for 6 months.
Ms. Bass. It says that in the law?
Mr. Chen. It says it in the law. This starts from January 1
this year.
Ms. Bass. Okay, thank you.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank each one of
you for your testimony. I wanted to follow up. Most of what it
sounds like today is that we just need to continue to highlight
this particular issue. I have been following it for some 20
years and find it amazing that some of the testimony that has
been given today is just very disturbing and even with someone
who has been following it closely for that length of time, and
yet at the same time highlighting the issue seems like that is
what we need to continue to do. The chairman of this very
committee brought this issue up with the Secretary General of
the U.N., and I was somewhat concerned in his facial and his
response to act like he didn't even know about these atrocities
that are going on, and so I want to commend the chairman for
bringing that up in that environment.
But Mr. Kumar, let me start with you if I might. In your
testimony you mention the importance of having Secretary Kerry
remember his audience. I think is in your written testimony
that you talked about when he travels to China and that the
audience is not just the Chinese Government, but the people of
China. What, in light of social media and some of the other
things that get out, what do references to human rights
violations and democracy, do they garner any special attention
among the Chinese people?
Mr. Kumar. Yeah, there are even though there are so many
restrictions being placed. For example, even in text messages,
human rights and democracy cannot be texted, that is what we
heard. So there are ways people are getting, but Secretary
Kerry speaking out is totally different from every Chinese
citizen's getting information about human rights from human
rights organizations or others. Secretary Kerry's first trip
and during his first trip, if he fails to speak up in a
meaningful manner, then Chinese people will feel that U.S. as a
country--I am very careful to say that U.S. should not lecture,
they should only insist on international standards.
Mr. Meadows. So am I hearing you--let me interrupt for just
a second. So what you are saying is the most important thing
that Secretary Kerry could do on his trip coming up in just a
few days is to highlight this particular issue diplomatically
but make sure that they know the importance that he and this
administration places on human rights violations?
Mr. Kumar. Yes. But he has to send a message to the leaders
as relates to the people of China is that U.S. considers
economic relationship and human rights and security and
environment at the same level. That is the message.
Mr. Meadows. What you are saying is tying the economic and
the human rights together.
Mr. Kumar. Yes.
Mr. Meadows. For example, we have a manufacturing plant
here in the United States, we wouldn't tolerate these kinds of
human rights violations----
Mr. Kumar. Abuses.
Mr. Meadows [continuing]. Within our own borders, so how
dare we import other economic goods from China when we are
tolerating it there, is that what you are saying?
Mr. Kumar. Yeah, that is what exactly I am trying to say.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So what do you think are the hopes,
and I would give this to you, Mr. Kumar, and then Mr. Genser as
well, what do you think the hopes that clear kind of message
will be articulated in the coming days?
Mr. Kumar. The host will accept because they expect U.S. to
speak up, and one example that we have seen U.S. leadership
that provided results is Mr. Chen.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Mr. Kumar. If not for U.S. leadership, Chen will not be
here. U.S. leadership came, to my opinion, if not for the
special hearing that was held here when Mr. Chen was testifying
from his hospital bed.
Mr. Meadows. So is it your opinion that the other two that
we have highlighted today in terms of the testimony that are
held in prison, that their release is only dictated by the
leadership of this particular government speaking out on that
behalf and that if they don't speak out, those folks will not
be released?
Mr. Kumar. U.S. should take the leadership, other countries
should join, but U.S. should take the leadership. As I
mentioned in my opening remarks, U.S. is the only superpower
left, so the U.S. as a superpower should also have
responsibilities in terms of speaking out. Not speaking out
will send the extremely wrong message to the leadership and to
the people at large.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Kumar. Mr. Genser.
Mr. Genser. Sure. Well, let me just make two brief comments
in response to your question. My first public recommendation to
Secretary Kerry, which he could do privately when he goes in
several days, is he could privately bring a copy of the op-ed
that Chen Guangcheng and Geng He had in the Washington Post
asking for a meeting with the President, and he could say to
the Chinese leaders, help us help you, right? We don't want to
have this meeting between Chen Guangcheng and Geng He, but we
are under a lot of pressure here in Washington. There was a
hearing on Capitol Hill, there was an op-ed in the newspaper,
we need to some progress on these cases. We have mentioned
these cases publicly and privately over many, many years, and
we haven't seen progress, and people are getting impatient, so
we want to give you a private opportunity to get that done. Now
that is something he could do very concretely in the next
several days that I think if he were to deliver that message we
would start to see some movement on these cases.
And then the second and last thing that I would just say is
that it is also very, very important from where I sit to not
just talk about human rights at 100,000 feet and talk about the
need for advancing the rule of law. This is what the Chinese
love to do, they love to come to these bilateral human rights
dialogues and they love to sit there in those rooms, and in
essence what we have is sequential monologues with both sides
talking past each other, and the Chinese issue a press release
and say this was a wonderful dialogue that we engaged in, and
it is the dialogue itself which is the outcome, but from where
I sit that is not the outcome. The outcome is are we seeing
progress in a bunch of ways? And yes, of course, progress can
come by changing laws in ways that are compatible with
international law, and I am not trying to discount the
importance of it, but I think we always need to be focusing on,
like we have today, a handful of actual live people's cases and
people's lives where you can have a clear and unequivocal
benchmark with large photographs of people, and are they or are
they not still in prison? And if they are, the tactics that we
are deploying by definition have failed, and we need to think
about new tactics.
Mr. Meadows. Do you think that there is a clear
understanding with the Chinese Government that we are not
asking them to abide by U.S. law but just by U.N. guidelines?
Do you think there is a clear understanding of that?
Mr. Genser. I think the problem is that the Chinese receive
different messages from different actors in the United States,
and the messages from within the administration, from the State
Department and the White House aren't the same, the messages
from the Hill are different, depending on who you talk to, and
I think that unfortunately a lot of people in China and the
Chinese Government think that human rights is somehow a sword
to use to get political advantage and not something that is
consistent with our values, and the only way that they are
going to perceive it differently--to be clear, I am not
justifying that perception because I do think it is fundamental
to our core values, to our Constitution, to our Declaration of
Independence, but I do think that the only way that we can
combat that perception is, as Kumar was saying, by consistently
raising it to the Chinese Government across all the different
aspects of the relationship, and it is only when we do that
consistently across the executive branch and the legislative
branch that the Chinese will understand that we take it
seriously, but if we are going to start censoring ourselves and
be afraid of raising human rights to the Chinese for fear that
they might, you know, not give us what we need on other
important issues, then if I were them, I probably also wouldn't
take all that seriously our concerns about human rights.
Mr. Meadows. Mr. Chairman, do I have time for two more
questions? Okay. Let me go on a little bit further with that
because it is all about the message, and as I think has been
pointed out, you made pretty straightforward actions that the
Obama administration could take in order to promote human
rights in China including a meeting between, you know, the
President and the distinguished guests that we have here today.
You know, can you explain the reluctance that the White House
has in why this meeting has not taken place, given the kind of
visibility that we have with Mr. Chen here today and Pastor Fu
and et cetera?
Mr. Genser. Obviously, I work as pro bono lawyers for the
two distinguished guests here, so I can't answer for the White
House. I will say there is a genuine reluctance on most White
Houses' parts to be viewed as doing things that are provocative
to important partners of ours on multiple issues, but, again, I
think that they are not looking at it the right way. I think
that they need to look at the fundamental values that are
important to us as a country to have a true north which is
grounded in our Declaration of Independence and our
Constitution and to implement policy on the basis of our
fundamental values, and that means that at times we are going
to have to do the thing that isn't politically expedient but
that is consistent with our values, which is speaking up for
human rights. If it is only about what is politically
expedient, human rights is almost never going to be a priority
for this country.
Mr. Meadows. Well, do you believe, and I would ask this of
Mr. Kumar as well, do you believe if the American people as a
whole knew the kind of atrocities that have been highlighted
here in this hearing plus others that have not been covered, do
you think that they would see that and have an economic revolt,
as Mr. Kumar said, they have to be tied together, do you see
that the American people would speak up?
Mr. Genser. You know, I do think so. Louis Brandeis said
that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and I think that sadly
for most Americans there isn't much attention paid to what is
happening 10,000 miles away, whether it be China human rights
or what is going on in Darfur or a whole long list of the
situation in Syria, you could go through a long list of things
that the average American isn't familiar with. I think that
these issues are so extraordinary and the persecution of these
two individuals and their families is so beyond the pale, and
if the United States of America as what I believe right now is
the most powerful Nation on Earth can't stand up for the most
persecuted people in those countries, Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia, Gao
Zhisheng, you know, Chen Kegui. If we can't stand up for those
people who are most persecuted because we are afraid of our own
interests on other matters with China, then who is going to
stand up for these people? And I think that is really just the
fundamental bottom line.
Mr. Meadows. Would you agree with that, Mr. Kumar?
Mr. Kumar. Yes, I agree, and I believe generally overall
U.S. citizens are aware of the situation purely because of
Tiananmen Square massacre that took place over 20 years ago.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Mr. Kumar. But we as an international human rights
organization also have major campaigns. We have about 700,000
members in this country, we have hundreds of high school and
college chapters. We also campaign on human rights issues,
including human rights issues in China. So we believe the
people of the U.S. get the message, and that is why we are
confident that there will be change in the U.S. policy as well.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So last question, Mr. Chairman. If
we have, one is communicating to the American people. The
second part of that is getting this message out to the Chinese
people that would know that, and there are reports that clearly
indicate that China spends billions of dollars, truly billions
of dollars employing over 100,000 people to monitor and to
really try to make sure that the Internet is not a public
place, and we see that. Would you think that the best peaceful
means of trying to get that message out to the Chinese people
would be to make a significant priority of circumventing those
firewalls that are there to monitor on the Internet?
Mr. Kumar. Obviously yes. That is why Congressman Smith
introduced the Global Online Freedom Act, which is to prevent
U.S. corporations from helping countries around the world,
including China, from using U.S. technology to block
information flow and also monitor peaceful dissent within the
country. So that dissent is an essential aspect of freedom of
expression where any country should be allowed to do and U.S.
can push for that.
Mr. Genser. I would agree as well. I mean, I think that
there are literally dozens of things that could be done to try
to advance human rights in China if we had both the political
will and the consistent commitment to actually make those
things happen, and I think that it is really only a matter of
our own imagination. One other issue that I will mention as
well is, you know, the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square is
coming up June 4, 2014, and I would love to see, you know, for
example, a Congressional Gold Medal resolution introduced to
honor, let's say, a half dozen Chinese dissident heroes to be
able to put pressure on the Chinese Government to secure the
freedom of these kinds of individuals and others and to be able
to have an event where the President of the United States and
both Houses of Congress would stand in solidarity with the
Chinese people. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
That kind of a picture would be worth much more than that.
Mr. Meadows. Well, my thank you.
Mr. Chen. Hold on.
Mr. Meadows. Okay, Mr. Chen.
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Mr. Chen. I am sure that many Chinese netizens and Chinese
people know that we are here for this hearing. Probably not as
many because of the great firewall in China. The amount of
money the U.S. invested in information is not proportionate
compared to how much the Chinese invest in forbidding its
people from using the Internet. We need to invest and break
down the great firewall so that the Chinese people can freely
speak. With the free flow of information it would be harder and
harder to deceive Chinese people.
Mr. Meadows. Well, I want to thank each one of you for
coming in for your boldness in testifying and illuminating this
issue, and I thank Mr. Chairman for this very worthwhile
hearing, and I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Meadows, thank you for your incisive
questioning and commentary. Mr. Weber.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Earlier in the remarks
figures were quoted that there were 330 million forced
abortions and there were 130,000 I think abortions in Mr.
Chen's area, and I don't remember who made those remarks. The
chairman did? Gotcha. What is the time period? Since 1979.
Pastor Fu. 2000. Oh, you mean the first number, the 330
million?
Mr. Weber. Right.
Pastor Fu. Yes, that was since 1979 when the one-child
policy was carried out.
Mr. Weber. Okay.
Pastor Fu. And the number for 130,000 cases, that was
documented by Mr. Chen, that happened only within a 6-month
period of time in his city alone.
Mr. Weber. Right. So it is interesting to me that--thank
you, Mr. Chairman--amidst the discussion of human rights
violations that a major plank in our discussion is the taking
of innocent human life, that would be unborn babies. So would
you all agree that part of your reason for being here is to
stop those atrocities and that we would include those as a
basic human right as well? Would you all agree with that?
Pastor Fu. Absolutely. And I would like Mr. Chen to also
answer that question, too.
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Mr. Chen. Forced abortion is definitely a human rights
issue. No mothers want to kill their own children. This is
definitely dictated by the Central Communist Party because the
Communist Party is above the law, so nobody can sue the Chinese
Communist Party.
Mr. Weber. Well, thank you. The point I am driving to, of
course, is that it is a basic human right. Life is a basic
human right, and we have had a lot of discussion here today
about our country and the values that we have. I am glad to
hear you all including that in your discussion today. It
doesn't matter whether the government forces the taking of that
innocent human life or, in my opinion, whether the mother takes
an innocent human life, the outcome is that an innocent human
life is taken. So I am glad that we have made that distinction.
Pastor Fu, you mentioned in your discussions that the U.S.
Embassy can request permits to meet with those prisoners of
conscience. Is there a list of the prisoners of conscience?
Pastor Fu. Yes. The U.S., I think, even the Congressional-
Executive Commission on China (CECC) has a very comprehensive
list, and of course for specific cases, those family members.
If for any Member of Congress, if any of the Cabinet or
ministry officials want to visit China or visit these family
members when they are in China, we would be glad to facilitate,
we would be glad to provide the most accurate information in
terms of location, names, contact information. I think this
should be part of the systematic and persistent effort and all-
out effort not only by congressional leaders but also by all
levels of the bilateral exchanges with China. For instance, Mr.
Zhu Yufu, the prisoner I just mentioned who is dying in his
prison, we have his prison address, we also have the wife's
phone number, her next visit to Mr. Zhu is April 13.
Mr. Weber. How many prisoners of conscience would you say
that list entails? Is it 1,000, 10,000?
Pastor Fu. It is thousands, yes, thousands of names.
Mr. Weber. Thousands?
Pastor Fu. Yes, yes.
Mr. Weber. And so it is probably too much to ask that
Secretary of State John Kerry would even entertain that idea?
Have you all made that request to the State Department?
Pastor Fu. My organization, we have not made that request
yet.
Mr. Weber. Okay, let me jump over to Mr. Kumar. Have you
all made that request of the State Department?
Mr. Kumar. We urged Secretary Kerry to meet with the
families of some of the human rights defenders. But he is going
to be there only for a day, less than a day actually.
Mr. Weber. Did you get a response from him?
Mr. Kumar. Not yet.
Mr. Weber. How long ago was that request?
Mr. Kumar. We had a meeting about a week ago and we
verbally asked him.
Mr. Weber. Okay. And Mr. Kumar, you also talked about
Secretary John Kerry, putting some pressure on him, and then I
was glad to hear my colleague Mark Meadows' comments about
social media and trying to build that awareness. Of course, I
am aware of what I guess we could now call the great firewall
of China. No longer the Great Wall, but the great firewall of
China--how they are intending to keep out all of the Internet,
as much social media as they can. Do radio signals, for
example--from South Korea, do they reach into China or do they
block those?
Mr. Kumar. I have no idea. I know Voice of America usually
have live discussion, TV. I don't know whether they get
interrupted or not.
Mr. Weber. Mr. Genser, you said in your remarks, and I
don't mean to end on a pessimistic note, but I believe you said
we should--pretty much you ended with we should not expect
their behavior to change?
Mr. Genser. Well, I would echo what Chairman Smith said. I
am an eternal optimist about human nature and about what we can
ultimately achieve if we put our minds to it. This actually
isn't very complicated, it is actually quite simple, it is
acting consistently with our values. So on the one hand I would
say that White Houses past and present tend to hedge when it
comes to these kinds of issues, ultimately there is a lot that
could be achieved and the President has 3 more years in office,
and we will continue to urge him to move forward and to raise
these issues, and we will continue to be persistent about it.
Mr. Weber. Well, that is what I want to encourage you to
do. The public discourse and the public pressure, I didn't want
you to be too discouraged. I wanted you to continue that.
Now let me ask a question of you since I have got you here
at the microphone. Why should China care what the U.S. says to
them about human rights? Why should the Chinese Government
care?
Mr. Genser. Well, look, as an international human rights
lawyer, what I would say is that China has signed major
treaties that they want the United States to abide by. For
example, you know, acceding to the World Trade Organization and
rules of trade, and international human rights law is equally
binding on China as international trade law. At the end of the
day if they want to be a reliable partner for the United
States, if they want to attract foreign investment, then
foreign investors want to know that they can have certainty in
their domestic courts system if there is a dispute.
Mr. Weber. Are you saying that, as Mark Meadows kind of
alluded to, that maybe we should have trade laws that keep
Americans from investing in China when they have an abysmal
record, especially when it comes to intellectual property
rights?
Mr. Genser. Look, that is sort of a more complex and longer
discussion, but what I would say is that it is important to
hold China to account for their adherence to their
international law obligations, and it is in China's interest, I
believe, that the law be consistently applied, and they want it
to be when it comes to their issues, and we are going to want
it to be when it comes to ours. So, you know, I don't think it
actually behooves the Chinese Government, for example, you
know, to have a court system that is not independent and
impartial because it makes foreign investors less interested in
investing there. If you have a court system that is independent
and impartial, it can help not only businesses invest and be
certain about outcomes but also help human rights victims as
well.
Mr. Weber. Pastor Fu, why should China care what we think?
Pastor Fu. I think I will echo my colleague attorney Jared
Genser is saying. Moreover, it is the values, it is the
universal values, and if a government that ultimately
disregards its own citizens' basic dignity and rights, and how
could they expect to be respected.
Mr. Weber. Okay. I think I know what you are getting to--
let me highlight that. A government that disregards the
sanctity of life, I would call it a basic human right, the
dignity of that person.
Pastor Fu. Yes.
Mr. Weber. What can we do to put pressure on them to
recognize that and change? What is the answer here?
Pastor Fu. I agree with the recommendations. I think the
President of the United States of America should speak and
stand firmly, publicly, unequivocally, and persistently that
the human rights issue is not Americans' concern, it is a
universal concern.
Mr. Weber. Well, I wouldn't hold my breath for that to
happen, but I think you are getting to the very crux of the
matter, and I am sorry we are getting a little short on time. I
would like to direct that same question----
Pastor Fu. As I suggested, I think we have some concrete
steps we recommend; for instance, with the U.S. Embassy, the
Ambassadors or consular general, they can make requests to meet
with those victims or these prisoners and to visit the prison,
even if they are not granted.
Mr. Weber. At least it brings it to bear, it brings the
sunlight that Brandeis talked about. Let's go to Mr. Chen, if I
may, with the same question.
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Mr. Chen. I think we shouldn't just ask whether or not it
is useful to express our concerns to the Chinese Government
because on one hand they do commit the human rights abuses, and
they will turn around and look at how the international
community reacts, and then if they see that the international
community does not react, they will think that, okay, they
don't really care about human rights, they are just saying it.
So we should definitely bring out this consistent message. I
should give an example. In terms of freedom of speech, the
number of American journalists in China is only a little bit
over 100. That means the ratio is 10 million Chinese citizens
to one American journalist. And the central propaganda
department of China has about 800 journalists in the United
States. That is about one journalist to 300,000 U.S. citizens.
We see that there is an inequality. They could advertise in the
big TV screens in Times Square, but can we do that in Tiananmen
Square? Certainly not. So if we do the right thing, we should
not be afraid that we will anger the dictators. If we invest in
breaking down the great firewall, we can certainly do it, and
then the Chinese citizens will have this free flow of
information, and the government can no longer deceive the
people.
Mr. Weber. Okay, and one last question, if I may, Mr.
Chairman, for Mr. Kumar from Amnesty International's viewpoint,
is our country the only one that is being called upon to pay
attention and to make its voice heard?
Mr. Kumar. I am not saying U.S. is the only country. U.S.
is the only superpower, so it has its own responsibilities.
Mr. Weber. Let me follow that up, then, by saying, does
Amnesty International, do they reach out across the globe to
other countries? Are there other organizations? Is there a fund
mechanism so that people that care and get involved and want to
make a difference and make their voice heard, is that going on?
Mr. Kumar. Oh, yeah. We are in existence from 1960 onwards,
and we have about 3.2 million members around the world, and in
about 85 countries we have activities like what I am doing
here.
Mr. Weber. Okay.
Mr. Kumar. We lobby, we urge different countries around the
world, a lot of Asian countries, we are talking about China,
Japan, Korea, Philippines, small countries like Nepal,
everywhere our members are campaigning for the rights of
individuals around the world, including in China. So we are a
global movement. We are supposed to be--I am here, so that is
why I am testifying about U.S. foreign policy. My colleagues in
Nepal will be testifying and calling upon Nepalese Government
to take on China about human rights abuses, but the reality is
U.S. is the only superpower, so we have to recognize that.
Mr. Weber. All right, and last question, what is your Web
site?
Mr. Kumar. www.amnestyUSA.org.
Mr. Weber. www.amnestyUSA.org?
Mr. Kumar. Thank you, sir. I appreciate your comments.
Mr. Weber. Thank you. You bet.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. Let me just ask a couple of
final questions. Again to Mr. Chen, if you could, with regards
to your nephew Chen Kegui, has the administration sought to
visit him? Has anybody within our Embassy sought to go and
visit him in prison?
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Mr. Chen. I am sure no. The answer is no.
Mr. Smith. With regards to other members of your family,
has the U.S. Embassy been in touch with your brother, your
mother who is now 80, I believe, just celebrated her birthday,
has there been contact with other members of the family
expressing concern, especially not just to them but to the
Chinese who would monitor such a meeting?
Mr. Chen. In fact, I don't think that any people from the
Embassy visited them. I never heard anything about that. In
fact, my family is still under persecution. They have several
groups of people, I don't know how many groups are there, but
each group consists of 16 people. They are constantly there,
constantly persecuting my family members.
Mr. Smith. Are you in touch with them? Can you speak to
them on the phone, your family?
Mr. Chen. Yes, I have talked to them on the phone, but for
sure the phone lines are monitored, and in fact after my
conversation with them some of them were taken to the local
police station and they were threatened, and then they were
asking my relatives what was the content of the conversation
that you guys had. In fact, they also spread rumors to the
local authorities, they said that Chen Guangcheng in America is
actually monitored more closely by the U.S. Government than
when he was in China.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chen, a minute ago Mr. Weber brought up a
very good point about how do we convince the Chinese, why would
they even listen to us. Would it be your thought that, this is
for any of the distinguished witnesses, that while moral
suasion and speaking out very clearly and unambiguously is
important, it is also important that there be linkages to other
things? I will give you an example. We are doing a letter right
now to Secretary Kerry asking that they properly find China to
be what we call a Tier III country, an egregious violator of
human trafficking. I wrote the law in 2000 called the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act. We set up tiers. Tier III
is the worst, and it carries with it a series of sanctions that
could be imposed if the executive branch so wills it in order
to try to mitigate this horrible practice of modern day slavery
called human trafficking.
As a direct result of the one-child-per-couple policy and
the missing girls, we know that there are tens of millions of
girls who have been slaughtered in the womb simply because they
happen to be female. When allowed only one, it has put an
unbelievable pressure on having just a male, and it has led to
a gendercide of little girls. But now we are seeing the
horrific consequences over time of men unable to find wives
simply because they have been systematically eliminated through
this one-child-per-couple policy and this gendercide
consequence. China now has become probably the largest magnet
for trafficking. We are seeing it not just the North Koreans,
who have been trafficked, and I have had several hearings on
that, but we are seeing this rising problem, and this letter
which will be sent to Secretary Kerry very shortly calls on
China being named a Tier III country.
In like manner, under Mr. Wolf's law, the International
Religious Freedom Act, China has been designated a country of
particular concern, or CPC country, and that carries with it 18
prescribed actions, the least of which would be a demarche, but
all kinds of other sanctions that can be imposed. They are not
draconian, but they are significant. And there has been no
sanctioning of China, even though as you pointed out, Pastor
Fu, there is an actual plan to eliminate the house church
movement over a 10-year period, I believe it is over a three-
phase plan. I wasn't as aware of it until you laid it out in
your testimony. They want to eliminate the house church
movement. When Mr. Wolf and I went to China right before the
Beijing Olympics, we sought to meet with several pastors. Every
one of them except one was arrested before they could meet with
us, and the one we did meet with was brought in after the fact,
interrogated, and beaten by the Chinese secret police simply
for meeting with two Members of Congress, and now you are
talking about the new plan to eradicate the Christian church
movement. It seems to me the administration has two right at
hand ways of showing their extreme displeasure for trafficking,
Tier III designation, which comes shortly, as well as CPC,
which they already have, but should now take the next step.
I would agree, with you, T. Kumar; you were in the trenches
when we were fighting the battle to link Most Favored Nation
status with human rights. Bill Clinton linked them and it was,
I think, a very good linkage with respect to what the human
rights benchmarks had to be. Sadly, 1 year later, on a Friday
at 6 o'clock o'clock or so in the afternoon, he ripped up his
own Executive Order, and that was when we lost China, I
believe, or lost much of it in terms of human rights. The
administration said profits trump human rights.
So we do have two things at hand, if you might want to
speak to that, any of you, because I think moral suasion is
important, but I think we need to have some real tools and
levers.
Mr. Chen. There is much we can do. For example, when U.S.
journalists apply for a visa at the Chinese Embassy, they may
tell the U.S. journalists that we don't need American
journalists there. We can actually do the same thing to Chinese
journalists applying for visa to the United States. If we give
them the impression that human rights is only a secondary
issue, the human rights issue in China will continue to worsen.
Mr. Smith. Could I ask, is it Mr. Chen's belief that the
Obama administration has made it a secondary issue? And Mr.
Kumar, if you would speak to that, and Pastor Fu.
Mr. Chen. This is how I feel, yes, in fact. But I think
that human rights should not be just part of a diplomacy issue.
It should be diplomacy in itself.
Mr. Smith. Pastor Fu.
Pastor Fu. When we talk about the delinkage between trade
and human rights, it reminds me about how the U.S., these
transnational or U.S. large corporations' social and moral
ethics and their social responsibilities. I think if the Apple
or the Google or especially these large corporations in China
if they operate in a way that just be compatible with the
international human rights standards, I think the human rights
in China would not come to this far, this worse in China.
Just back to the end of last year Mr. Chen and I, along
with another American investor from New York City, we sent a
letter to Mr. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, and requested a
meeting to just brief him and ask him about how the factories
in Apple enforce the one-child policy in their own factories to
the women and men working there, and today unfortunately we
have not heard a single response, and instead we heard and we
have seen after the CFO or COO of Apple went to China to
apologize to the Chinese consumers and at the same time or the
same day in Apple's application there is a classic literature
library. All the so-called sensitive books on the Chinese
Government blacklist were taken off from their shelves,
electronic shelves, and these are books written by Tibetan or
Uyghur writers, very prominent writings, and so it makes you
think what had happened behind the scenes, and I think that is
a shame.
Mr. Smith. Now just one question.
Mr. Kumar. Go ahead.
Mr. Smith. This would be to you again, Mr. Chen. In an
interview that you did just a couple days ago, you underscored
just how brutal the one-child-per-couple policy was, and you
pointed out something that you asked that the press take note
of, that while some may be under the impression that forced
abortions only happen to those who have had more than one
child, it is simply not true. If a family hasn't obtained a
birth permit, whether it is their second or first child, the
women are kidnapped and taken to a hospital where they are
forced to have their babies killed. You point out that some of
these are done in the eighth and ninth month of their
pregnancies and that you literally have to get permission, this
is your quote, from the government to have your own child, even
the one, and I think that is not largely recognized by a lot of
people. They tell you when and if you can have your one.
If you wanted to comment on that. These are your quotes, of
course, but, Mr. Chen, please do.
Mr. Chen. Even though official figure says there are only
500,000 people participating in forced abortions, but that is
probably around 2 million. Because in China they have this rule
that if the party secretary cannot do this well, the forced
abortion in terms of a one-child policy, he cannot continue in
his post. In order to meet the quota they not only abort the
second child or third child but also the first child in order
to meet the quota, in order to have a child needs to acquire a
permit from the government. If they don't give it to you, you
can bribe them with money.
Mr. Smith. Is there anything else any of our distinguished
witnesses would like to conclude with? Mr. Kumar?
Mr. Kumar. I am fine.
Pastor Fu. Just a final word on this issue. When China just
proudly announced their achievement of the last 40 years
population control and announced that 330 million abortions
prevented, children from being born. Everybody knows most of
them were forcefully aborted. This is almost the entire
population of today's United States of America who were wiped
out basically, and I think this is perhaps the single most
horrible human rights violation and atrocity on this Earth in
the history of human beings. I think we should certainly pay
more attention and continue to urge the Chinese Government to
stop this policy. In the past year we know there are several
high profile cases that called attention by some Chinese
citizens. Even some Chinese Government affiliated scholars
publicly advocate to abandon this one-child policy, and for the
long run, as the Mr. Chairman pointed out, with the gender
imbalance, the human trafficking, all this, even the
ramification for the economic problems is not going to be
sustainable even for the best interests for China itself.
Mr. Smith. I do want to thank all of our distinguished
witnesses. Chen Guangcheng, thank you for your extraordinary
bravery. I can assure you that Chen Kegui will be a primary
focus of this chairman, but I know we will be working side by
side with members on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and
Republican, on his behalf and on behalf of your family. To
speak out so bravely when you know your family has suffered so
much should inspire each and every one of us to do much more
than we have d1 months or years to date. So thank you for
inspiring us as well.
The hearing is adjourned. Did you want to say something?
Mr. Chen. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 5 o'clock p.m., the subcommittee was
adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing RecordNotice deg.
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statt\
Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H.
Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and
chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights,
and International Organizations
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Material submitted for the record by Mr. Chen Guangcheng, Chinese human
rights activist
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Material submitted for the record by Pastor Bob Fu, founder and
president, ChinaAid Association