Calling on the Government of China to End its Crackdown in Tibet

CALLING ON THE GOVERNMENT OF CHINA TO END ITS CRACKDOWN IN TIBET -- (House of Representatives - April 08, 2008)

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First of all, I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for introducing this very important resolution of which I am very proud to be one of the cosponsors, and especially for the trip, along with other Members of the House, that you led to India to be at the side of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, in this hour of terrible suffering for the Tibetan people.

Madam Speaker, tonight we are here to speak frankly about what the Chinese Government is doing in Tibet. Last week, Lodi Gyari, His Holiness' Special Envoy, told me and others on the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that Tibet has ``become, particularly in the last few weeks, in every sense an occupied nation, brutally occupied by armed forces.''

Madam Speaker, despite the fact that there is an extensive news blackout, the grim consequences have gotten out.

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Chinese soldiers and police have shot large numbers of people. The death toll is now well over 150. We don't have any idea how many have been wounded, how many are right now lying, wounded or dying, in attics and cellars, because they know that if they go to the hospital, they will simply disappear into the Chinese Laogai.

The Chinese Government has been subjecting Tibetans to mass arrests. They have searched whole sections of cities, house by house. Chinese officials admit to nearly 2,000 arrests. The China Commission estimates that there are at least 1,000 more. Frankly, I wonder if there might be thousands more, since there are large areas of Tibet from which nothing has been heard in weeks, where phone lines and cell towers and e-mail have been simply turned off.

Many thousands of monks are now being held under house arrest or in lockdown. Chinese riot police have surrounded some Buddhist monasteries and are letting no one get in and no one get out. Many have been tortured. I would remind my colleagues that we are seeing now, in a massive way, what has been ongoing and pervasive for decades.

I chaired a hearing in 1995, Madam Speaker. We heard from six survivors of the Laogai. One of those was Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan monk who spent 24 years in prison. When we invited him to come and speak, he brought with him some instruments of torture that are routinely employed and used in a horrific manner against men and women in the Chinese concentration camps. He told us that many people die of starvation. But when he brought those instruments, he couldn't even get past our Capitol Police. They stopped him. We had to come down and get him through.

Then, when he held up those batons that are used in the mouth and elsewhere in order to provide electric shocks, he actually broke down. He held it up and he said, ``This is what went into my mouth as a Buddhist monk and into the mouths of many other people to shock and to deface,'' and he has trouble swallowing to this day.

He talked about these self-tightening handcuffs, and held up his wrists and showed us the marks on his body, not just on his wrists, but elsewhere. He talked about piercing with bayonets. And this is routine. I would encourage Members to realize what goes on each and every day, but now in a more pronounced way, in a more massive way, against the people of Tibet, through the use of torture.

The Chinese Government, Madam Speaker, what they are doing right now is exactly what happened in some of the parts of the world ruled from the Communists. Who can forget the Soviet invasion of Hungary, which was still felt on the streets of Budapest in the 1980s, even though that happened

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back in 1956. Tibet is now a cruel place, not the people, but the Chinese imposition of their crackdown.

Madam Speaker, it should be noted and emphasized that the Tibetan people have not provoked the government into this newest wave of repression. It is the Chinese Government that has provoked the Tibetan people to protest, a protest that, perhaps because of the Buddhist emphasis on peace, has been overwhelmingly peaceful.

As we all know, Tibet has been subjected to Chinese Communist tyranny since 1951. Since 1959, the Chinese Government is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans--and that is a low estimate. The current number of Tibetans living in China is now about 5.4 million people.

I think Members should realize too that there has also been--and the Dalai Lama speaks about this when he speaks about his Five Points of Engagement--this population transfer, where the entire culture is being replaced by a Han Chinese culture. They are getting very good jobs. The incentive has been given them by the Chinese Government, in order to marginalize and decrease the Tibetan people, to make them more of a minority in their own land. What we are talking about here is nothing less than a planned destruction of a culture that has now gone to new lows with this recent crackdown.

In fact, the Chinese Government's attitude toward Tibet can be seen in these two insults by Zhang Qingli, the Secretary of the Chinese Party of the Tibet Autonomous Region, who offered to the people these words. He said, ``The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need.'' We are talking about a very abusive parent here. He also said, ``The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans.'' What a sacrilege! What a sacrilege! What a violation of fundamental human rights.

I will say only a couple words about the Olympics, Madam Speaker. The IOC made a great mistake in allowing China to host the Olympics. Who can forget when they were vying for the 2000 Olympics and they let Wei Jingsheng out. Speaker Pelosi knows him very well. I met him in Beijing when he was let out, very briefly. As soon as they didn't get the Olympics, they rearrested him and beat him and tortured him. They finally let him out because he was close to death. But then the IOC awarded the Olympic venue to Beijing several years later.

They shouldn't be held in a nation that cracks down on all kinds of political dissent and has a system of coercion where brothers and sisters are illegal as part of its one-child-per-couple policy, its forced abortion policy, and also a country that is responsible for killing so many Africans. The most recent is happening in Darfur. This really is, as my colleague Ms. Lee said earlier, the ``genocide Olympics.''

That repression and those killing fields are ongoing today in Darfur. As we all know, some 4 million people died in Southern Sudan even before that, and it was the Chinese who enabled those killing fields as well.

Finally, let me just say briefly to my colleagues that there are American companies who may be supporting this tyranny. I am afraid some of them are doing that, playing smaller or larger roles in the crushing of Tibet, working with the Chinese Internet Surveillance Bureau to block Web sites and blocking and tracking down Tibetans who send Internet reports of arrests and massacres.

The New York Times has reported that the Chinese Government is indeed, and not unexpectedly, blocking Web sites to prevent uncensored news from reaching the Chinese people, including the Web sites of CNN, BBC, YouTube, Google and Yahoo.

The Times has also reported that the Chinese Internet Surveillance Bureau has warned Tibetans about sharing factual news about the protests. They have said, and I quote them, this is the Chinese Bureau, ``We inform Internet users that it is forbidden to post news about Tibet events ..... The Internet Surveillance Bureau will carry out filtering and censorship ..... Anyone infringing this ban will have their IP addresses sent to the police, who will then take the necessary steps.'' That means, Madam Speaker, arrests; that means, Madam Speaker, torture of those who simply try to share the truth as to what is going on in Tibet.

Who can forget Shi Tao, the journalist who got 10 years simply for sending information to an NGO in New York about what the Chinese Bureau of Propaganda had told them they could not do with regard to the Tiananmen Square massacre? Now it is going on in Tibet, and the ugly cycle continues.

As I think Members know, the Global Online Freedom Act legislation, which is pending and hopefully will come to the floor, would finally give us a full and thorough accounting as to this complicity, whether it be witting or unwitting, on the part of these Internet companies, so that we are not part of this tyrannical regime that is now so brutally suppressing, murdering and torturing Tibetan people and putting so many monks into prison, rather than letting them be in their monasteries, where they want to practice their faith.

Madam Speaker, this is an excellent resolution you have brought to the floor. I congratulate you. This is bipartisanship, I believe, at its best. We are all in support of the Dalai Lama. You have led on this for so many years, and are doing so now as Speaker, and I hope we get very strong support for this, on behalf of the Tibetan people and on behalf of the Dalai Lama.

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