Promoting A Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina, the gentlewoman from California, and the gentleman from New Jersey, who just spoke, not just for their support for this bill but for their leadership on human rights in general.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 533, the Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act.

I thank my co-lead, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman McCaul, and Ranking Member Meeks for their work to bring this bill to the floor today. This is important.

It has been more than 60 years since the People's Republic of China forced His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama into exile and took control of Tibet against the will of its people.

The dispute between the Chinese and the Tibetans over Tibet's status and governance has persisted ever since, in spite of the willingness of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people to resolve Tibet's status and governance through dialogue.

With dialogue blocked, the PRC has continued its unceasing efforts to erode Tibetan history, Tibetan language, Tibetan culture, and Tibetan religion.

A few years ago, I was on a delegation with Speaker Pelosi. We went to Tibet and saw firsthand the PRC's repression against the people of Tibet, essentially trying to erase the Tibetans as a people.

This bill that we are discussing here today seeks to end that by explicitly recognizing that the Tibetan people are a people with a distinct religious, cultural, and historical identity; by reminding all concerned that peoples, and not least the Tibetan people, have a right to self-determination under international human rights law; and by requiring the U.S. Government to actively counter the PRC's propaganda about Tibet, like the false claim that Tibet has been part of China since ancient times, a position that the United States has never accepted. There is no basis for such a claim.

Through these measures, we hope to kick-start dialogue between Tibet and China, in keeping with longstanding U.S. policy.

Madam Speaker, any one of us reading the news these days knows that the world is awash in conflict. At the heart of most, if not all of those conflicts, lies the systematic denial or violation of a people's human rights.

The decades-old dispute between Tibet and China started as an armed conflict of invasion, resistance, and insurgency. In the long run, the only guarantee against the resumption of large-scale violence is for the PRC to fully respect the human rights and dignity of the Tibetan people.

A vote for this bill is a vote to recognize the rights of the Tibetan people and a vote to insist on resolving the dispute between Tibet and the People's Republic of China peacefully, in accordance with international law, through dialogue, and without preconditions.

There is still an opportunity to do this, but time is running out. Again, I urge my colleagues to support this bill because it is about standing up for human rights. It is about standing up for the Tibetan people, a people who have been repressed for far too long.

Madam Speaker, I thank all my colleagues for their support.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source