Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. President, I would now like to turn to a second matter. This is a matter I have raised a number of times on the Senate floor and intend to continue raising. It is the matter of the human rights abuses in the People's Republic of China. I would like to talk about some specific examples, starting with the one-child policy. I want to talk to you about Feng Jianmei.
PRC officials forced Feng Jianmei, who was 7 months pregnant with her second daughter, to undergo an abortion. While her husband Deng Jiyuan was at work, five family planning officials abducted Ms. Feng on June 2, 2012. When she could not pay the fine of 40,000 RMB, they restrained her and forcibly aborted her daughter.
As her husband recounted, ``At the hospital, they held her down. They covered her head with a pillowcase. She could not do anything because they were restraining her.'' The so-called ``medics'' forced her to ``sign'' an abortion consent form by inking her thumb and pressing it against the paper. Then they proceeded to inject toxins into the brain of her unborn daughter.
After the injection, Jianmei suffered excruciating contractions until 3 a.m. on June 4. Then, having received no anesthesia, she gave birth to her deceased child. Jianmei said:
I could feel the baby jumping around inside me all the time, but then she went still. It was much more painful than my first childbirth. The baby was lifeless. She was all purple and blue.
In an act of heartlessness that is difficult to comprehend, the so-called doctors who performed this abortion left the lifeless body of Feng's 7-month-old baby on her bed beside her, leaving a bereaved mother with nothing but the sight of what could have been. Feng Jianmei's father-in-law rushed to the hospital, but family planning officials prevented him from seeing Jianmei until after the abortion.
After seeing her mother for the first time after her forced abortion, Feng's elder daughter innocently inquired, ``What happened to your tummy? Where did the baby go?''
Reggie Littlejohn, a world-renowned human rights activist who broke this story in the United States, stated in the wake of this tragic story: ``This is an outrage. No legitimate government would commit or tolerate such an act.''
China is among the leading nations in suicide rates. It is the only nation where more women commit suicide than men. A large contributing factor to this morose distinction is the totalitarian one-child policy.
Another example is the crackdown on lawyers. When the United States engages with China in any sort of bilateral negotiation or agreement, we have to understand that the rule of law is not a reality in the PRC. Despite laws duly passed by the National People's Congress, and a supposed Constitution, the reality since 1949 remains unchanged: China has a ``rule of the party''--the Communist Party--and it is ready to punish anyone who challenges its violation of the law within the legal system.
The latest example is human rights lawyer Pu Zhiquiang. In early May 2014, Pu attended a small, private seminar where the participants discussed the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the party's violent suppression of students. Pu was a student leader during the infamous 1989 protests, so marking the auspicious occasion was no doubt of personal importance to him.
The following month Pu was arrested and charged with ``illegally obtaining personal information of citizens'' and ``picking quarrels and provoking trouble.'' As the year progressed, PRC authorities added additional charges ``inciting splittism'' and ``inciting ethnic hatred.'' In May 2015, a Beijing court officially indicted Pu on two of these charges, and he remains in custody today.
While legal officials cited Pu's criticisms of the PRC's treatment of the Uighur ethnic minorities, his real offenses were taking cases and representing victims of forced eviction and shining a light on China's labor camps. His defendants included a who's who of China's prominent political dissidents, including Liu Xiaobo--a brave, selfless action that undoubtedly painted a target on Pu's back.
Prior to his arrest, the PRC praised Pu as a paragon of social justice. The state-run China Newsweek magazine named Mr. Pu the most influential person in promoting the rule of law in 2013. This is a microcosm of life in authoritarian China: Compliance with the party and compliance with the law are often at odds, and the party always wins.
In the past year, Beijing has detained and jailed hundreds of activists standing for the rule of law, ideals the party ostensibly espouses. Words are one thing; public embarrassment of public officials is quite another. Xi Jinping and his cohorts cannot abide the erosion of their credibility or anything that would threaten their legitimacy.
A third example is Pastor Zhang Shaojie. Under President Xi, the atheist Communist Party of China has targeted Christianity for special oppression. Using a campaign in Zhejiang--a province which President Xi ran earlier in his career--to forcibly remove crosses from churches, in some cases, the PRC has gone on to bulldoze entire churches and to arrest pastors and congregants for standing boldly for their faith.
Persecution of Christianity is not confined to Zhejiang. One such victim of this crackdown is Pastor Zhang Shaojie. On July 24, 2014, the Nanle County People's Court, ignoring domestic and international due process provisions, sentenced Pastor Zhang Shaojie to 12 years in prison on a count of ``fraud'' and ``gathering a crowd to disrupt public order.''
Again, arrest charges in China do not reflect reality. Prior to his arrest, Pastor Zhang was defending the rights of his church in regard to the land they had purchased. Pastor Zhang and his parishioners traveled to Beijing three times in November 2013 seeking resolution of the land dispute. Maybe this is what the People's Court meant by ``fraud.'' According to his congregants, the minister also had a ministry of helping victims of legal injustice seek restitution. Perhaps this is what the Communist Party referred to in its charge of ``disrupting public order.''
The following month, the Puyang Municipality Intermediate People's Court rejected Zhang's appeal.
In October, the Nanle County Court threatened to auction off Zhang's house to pay for a court-ordered fine, ordering Zhang's family to leave the house by October 26. In response, Zhang's mother physically stood between the Chinese officials and her home, holding gasoline in one hand and a lighter in the other.
It is a sad reflection of China's supposed progress on human rights when a citizen feels her only recourse against a dictatorial regime is the threat of self-immolation.
His sister, having been detained, along with several of Pastor Zhang's parishioners, suffered in one of China's most infamous black prisons for 1 1/2
years. Her words, penned in this letter, require no substitute:
I am Zhang Cuijian, one of the Nanle County Christian Church members detained in 2013. When my brother was kidnapped, I went with other church members to the public security bureau for information about his detention. Unexpectedly, I became the target of arrest, as well as more than a dozen other church members. We became prisoners who were unprepared and innocent. The prison was hell on earth; no other words can describe it.
In prison, I was very grateful. I truly felt that God was with me, even though I suffered punishment in prison. I had a thankful heart; I had joy from God. I deeply know my true and living God. While my body suffered, my heart was free. God let me learn different life lessons. I know that the more persecution I endure, the greater the blessing.
In America, we should stand with victims of oppression. In America, we should stand with Christians being persecuted by the brutal Communist totalitarian dictatorship. In America, we should stand for women's rights. Women being forced to have abortions are horrific acts of brutality. They are inhumane. They are contrary not only to American values but to human rights across the globe, and they are carried out as a matter of policy in the People's Republic of China.
When it comes to Chinese oppression, when it comes to Communist oppression, this is not an abstract or academic matter for me. My family has been tortured at the hands of Communists in Cuba. My father was imprisoned and tortured by Batista in Cuba, and my aunt was imprisoned and tortured by Castro's Communist goons in Cuba.
Communist oppression is real, and we have a powerful example of what America could do. When the Soviet Union was in power, this body renamed the street in front of the Soviet Embassy ``Sakharov Plaza.'' Renaming that was done by President Reagan.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley introduced the resolution in this body. Every day the Soviet officials had to write on the address of their Embassy: ``Sakharov Plaza,'' honoring the imprisoned dissident. This resolution is to use the same power of moral clarity, the same power of shaming, and the same power of speaking the truth to shine a light on the oppression in China.
When Senator Grassley took the lead with Sakharov Plaza, that helped shame the Soviet Union into changing their conduct. We should use the same moral authority with respect to the People's Republic of China.
My resolution is cosponsored by Senator Rubio, Senator Toomey, and Senator Sasse. It was on a path to being unanimously approved in this body. Every Republican had signed off on it and initially every Democrat had as well. Yet moments before it was about to pass the Senate, unfortunately the senior Senator from California decided to come to the floor and object.
After objecting, after blocking its passage, Senator Feinstein put out a press release, a press release with which I agree emphatically. Senator Feinstein observed, powerfully, that ``we urgently request the Chinese government to allow Liu Xia to seek medical treatment abroad and release Liu Xiabo, the world's only jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate.''
Senator Feinstein was exactly right. If anything should bring us together in bipartisan agreement, it should be against the Communist Party's wrongful imprisonment and oppression of a Nobel Peace laureate. Yet sadly, each time I have attempted to follow the successful pattern of Sakharov Plaza, to rename the street in front of the Chinese Embassy ``Liu Xiabo Plaza,'' the senior Senator from California stood and objected.
For the life of me I cannot understand why any Member of this body would choose to stand with Communist Party oppressors against dissidents, against human rights, against women's rights, against the rights of those standing to speak for freedom.
Yes, we have to negotiate with the Chinese. Yes, we have to talk to them. Just like in the Cold War, we negotiated at Reykjavik with Gorbachev, but we did it from moral authority and truth.
If we are afraid of even embarrassing the Communist Party, if their conduct doesn't embarrass them, we shouldn't shy away from speaking the truth.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 224. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.
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