Science, State, Justice, Commerce, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006

SCIENCE, STATE, JUSTICE, COMMERCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 16, 2005)

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AMENDMENT OFFERED BY MR. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I thank my good friend for yielding me time, and I rise in strong support of this amendment. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman WOLF) for accepting it in advance because it is a very important amendment.

Let me make two very brief points. The Convention against Torture could not be more clear in proscribing any kind of torture. It is never acceptable. The United States is a signatory and has ratified that convention, and that includes, as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) pointed out, the outsourcing of torture, and I think his amendment is very, very important. It comes at a very important time.

Let me also make the point, too, that next Thursday I will be holding a hearing on the victims of torture. I have written three laws on torture, The Torture Victims Relief Act, as it is called, and two reauthorizations over the last several years, and during the course of hearings that we have held, and we have one set for next Thursday in my subcommittee, we heard from people who actually suffered, the psychological scars that they bear, the post-traumatic stress, the sleepless nights that they endure because they have had to endure severe torture.

We want absolutely no part of torture in any manifestation. This amendment makes it very clear. This is already law. This makes it very clear that there is an absolute bright line of demarcation between interrogation methods that are real, that are listed, that are ethical and those that cross that line.

So I want to thank the gentleman for offering his amendment.

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AMENDMENT NO. 6 OFFERED BY MRS. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for yielding me time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment. For 25 years, the United Nations Population Fund has been an aggressive and shameful accessory to gross crimes against women and babies in the People's Republic of China. Despite being admonished to do otherwise on countless occasions, the U.N. Population Fund continues to be the chief apologist and enabler for both past and ongoing crimes against humanity.

Now the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) is offering an amendment that would suspend all U.S. laws, including all of our human rights laws, in order to compel U.S. taxpayer funding for the U.N. Population Fund. The Maloney amendment is written in such a way to immunize UNFPA from having to obey any U.S. law or funding restrictions, including the Kemp-Kasten anti-coercion amendments. I strongly urge its defeat.

Mr. Chairman, let us not forget that the UNFPA has whitewashed, sanitized, and facilitated-it has been an accomplice-in China's barbaric one-child-per-couple coercive population program that has victimized hundreds of millions of women and murdered hundreds of millions of children.

As a direct result, there is this exceedingly dangerous statistical demographic anomaly known as the "missing girls." There may be as many as 100 million missing girls in China today, a tragedy beyond words. As a result, there are also on any given day, according to the Country Reports For Human Rights Practices, the human rights report by the State Department, 500 women in China who commit suicide every day. Five hundred. This coercion has a terrible, deleterious effect on Chinese women.

As violations of human rights go, coercive population control in China is among the worst and most degrading systematic abuse in human history.

Let us not forget or be naive, I say to my colleagues, about the fact that in China today, brothers and sisters are illegal and children can only be born if permission is granted by the state.

We all know that in the United States, families get State and Federal tax credits and deductions for their children so they can better cope with economic pressures.

In China, on the other hand, there is no welcome mat for children, and Chinese parents have huge fines imposed upon them if they try to bring their children into the world. Unwed mothers are also severely punished in China, and are compelled to abort, even if it is their only one child, the one that they are supposedly permitted to have. China's eugenics policy, which compels the murder of disabled babies, is clearly reminiscent of the Nazis.

Those who violate these cruel, inhumane, antichild policies are fined up to 10 times the annual salary of both husband and wife, a draconian penalty that usually ensures that the child, at the end of the day, is aborted.

This is China's national policy, Mr. Chairman. In all counties, including UNFPA-supported counties, severe fines are imposed on women who have babies out of plan. Some women do resist. Some women have their children on the run, as they say. Some resist or pay bribes or endure the harsh penalty, the so-called "social compensation fee." Others are forcibly aborted, trussed, and brought into the so-called family planning clinics to have their babies aborted, and some are even tortured, and some are jailed.

Last December I chaired yet another hearing on forced abortion in China. I have had about 18 or more hearings over the last several years, and we heard from a woman by the name of Mrs. Mao Hen Feng, a Chinese woman who had been imprisoned and tortured because of her resistance to coercive population control.

I would point out to my colleagues, I met with Peng Peiyun, the woman who runs this program, and, during the course of that several-hour conversation, she kept coming back to the fact that, oh, the UNFPA is here. They do not see any coercion. The UNFPA clearly enables the PRC to practice this draconian program, and then they resort to the whitewash and say, but the UNFPA is here, and, again, they do not find any of this.

Amazingly, Mr. Chairman, the UNFPA calls China's massive violence against women like Mrs. Mao voluntary family planning, as if cheap sophistry makes it all okay. Just call it voluntary family planning, and it is all okay. It makes the definition of "voluntary" a joke.

To make matters worse, Mr. Chairman, UNFPA spokesmen gleefully encourage other countries to follow China's disgraceful lead.

I hope the majority of our colleagues will have no part in enabling either China or its best friend, the UNFPA, in these horrible abuses. Instead of funding the UNFPA, both they and China should be on trial at the International Criminal Court for crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Talk to these women who have suffered. Look at the terrible loss of life, millions upon millions of babies killed, often right at the ninth month as women try to conceal their pregnancy, and the UNFPA is there on the ground enabling this terrible abuse. They provide cover, respectability, tangible support, and technical capabilities that predictably results in massive acts of cruelty and murder in China.

Defeat the Maloney amendment.

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