Hearing of the House Committee on International Relations: International Relations Budget for Fiscal Year 2006
HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
SUBJECT: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006
CHAIR: REPRESENTATIVE HENRY HYDE (R-IL)
WITNESS: SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE
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Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. First of all, Madam Secretary, welcome. It is great to see you here. We deeply appreciate your great work in the past, and what we know will be fine work in the future.
I would like to note at the outset that Brian Gunderson, your chief of staff, is well known on both sides of the aisle, having been the chief of staff for the former Majority Leader. Brian is an unsung hero on two historic laws: The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which I was the prime sponsor of, and which was referred to 11 Subcommittees and 4 Full Committees, usually the kiss of death. He helped honcho that bill through all of those Committees, and he did the same thing with Frank Wolf's International Religious Freedom Act. They would not be law today if he did not do that work. I want to publicly thank him for that extraordinary work. He is quiet, but he gets the job done.
I also want to note that Harry Wu is in the audience today. Harry Wu, as you know, spent 19 years in the Chinese Laogai, was tortured and suffered unspeakable cruelties at the hands of the Chinese dictatorship. He wrote a book called Better Ten Graves Than One Extra Birth, which is a family-planning slogan used in China. I recommend this book to anybody who wants to know what is really going on in China, where the human rights abuses against women, the cruelty of the one-child-per-couple policy, and forced abortions and draconian fines is unconscionable. Brothers and sisters are illegal in China. My wife and I have four children. In China, only Melissa would have been here today.
Five hundred women commit suicide each and every day in China attributable in whole or in part to this horrible intrusion into their lives as part of this one-child-per-couple policy. Any thoughts you have on that?
We had a hearing in December, courtesy of our Chairman, and Mr. Lantos and I and others participated, with Mrs. Mao Hengfeng. Mrs. Mao is in the gulag right now, serving an 18-month sentence, has been tortured and is an Amnesty International political prisoner of conscience because of her opposition to this cruel policy. And she is not the only one.
I would also like to ask you very briefly about the tsunami relief. I chair the Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations Subcommittee, and while we are all very, very grateful for the good work the Administration has done on tsunami relief, many of us are concerned about the diversion of funds for food aid from Africa and elsewhere, where there are some 16 million people at risk of starvation.
We have been told the money will be put back into the accounts, but many of the NGOs believe, rather than $150 million, the number needed is $650 million to truly replenish those food storages or the caches of food that will be needed to feed those hungry people.
Finally in Belarus, the Belarus Democracy Act was signed by the President. I was a sponsor of it. Lukashenko is the last remaining dictator in that part of the world, although we are all worried about Putin and where he is taking Russia. There is $7 million in the budget for Belarus. Many of us thought at least $20 million would be needed to support the NGOs and all of the good work being done there.
Secretary RICE. Thank you. First of all on China, we have been outspoken with the Chinese about this terrible practice. Of course, as Secretary of State, I will enforce the Kemp-Kasten to make certain we are not funding anything that remotely is related to these policies. And we are very concerned that the Chinese on the human rights side have not been as responsive in recent years. Last year we tried to introduce to the U.N. Human Rights Commission a resolution on China. It did not succeed.
We have said to the Chinese this year we will do it again if we are unable to get some progress on human rights issues. I might just add that I know the interest of the Congressman on religious freedom issues as well, and this is an area that we take up frequently. You can be certain that we will continue to do so, and do so forcefully.
On the tsunami, the supplemental does replace the USAID funding that was used on an emergency basis to allow us to respond quickly to the tsunami, but it is funding that we do need to replace and intend to replace fully, based on the supplemental.
Yes, Belarus is a sore thumb in the middle of Europe. Given all that has happened around itand we are trying to be supportive of civil society, supportive of nongovernmental operationsit is not easy for those people to operate in conditions in Belarus. The only thing I will say is that I was even myself taken aback at the strength of civil society in Ukraine underneath, and I think it was testament to a lot of hard work by nongovernmental organizations, not just ours but the Europeans and others, and really to the triumph of the human spirit, which, despite the difficulty of those years in the Ukraine, remained alive. I think it has to be our hope and effort to see if the same is true in Belarus.
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