Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership and thank he and Mr. Smith, two gentlemen from New Jersey, for being champions for human rights.
I also thank Mr. McCaul and Mr. Eliot Engel, the ranking member and the chair of the committee.
And I thank Mr. Malinowski for being a champion for human rights even before he came to Congress.
My colleagues, next week marks 71 years since the nations of the world gathered in Paris to enshrine our global commitment to human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The opening words of that declaration read: ``Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.
``Whereas, disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.''
Today, the human dignity and human rights of the Uighur community are under threat from Beijing's barbarous actions, which are an outrage to the collective conscience of the world.
Across the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the Uighur people and other Muslim minorities face brutal repression: a pervasive state of mass surveillance, including the arbitrary and nonconsensual collection of children's DNA; the mass incarceration of 1 to 3 million innocent people with beatings, solitary confinement, deprivation of food and medical treatment, forced sterilizations, and other forms of torture; incidents of mass shootings and extrajudicial killings; and the intimidation and suppression of journalists courageously exposing the truth.
Mihrigul Tursun, a former detainee, testified she faced treatment so brutal that ``I thought I would rather die than go through this torture and begged them to kill me.''
Another former detainee, Tursunay Ziyawudun, testified, ``We were all helpless and unable to defend ourselves. We all went through all kinds of mistreatment. The screaming, pleading, crying is still in my head.''
Today, with this bicameral and overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation, the United States Congress is taking a critical step to counter Beijing's horrific human rights abuses against Uighurs.
I thank Chairman Engel, Representative Brad Sherman, Representative Suozzi, and Chairman McGovern for their leadership on this important legislation.
We are sending a message to Beijing: America is watching, and we will not stay silent.
This legislation helps uncover the truth, requiring reports by the DNI, Director of National Intelligence; the State Department; and the FBI about the depths of the crisis and about China's campaign against journalists exposing the facts.
It creates accountability, ensuring transparency of Chinese and foreign companies involved in the camps.
And it engages the full firepower of American law and leadership, including by urging the application of Global Magnitsky and other related sanctions and the full implementation of the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, named for our distinguished former colleague and human rights champion, Congressman Frank Wolf.
Sadly, Beijing's human rights abuses extend beyond the Uighurs, from the decades-long abuse faced by the Tibetan people; to Hong Kong's fight for democracy and rule of law; and to the jailing of journalists, human rights lawyers, Christians, and democracy advocates on the mainland.
In the Congress, Democrats and Republicans stand united with all people fighting for human rights in the face of China's abuses. Last month, we were proud to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which has now become law, and we are grateful that the President has signed that legislation.
If America does not speak out for human rights in China because of commercial issues, we lose all moral authority to speak out for human rights anyplace in the world.
In honor of the millions fighting for their dignity, safety, and rights in China and around the world, I urge a strong bipartisan vote for the Uighur Intervention and Global Humanitarian Unified Response Act.
I thank Mr. Smith, Mr. Sires, Mr. Sherman, Mr. Suozzi, Chairman Eliot Engel, and Mr. McCaul for their leadership. And I acknowledge the leadership of Senator Rubio in the United States Senate on this important legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I urge an ``aye'' vote.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey.
Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank the Speaker for her very eloquent remarks and for her tenacity in promoting human rights and respect for the rule of law in all of China, including and especially with today's focus on Xinjiang, where, unfortunately, Xi Jinping is conducting massive, massive crimes against humanity against the Muslim Uighurs. So I thank her for that leadership.
I thank Chairman Engel, Ranking Member McCaul, Brad Sherman, and Ranking Member Ted Yoho for their deep and abiding commitment to the suffering people of Xinjiang as well.
I would also like to express my special thanks to the 128 bipartisan cosponsors of my bill, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019, H.R. 649, comprehensive human rights legislation that I introduced earlier this year with lead Democratic cosponsor Tom Suozzi to address the massive crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese Government against the Uighurs.
The legislation would require the administration to categorize and report on the human rights abuses being committed by the Chinese Communist Party each and every day, take specific steps to sanction Chinese officials for these abuses, especially through the use of the Magnitsky Act, and stop, to the greatest extent possible, the Chinese Government's efforts to create a high-tech police and surveillance state.
With endorsement of our bill 12 months ago and cosponsorship by the Speaker herself, as well as endorsement by the Washington Post, which said, a full year ago, ``This has become''--that is to say, the situation in Xinjiang--``one of the world's most urgent human rights crises. Congress should pass the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act.'' Today the Senate bill is before us, and I encourage my colleagues and the cosponsors of H.R. 649 to vote for it.
Mr. Speaker, at a congressional hearing that I cochaired last year, Mihrigul Tursun recounted her horrifying ordeal with torture, sexual abuse, and detention in one of China's mass internment camps in Xinjiang.
She broke down weeping, telling us that she pleaded with God to end her life. Her Chinese jailers restrained her to a table, increased the electrical currents coursing through her body, and mocked her belief in God. She was tortured simply for being an ethnic Uighur and a Muslim in China.
There are millions of stories like this waiting to be told about the crimes against humanity being committed each and every day by the Chinese Government against the Uighurs, the Kazakhs, and the Turkic Muslims.
Given that this year is the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, maybe we should not be surprised by the cruelty and brutality of the Chinese Communist Party. But the size and scale of what is happening in Xinjiang is audaciously repressive, even by China's low standards:
The mass internment of millions of people on a scale that has not been seen since the Holocaust; children ripped from the warm embrace of their families to be indoctrinated in communist ideology and forced to renounce their religious culture and language; rape, sexual abuse, and forced abortions of women being held in internment camps; forced labor on a scale that allows Chinese companies to profit from modern-day slavery.
That atrocities such as these can exist in the 21st century is astounding and enormously sad.
We cannot be silent. We must demand an end to these barbaric practices and accountability from the Chinese Government. We must say ``never again'' to the cultural genocide and the atrocities suffered by the Uighurs and others in China.
Chinese authorities initially denied the existence of mass internment camps, Mr. Speaker, and even now portray them as vocational training centers. What a cruel joke. They employed lies, censorship, and economic coercion to stifle discussion of their crimes.
But documents obtained by The New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have exposed the brutality behind Beijing's plans to radically and coercively transform the culture and religion of ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslims in China.
The leaked internal papers show detailed plans to intern between 1 million and 3 million Uighurs in modern-day concentration camps, where they are subjected to severe human rights abuses and Orwellian indoctrination efforts for those ``whose thinking has been infected.''
At the same time, Beijing instituted plans to erase the influence of Islam in western China, bulldozing mosques and shrines, severely throttling all religious practice, and forcing camp detainees to renounce their faith.
The leaked documents also show that Xi Jinping himself has directed the crackdown, saying that the Communist Party must put ``the organs of dictatorship'' to work and show--his words--``absolutely no mercy'' in dealing with the Uighurs and other Muslims.
In one speech exposed by the leaked documents, President Xi Jinping says, ``The weapons of the people's democratic dictatorship must be wielded without any hesitation or wavering.''
In 2017, he told thousands of police officers and troops standing at attention to prepare for ``a smashing, obliterating offensive.''
According to the documents, Communist Party officials who were reluctant to carry out Xi's draconian policies were investigated and expunged--and worse:
``Secret teams of investigators traveled across the region, identifying those who were not doing enough. In 2017, the party opened more than 12,000 investigations into party members in Xinjiang.''
Xi Jinping has created, Mr. Speaker, one of the worst human rights tragedies on the face of the Earth. Xi Jinping and his government are directly responsible--directly responsible--for these crimes against humanity.
Our hope is that a reckoning is coming, but only if the international community stands up to China. I would note with some sadness, notably absent are voices from many Muslim countries, and I have raised it myself with many leaders of Muslim countries.
They have not been as critical of China as they ought to be. They need to speak out and to do it boldly and very clearly.
I do want to commend the Trump administration for its actions over the past several years. They have issued strong statements and, according to the U.S. Commerce Department just last month, 28 government agencies and businesses were placed on the Entity List and barred.
The way the Secretary of Commerce put it: `` `The U.S. Government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China,' said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. `This action will ensure that our technologies, fostered in an environment of individual liberty and free enterprise, are not used to repress defenseless minority populations.' ''
These are important steps. This legislation, however, takes the next step. More must be done. Chinese officials, as I said earlier, need to be held accountable for crimes against humanity, including Global Magnitsky and international sanctions and U.N. investigations.
Those who tortured Mihrigul Turson should know that justice is coming for them as well. And the Chinese Government companies profiting from forced labor need to be barred from selling their products made so horribly by forced labor from coming into this country.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source