Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2019

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. PELOSI. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for bringing this legislation to the floor.

I am pleased to follow the distinguished ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. McCaul. One of the joys of my service in Congress is to work in a bipartisan way on issues that relate to respecting human rights and religious freedom throughout the world.

I thank Mr. McCaul for his leadership and Chairman Eliot Engel for his leadership in facilitating this all through the committee. I thank Mr. Phillips for giving us access to the floor today.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2019, a strong, bipartisan and urgently needed legislation to strengthen America's commitment to the Tibetan people and their right to safeguard their distinct identity.

I salute Chairman Jim McGovern, the chair of the Congressional- Executive Commission on China and chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. I thank Mr. McGovern for being a leading voice in Congress and in the country for human rights.

I thank Congressman Chris Smith--the gentleman and I go back decades. He is the ranking member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and also the co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. I have worked with the gentleman for three decades to hold China accountable for its oppression, as well as for promoting human rights throughout the world. I thank Mr. Smith for his leadership.

I also want to acknowledge Senator Marco Rubio for his leadership in the United States Senate. As we discussed, he has been on some of the issues we have talked about, supporting the people of Hong Kong, the Uighurs, and now this important legislation. I thank Senator Marco Rubio for his leadership and courage in facilitating some of this legislation through the Senate.

For many of us, the fight to protect human rights in China has been a long-term commitment, as I acknowledged with Mr. Smith, as well as Frank Wolf, our former Member who worked with Chris Smith so closely.

In 1987 when I first came to Congress, I heard Tom Lantos--we mentioned the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission--he invited me to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama to be in a small meeting with him. I heard His Holiness first describe his ``Middle Way Approach'' for Tibet. It was an approach about autonomy, not about independence.

So, when the Chinese say that it is about independence, that is not what it ever has been about as far as His Holiness' presentation on Capitol Hill or to the world.

Among other priorities, the Dalai Lama proposed that Tibet be allowed to be a zone of peace; that the Tibetan people's human rights be respected; and Tibet's natural environment be safeguarded.

He said: ``The Tibetan people must once again be free to develop culturally, intellectually, economically and spiritually and to exercise basic democratic freedoms.''

I just wanted to acknowledge that because he talks about Tibet's natural environment.

His Holiness was the first Nobel Laureate, the first winner of the Nobel Peace Prize to have presented in the testimonial his protection for the environment. It has been there for a long time. For many of us, the fight, again, has been a long time.

Twenty years after that meeting, in 2007, and in 2008, as Speaker of the House, I had the privilege of visiting Dharamshala. Our delegation was blessed to be received by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and we had the opportunity to see the aspirations of the Tibetan people firsthand, especially in the eyes of the Tibetan schoolchildren we met.

It was a bipartisan delegation. We spoke to big crowds waving American flags. It was a beautiful thing. But it is important to note the children, the beautiful Tibetan children. In order for their children to be raised in the tradition of the Tibetan language, culture, and religion, parents had to send them from Tibet to India because, sadly, Tibetan aspirations of observing their culture are under threat because of brutal repression in Beijing. That was in 2008.

Then in 2015, along with Chairman McGovern, the gentleman and I led the first congressional delegation in decades to enter Tibet. In Jokhang Temple, Potala Palace, and Sera Monastery, we again witnessed the deep faith of the Tibetan people and the beauty of their culture.

We also saw the Potemkin Village-like posturing of the Chinese regime. For example, they said: We are going to invite you to a family's home so you can see how Tibetan families thrive in their own culture, language, and religion.

So we go to the home--and you probably have never seen this in anybody's home--but they had a gigantic picture of President Xi in the living room. And then they talked about their grandchildren and that the daughter had taken them to school, and that is why they weren't there.

So, when the daughter then came back from so-called taking them to school, we said: Well, how are the children?

And she said: Children? What children?

They had these fake visits to homes to show us how they were respecting Tibetan culture.

And then years later in 2017, I led another bipartisan delegation, this time to Nepal in India, where we were blessed to be received by His Holiness the Dalai Lama again. We saw once more the beautiful children again waving American flags, but no closer to an autonomous Tibet.

Today, we are here to pass the Tibetan Policy and Support Act. In 2002, Congress passed the Tibetan Policy Act to support the aspirations of the Tibetan people to safeguard their distinct identity, as His Holiness had suggested.

But in the years since, China has cruelly accelerated its outrageous aggression against the Tibetan people. As the CECC, the Congressional- Executive Commission on China concluded in its most recent report, Beijing is increasing Sinicization efforts and restricting the religious freedom of Tibetan Buddhists, including with mandatory political education for religious leaders, large-scale evictions from Buddhist monasteries, and by replacing images of the His Holiness the Dalai Lama with past and current party leaders.

The report also concludes that Beijing is expanding a massive surveillance regime to intimidate Tibetans and prevent them from practicing their culture or observing their religion. We could see the cameras every place we went, especially near the monasteries.

Pursuing massive infrastructure projects--I have seen that over the years. And we fought some of this in the World Bank then with Chris Cox and others here then on the Republican side of the aisle, working together--pursuing massive infrastructure projects that violate the social, economic, and cultural rights of Tibetans, forcing scores of families from their homes and even detaining monks for peaceful protest.

And tightening access to Tibet for international visitors. International journalists have stated that the isolation of Tibet is worse than North Korea, allowing the Chinese Government to conceal human rights abuses and environmentally damaging large-scale projects.

Today, the House is taking action to update and strengthen the Tibetan Policy Act to address these growing threats.

We are supporting the Tibetan people's right to religious freedom and genuine autonomy by formally establishing a U.S. policy that the Tibetan Buddhist community has exclusive right to choose its religious leaders, including a future 15th Dalai Lama.

Imagine that the Chinese Government should think that they should be choosing the next Dalai Lama of the Tibetan Buddhists.

We are sending Beijing a clear signal that they will be held accountable for interfering in Tibet's religious and cultural affairs, making it clear that Chinese officials who meddle in the process of recognizing the new Dalai Lama will be subject to targeted sanctions, including those in the Global Magnitsky Act.

We are protecting Tibet's environmental and cultural rights, working with international governments and the business community to ensure the self-sufficiency of the Tibetan people and protect the environment and water resources of the Tibetan Plateau. This is really very important to the sustainability of our planet.

This legislation also deploys America's diplomatic weight to encourage a genuine dialogue between Tibetan leaders and Beijing. It is unacceptable that the Chinese Government still refuses to enter into a dialogue with Tibetan leaders.

Congress will--and must--continue to take action to hold China accountable for its many abuses which sadly target so many, including the Uighur community--which Mr. McCaul and Mr. Rubio in a bipartisan way had acted upon--which faces horrific human rights abuses, including forced sterilizations and the mass incarceration of millions. This is happening as we speak. Millions of people are subjected to this in China.

And, as we know, the current party chairman of the Uighur Autonomous Region, Secretary Chen, previously served as the top party official of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. So oppressive was he, they rewarded him by sending him to the Uighur Autonomous Region. That is so sad.

We also see human rights abuses, as we know, in Hong Kong, where millions are fighting for the democratic freedoms they were promised and, on the mainland, where journalists, human rights lawyers, Christians, and democracy advocates languish in jail cells.

Today, in the face of rising oppression in China, Congress has an urgent responsibility to act. Sikyong Dr. Lobsang Sangay, the President of the Central Tibetan Administration, has said that, ``The very survival of Tibetan culture and identity is in peril.''

Madam Speaker, if we don't speak out for human rights in China because of commercial interests, then we lose all moral authority to speak out for human rights anyplace in the world.

As I have said on this floor to those who take the repressive Chinese Government's side, we ask: What does it profit a man to have gained the whole world and suffers the loss of his soul?

Madam Speaker, I urge a strong vote for this legislation and support the Tibetan people as they seek to defend their culture and their identity and to pursue a future of freedom of religion and dignity.

I thank, again, the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee for giving us the opportunity to talk about Tibet on the floor of the House today.

Repression in Tibet by the Chinese Government is a challenge to the conscience of the world. Let's take this step to address that challenge.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source