Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, what is happening at this moment in Hong Kong is a tragedy, a crime, an affront to the civilized world. In a year in which so much has happened, we may look back in the near future and view this moment in Hong Kong as the single biggest moment of the year. It is not getting enough attention, though, because the Communist Party is using the pandemic as cover for its crimes against Hong Kong.

Under the cover of night, the Communist Party's puppets in Hong Kong have enacted a security law that threatens to sweep aside the traditions and freedoms that have made that city such a special place. While the Chinese Communist Party hasn't yet rolled in tanks, as it did in Tiananmen Square, the effects of this law are no less chilling to democracy.

The security law imposes broad prohibitions on what it calls subversive activities. What kinds of activities? Activities like waving flags or chanting a slogan like ``Hong Kong independence'' or ``Hongkongers, build a nation.'' In other words, the security law criminalizes basic elements of peaceful protests and democratic change that Hongkongers have used for years and that set them apart from their fellow citizens on the mainland.

The new law also erodes the rights of the accused that are essential to a fair legal system. The Chinese Communist Party isn't interested in rights or fairness. It is interested in control--total control--and this law exerts total control over the people of Hong Kong.

Under the new law, protesters accused of such vague crimes as separatism and collusion can be smuggled away to mainland China to be tried in Communist courts. The so-called crimes don't even have to be committed in Hong Kong in order to be punished; the new law could encompass expatriates with foreign citizenship living overseas--even here in America. So simply meeting with a U.S. Senator, like me or Senator McConnell or Senator Schumer or Senator Van Hollen, could land a Hongkonger in prison for a lifetime. The China Communist Party thus is extending its iron rule beyond its own shores to our free soil.

Those convicted under the new law could face life imprisonment, alongside the many underground church leaders, Uighurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong members, and other persecuted individuals the Chinese Communist Party has already ``disappeared.''

Indeed, the crackdown is already underway. The Chinese Communist Party's agents in Hong Kong rounded up as many as 300 protesters this week for what it called unlawful assembly. Some of the protesters were arrested under the supposed authority of the new security law. Their fate at this moment is unknown.

The takeover of Hong Kong may seem like an event far away, especially when we have so many problems at home. But the same could have been said after the Second World War when Stalin and the Soviet secret police dropped an Iron Curtain over Eastern Europe. Czechoslovakia and Poland were far away, too, but the brutal repression of their people showed the world what was at stake in the titanic struggle between freedom and communism.

We face the same sort of titanic struggle today, and it is not limited to Hong Kong. All across the periphery, the Chinese Communist Party is acting aggressively. It has essentially invaded India and killed 20 Indian soldiers. In the South China Sea, it has attacked or otherwise threatened vessels from Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines and has repeatedly and increasingly encroached on Taiwanese and Japanese airspace.

But in Hong Kong, the security law proves most clearly that the Chinese Communist Party will not abide by its commitments, whether to its own people or to foreign nations. Through actions this week, Beijing has effectively torn up the joint declaration it made with Britain to govern the peaceful handover of Hong Kong just as cynically as China has broken its commitments to the United States, to the World Trade Organization, to the World Health Organization, and others.

And, of course, this law exposes once again the hideous nature of communism, which is so paranoid and insecure it can't tolerate even a tiny outpost of freedom within its borders. No wonder. Freedom is an attractive, precious, and contagious thing. The way of life enjoyed by the citizens of Hong Kong could give the wrong ideas to the 1 billion Chinese yearning for freedom elsewhere in the country. Nothing could be more threatening to the Chinese Communist Party's rule.

Now the party has begun the takeover that Hongkongers have long feared. Those of us with freedom to speak and act on their behalf must do so now, as one of the great citadels of Asia slips into the totalitarian darkness.

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