Recognizing Significance of Genuine Autonomy of Tibet and Tibetan People

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to join my friend, the gentleman from Florida, in support of this important resolution.

We know as a fact, confirmed by Reuters, the New York Post, and many other news outlets, that the Chinese Communist Party has recently forced 500,000 Tibetans into labor camps--500,000.

Through these camps the CCP wishes to sinicize the Tibetan people and destroy their religious and cultural heritage and national identity.

If you asked the General Secretary Xi Jinping why his country continues to undermine the national identity of the Tibetan people, he would tell you that his party's initiative is simply part of a poverty alleviation program wherein the CCP hopes to move surplus rural labor to other parts of the country. It is absurd, and it is outrageous. The fact that a foreign leader could believe that this kind of public policy is morally acceptable is beyond me, and it is beyond the civilized world. We have heard similar explanations before.

We know what these so-called poverty alleviation programs are really about: Xi Jinping desperately wants to crush the spirits of those who are living under his dictatorial regime. He wants to indoctrinate people in those camps and ruthlessly marginalize their identities.

Mr. Speaker, you don't need camps for people who are seeking to do better in their life; you just give them the opportunity, and they will do it. They don't need to go to camp to do that.

He will fail in his effort. Make no mistake about it. He will fail spectacularly in his effort to quash the hopes of millions of Tibetans who dare to dream and fight for a free nation. One of the reasons he will fail is because the United States is with the people of Tibet.

Our Tibetan friends have long since recognized the significance of the genuine autonomy of Tibet, and today I am proud to join them.

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