Torture Victims Relief Reauthorization Act Of 2007

Floor Speech

TORTURE VICTIMS RELIEF REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - April 25, 2007)

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Lantos for his very strong support for the Torture Victims Relief Reauthorization Act of 2007. His long-standing concern about torture victims is legendary, and I want to thank him for that. And I want to thank Mr. Ackerman for his leadership as well, and for presenting the bill before the House today.

Madam Speaker, an estimated 400,000 foreign torture survivors reside in the United States today. Worldwide it is virtually impossible to count the numbers, although we know it is very high. As witnesses have repeatedly testified before Congress, the paralyzing scars from the physical and psychological wounds of torture can and do remain for years. Torture impacts not only on individual victims, especially as it relates to post-traumatic stress disorder, but their families and society as well.

I would note parenthetically, Madam Speaker, that we don't have to look very far to know there are torture victims in our own Congress. SAM JOHNSON, a very brave and dedicated soldier of the Vietnam war, suffered terrible hardship and torture when he was incarcerated in Hanoi. Because of his faith and courage, SAM overcame unspeakable torture and abuse and is today an inspiration to us all. The same goes for Senator JOHN MCCAIN, who also suffered horrible torture, survived and overcame. But they are really the exception. They are not the norm. So many people who do suffer never recover--unless they get significant help. They suffer irreparable psychological damage and live a life of real misery, pain and flashback, unless they get help.

My own involvement in torture victims relief began in 1981 when I read a book titled ``Tortured for Christ,'' written by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania. That book detailed despicable tortures that were routinely imposed upon Pastor Wurmbrand and other religious prisoners in Romania by the securatate. Pastor Wurmbrand appealed to all to help the persecuted.

I also read Solzhenitsyn's book, ``The Gulag Archipelago,'' and another book called ``Against All Hope'' by Armando Valladares in which he chronicled what Castro does routinely to people in his gulags--it is sickening and pathetic.

I would encourage Members and the listening public to pick up one of those books or others like them and read what really happens in dictatorships--and Castro's abuses continue to this day--where torture is used as a weapon against dissidents. Sadly, torture is used with impunity in China and North Korea.

Armando Valladares tells us in his book in one particular chapter how the political prisoners were marched into a huge vat of human excrement, and submerged. Many of the men got permanent disabilities and infection from it. The beatings were unceasing.

Torture is horrible. It is degrading and inhumane. It also constitutes grave violations of U.N. treaties and U.S. law and must be stopped wherever it rears its ugly head.

In the 1990s, FRANK WOLF and I visited the infamous Perm Camp 35 in the Ural Mountains--1,000 miles outside of Moscow--the place where Natan Sharansky spent years of his life, and met with many torture victims while they were still incarcerated and saw the mix of anger and hopelessness in their eyes and in their faces.

In 1998, Madam Speaker, Congress took a historic step towards repairing the broken lives of torture victims with the passage of the Torture Victims Relief Act of 1998. I sponsored that legislation and three reauthorizations that followed. As important as these congressional measures have been, there continues to be an enormous unmet need for us to try to reach out and robustly address, and that is what this legislation at least attempts to do. I strongly urge my colleagues to support this. This helps us to help those who have been hurt.

The domestic provision of H.R. 1678 is designed to ensure that particular attention is given to torture victims in regions with significant immigrant and refugee populations. The measure authorizes $25 million for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 to the Department of Health and Human Services to assist domestic treatment centers. This maintains the current $25 million authorization level for those centers.

Currently, 20 torture treatment centers in 15 States are assisted by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement. These programs include treatment for the physical and psychological effects of torture as well as social and legal services for torture victims. In addition to direct assistance, many of these centers also provide training in the specialized treatment of torture victims to mainstream providers in the health care, education and social service fields.

H.R. 1678 also authorizes $12 million for both fiscal year 2008 and 2009 for foreign treatment centers and programs administered by the USAID Victims of Torture Fund. In fiscal year 2006, the Victims of Torture Fund supported treatment programs in 28 countries throughout the regions of Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Near East and Europe and Eurasia.

Treatment centers often provide services beyond rehab, to include forensic documentation, written and verbal testimony to courts and legislatures, and advocacy for the rights of brutalized religious, ethnic and minority groups. This is the expertise Congress sought to foster when we first adopted the TVRA back in 1998.

Lastly, the measure increases current authorization levels of $7 million for fiscal year 2007 to the U.N. Voluntary Fund for the Victims of Torture to $12 million for both 2008 and 2009. Through this U.N. mechanism, the voluntary fund supports 175 projects in 64 countries in 2006, including within the United States. The type of humanitarian assistance provided by organizations which receive those grants from the fund consists mainly of psychological, medical, social, legal and economic assistance.

Madam Speaker, this is a bipartisan bill, and I urge its passage.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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