Hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs - U.S. Policy in the Middle East

Interview

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REP. CHRISTOPHER SMITH (R-NJ): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

And let me say, Secretary Rice, thank you for being here, for your extraordinary service. And if Mr. Berman had not asked you about Iraqi refugees, I would have. There is a great deal of concern on both sides of the aisle on that issue.

Secretary Rice, as I think you know, since 1979, China's one- child-per-couple policy, with its heavy reliance on forced abortion, has actually murdered more children than all of the mass killings of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. The one-child-per-couple policy has made brothers and sisters illegal. It is being used today as genocide against the people of Tibet and the Uighurs, and has resulted in little girls being targeted for extermination and killed by the tens of millions simply because they are little girls. The systematic destruction of those girls is gendercide.

As a direct consequence, the imbalance of boys and girls in the People's Republic of China today is so alarming -- some put it as high as 100 million missing girls -- that one demographer said that by the year 2020, 40 million men will be unable to find wives because they have been aborted, a cruel outcome that will make China a magnet for traffickers. And there's also a book called "Barren Branches," (sic/"Bare Branches") which posits as its theory that it could also lead to war.

In addition to withholding funds from the UNFPA because of their support for this policy, what are we doing to defend women and girls from this predatory policy? And would you consider raising this issue at the U.N. genocide implementation body?

You know, obviously birth or targeting births is part of the U.N. Genocide Convention and the Human Rights Council.

And secondly, this week I plan on introducing a bill, the international Megan's law, named after a little girl in my hometown of Hamilton, Megan Kanka, who was brutally murdered by a convicted pedophile who lived next door. Over the last decade, state after state has passed, as we all know, Megan's laws to notice local neighborhoods, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, schools and the like about the existence of that person in their neighborhood.

Using FBI databases, the bill would require noticing destination countries when a convicted sex offender or a convicted sex trafficker was about to travel to that country, and would also bar entry into this country of convicted sex offenders and convicted sex traffickers. And I know of your very deep commitment to combatting human trafficking and violence against women and violence against children; on that bill, I would ask for your personal help in trying to get that enacted into law.

SEC. RICE: Well, thank you very much, and thank you for your continued dedication to these issues and to concern about, really, the most vulnerable of people in the world. And certainly on China's policies, we have always voiced our concern about those policies, as you say. We have denied funds because of policies of that kind.

We -- on the -- the question of where one raises or how one raises it, I'd be happy to have a dialogue with you. I have not really thought it through, but it would be useful to do that.

And as you said, we've tried to address many of these issues through our work on human trafficking. And the president's I think global human trafficking operation, G/TIP, is now renowned for having put this on the agenda of every country in the world. And countries don't like to be designated in Tier III, and so we are very often able to get responses. We don't always get responses, and when we don't, we've been willing to really expose trafficking procedures and trafficking policies in countries.

So I agree, I think it is a modern form of slavery, this trafficking, and we have tried to act accordingly. I have not looked at your bill, Congressman, but of course I will be happy to look.

REP. C. SMITH: I deeply appreciate that. You know, the idea emanated from a meeting I had with the TIP Office from Thailand, at which they were expressing great consternation that our pedophiles fly to Bangkok, abuse their little children and then fly back, and they never even know they're coming in the door. And it seems to me that if they're noticed, they can put a great, big stop sign and prevent their entry. And if they do get in, monitor their activities, and vice versa: We don't want these pedophiles and convicted sex offenders and sex traffickers coming here as well. So it seems to me it's an idea that will help advance this cause significantly.

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