Resolution calling on the Government of the People's Republic of China to immediately end abuses of the human rights of its citizens, to cease repression of Tibetan and Uighur people, and to end its support for the Governments of Sudan and Burma to ensure that the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games take place in an atmosphere that honors the Olympic traditions of freedom and openness.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. I thank him for bringing this legislation, salute him and the ranking member of the committee, Congresswoman

Ros-Lehtinen, for her ongoing persistent advocacy for human rights throughout the world. I thank you for you leadership as well, Mr. Berman, Mr. Chairman.

I rise today in strong support of this resolution calling on the Chinese government to end its human rights abuses in China and Tibet so that the Olympic Games can take place in an atmosphere that honors the Olympic traditions of freedom and openness.

I thank Chairman Berman again and Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen for bringing the resolution to the floor. With passage of this resolution, the House will speak with one voice about the conditions in China and Tibet on the eve of the Olympic Games.

Madam Speaker, the Olympic charter states that the Olympics should promote ``a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.'' The reality is that human rights abuses committed by Chinese authorities are worsening in the weeks and months before the Olympics.

In exchange for the privilege of hosting the Olympic Games, the Chinese government made commitments on freedom of the press, human rights and on the environment. Many of these commitments have been violated repeatedly and blatantly. Both foreign and domestic journalists have been harassed, threatened and detained. Human rights defenders and activists have been arrested and imprisoned at an alarming rate in recent months.

The dialog between the Chinese government and the representatives of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, have gone nowhere. Thousands of peaceful Tibetans still languish in prisons in the aftermath of the protest that began in March. Chinese authorities have stepped up the so-called ``patriotic education'' campaigns that require Tibetan Buddhists, regardless of their true thoughts, to publicly denounce the Dalai Lama.

The violations of human rights do not end on China's borders. On the international front, the Chinese government continues to support the genocidal regime in Sudan and the military junta in Burma. Their actions run counter to our interests of promoting peace, stability and morality in the world. The situation in the Sudan would change drastically if the Chinese government would cooperate at the U.N. and send that message to the Sudanese government.

It is in this context that President Bush is traveling to China to attend the Olympic Games. To my knowledge, a sitting President of the United States has never attended an Olympics on foreign soil. That gives the President tremendous leverage with the Chinese government as he gives them tremendous face by attending the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

I have no objection to the President attending the Olympic Games. I do hope, though, that with all of the face, for lack of a better word, that the Chinese government will receive by his participation in the opening ceremony, that he will take the opportunity to use his leverage to speak very forcefully to the Chinese regime, not only about human rights in China and Tibet, of course that is a top priority, but also about the barriers to U.S. products going into China, about the dangers that are foisted upon our children and the American people by the lack of safety and the production of food.

It is important for the body to know, and I am sure others have made the point, that the President recently met with some advocates for human rights in China and Tibet. I was very proud that they had the opportunity to meet with the President in the White House, and I thank the President for doing that.

But shortly after the President had the meeting, two of these people were detained on the way to a meeting with our colleagues, Congressman Smith and Congressman Wolf, Frank Wolf of Virginia.

So the message has to be, I think, clear to the Chinese government. We have concerns about jobs. We have concerns about U.S. jobs fleeing to China without opening of their markets to our products. We have concerns about human rights in China and Tibet. We want to work with the Chinese government to fight global warming. There are areas where we can have a level of cooperation.

But if we give them that level of respect by having the President of the United States be at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, it is important for the President, when he is there, to deliver a strong message of concerns that we have in our country.

I hope that we can have a brilliant future with China. Mr. Smith and Mr. Wolf and I have been trying for over 20 years, haven't we, been making this fight on human rights, as well as others in this body, and our dear friend, Mr. Lantos, as well.

They told us 19 years ago, at the time of Tiananmen Square, if only we would engage economically with China, then human rights would improve there, democratization would take place, markets would be open to our products. But that just really hasn't happened.

Here we are 19 years later. The Olympic Committee honored China by giving them the opportunity to host these Olympic Games. The President of the United States is honoring them by attending the opening ceremonies. It is very important that the opportunity afforded to China be met with responsible behavior on their part in terms of human rights in China and Tibet.

So I hope that the President will not miss the opportunity, that historic, that has wide-ranging consequences, and which will be viewed with such favorability should he deliver the message when he is there.

The President is well known for his support of freedom of religion. That is a commitment that he has made throughout the world, and it is one that I hope that he will carry with him to China as well.

With that, again, I thank the gentleman and Congresswoman Ros- Lehtinen for bringing this to the floor.

I am very thrilled that the Congress of the United States will speak with one voice on this important subject. I know the struggle for human rights is a long one, but we did not expect the Olympics to result in a situation where they were worsened in China instead of improved, as was the promise.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution which underscores Beijing's broken promise to the International Olympic Committee and the international community. When Beijing was awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics, China's leaders committed themselves to using this historic event as a catalyst to improve human rights for the citizens of the world's most populous nation. By all credible accounts, however, the human rights situation in China has not improved on the eve of the games. The Olympics has led China's draconian security forces to further crack down on dissidents and increase repression of minority groups. The glimmer of gold from Olympic medals in Beijing cannot conceal a tarnished record of Chinese official sponsorship of dictatorial regimes in Sudan, Burma and North Korea. The shine of silver cannot blind us to the fact that the Beijing regime continues its bloody suppression of minority groups, including the Tibetans. The brilliance of bronze cannot block out the repression of Falun Gong practitioners, Internet journalists, underground church believers and other political prisoners left to languish in the laogai forced labor camps and the vast prison system.

In a report issued just yesterday, Amnesty International affirmed that in the last year alone, thousands of dissidents, reformers and other independent voices were arrested as part of a campaign by Chinese authorities to ``clean up'' Beijing before the start of the Olympic games. According to the report, human rights activists have been targeted in other parts of the country as well, with many of those arrested and sentenced to manual labor without trial. Amnesty's report cites the case of one activist who was arrested earlier this month on charges of possessing state secrets, although it is believed that the arrest was prompted by his efforts to help the families of children killed in May's earthquake bring a legal case against local authorities.

Amnesty's deputy director in Asia said: ``By continuing to persecute and punish those who speak out for human rights, the Chinese authorities have lost sight of the promises they made when they were granted the games 7 years ago. The Chinese authorities are tarnishing the legacy of the games.'' I agree with what he said.

When it comes to the pursuit of democratic values and human rights, we remain a world divided with a dream unfulfilled for many in China and elsewhere. I urge my colleagues to join in sending the Chinese leadership a strong message.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health and a long-standing champion of human rights in China and around the world.

Madam Speaker, I would like to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Indiana (Mr. Pence) who is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas, a former judge, Mr. Poe, an esteemed member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the author of China-related resolutions, part of which were incorporated into this measure.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate the Speaker's words relative to China. The Speaker has a very tough job, and with that job goes praise and criticism. I know many of us, including myself, have been critical of the Speaker for not allowing, for example, a vote on ANWR on the floor of this House and we certainly think that we ought to have that vote.

But I want to praise the Speaker on her speaking out when she was on a trip in India on a codel and she spoke out when the crackdown on Tibet was occurring, the scandalous, outrageous crackdown on Tibet was occurring. The Speaker spoke out, and I issued a press release and also a personal letter thanking her for speaking out on behalf of our country. I think it was the right thing for her to do, and I think it took a lot of courage for the Speaker of the House to actually speak out on behalf of Tibetans who are undergoing considerable civil rights, human rights abuses.

The fact is, there are still, according to a recent article, at least 1,000 Tibetans that are unaccounted for because of this crackdown by the PRC, by Communist China. This is a very serious issue, and I'm glad that we're taking up this resolution.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) who is the cochair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and who recently traveled to China.

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank my good friend for yielding. I thank the chairman for bringing this important resolution to the floor and thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) for his fine leadership and that of Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

A few years ago, Madam Speaker, Liu Jingmin, vice president of the Beijing Olympic bid committee, famously asserted that ``by allowing Beijing to host the games, you will help the development of human rights.'' At the time, the argument seemed plausible, at least to the naive, but in the long run-up to the Olympics the reality has been numbingly disappointing and yet another wake-up call concerning bogus promises made for political and financial gain by the Beijing dictatorship. The pre-Olympic crackdown on political dissidents and religious believers and the crushing of cyber-dissidents is yet another antithetical manifestation to everything that is sane, compassionate or just.

In recent months, the Chinese government has been filling its jails, house arresting, surveilling and warning all known dissidents. These men and women are persecuted simply because they seek to exercise fundamental human freedoms guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ironically by the Chinese constitution itself. Tragically but predictably, the Olympics have been the occasion of a massive crackdown designed to silence and put beyond reach all those Chinese whose views differ from the government line. For so many brave Chinese men and women, for the Tibetans, many of them Buddhist monks and nuns, for members of Falun Gong, Chinese Christians, Uighur Muslims, democracy and labor activists and others, this has been a terrible summer, not in spite of but precisely because of the Olympic games. The fact is this is a reproach to the International Olympic Committee and to all those who believe in fundamental human rights.

As we meet here, right now in HC-7 several key human rights leaders, including the great Harry Wu and Wei Jingsheng, are speaking out against the atrocities committed with impunity by the government of China. I would note parenthetically that Wei was let out of prison-- Wei, father of the Democracy Wall movement--simply to try to garner Olympics 2000. When the government didn't get that from the Olympic committee, they rearrested Wei Jingsheng and tortured him almost to death. That is the reality of the people we're dealing with.

In fact, let me just point out to my colleagues that any number of the Chinese government's human rights violations should have been a deal-stopper for the International Olympic Committee. Take the one- child-per-couple policy, Madam Speaker, with its attendant evils of forced abortion and rampant sex-selective abortion. In effect since 1979, the one-child-per-couple policy constitutes one of the gravest crimes against women and children in all of human history, and our resolution before us today has appropriate language condemning that atrocity.

The Chinese government massively violates Chinese women with a state policy of mandatory monitoring of all Chinese women's reproductive cycles, mandatory birth permits, mandatory contraception or sterilization, and ruinous fines up to 10 times the annual salary of both husband and wife if they don't comply with the one-child-per- couple policy. This policy has imposed unspeakable pain, violence, humiliation and degradation on hundreds of millions of Chinese women, many of whom suffer life-long depression as a direct consequence. It is no wonder more women commit suicide in China than anywhere else in the world.

As a direct result of this egregious human rights violation, tens of millions of girls are missing today, dead,

due to sex-selective abortions, creating a huge gender disparity, a new dark manifestation of genocide which is perhaps more appropriately called gendercide.

The lost girls of China, and the estimates are between 50 to 100 million lost girls, murdered simply because they were girls.

Madam Speaker, 3 weeks ago, Frank Wolf and I visited Beijing in order to press for respect of fundamental human rights. The Chinese Secret Police threatened eight human rights lawyers with whom we had planned to meet for dinner in a public restaurant and placed several of them under house arrest.

We did, let me conclude with this, present the Chinese government with a list of people, 734 prisoners, a short list by Chinese standards, of people who are advocating for democracy and freedom. And with the Olympics now underway, we ask again, let those people and all like-minded human rights activists who languish and are tortured in prison, please let them go.

The resolution is a great one, and deserves everyone's support.

Madam Speaker, on February 6, 2008, I was unable to vote on the following votes: rollcall No. 29: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 867. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 30: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 942. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'', and rollcall No. 31: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 943. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''.

Madam Speaker, on February 7, 2008, I was unable to vote on the following votes: rollcall No. 32: On ordering the previous question for H. Res. 956. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 33: On agreeing to H. Res. 956. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 34: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Con. Res. 283, as amended. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 35: On motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 4848, as amended. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 36: On agreeing to the amendment numbered 4 to H.R. 4137. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 37: On agreeing to the amendment numbered 5 to H.R. 4137. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 38: On agreeing to the amendment numbered 7 to H.R. 4137. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no''; rollcall No. 39: On motion to Recommit H.R. 4137 with Instructions. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no''; rollcall No. 40: On passage of H.R. 4137. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall

No. 41: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 947. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'', and rollcall No. 42: On agreeing to the Senate amendment to H.R. 5140. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Madam Speaker, On March 11, 2008, I was unable to vote on the following vote: rollcall No. 111: On motion to adjourn. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Madam Speaker, on April 14, 2008, I was unable to vote on the following votes: rollcall No. 183: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 886, as amended. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 184: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 994, as amended. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; and rollcall No. 185: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H.R. 3548, as amended. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Madam Speaker, on May 5, 2008, I was unable to vote on the following votes: rollcall No. 240: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 952. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 241: On a motion to table the motion to reconsider H. Res. 952. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 242: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 1011, as amended. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 243: On a motion to table the motion to reconsider H. Res. 1011. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; and rollcall No. 244: On a motion to adjourn. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Madam Speaker, on May 6, 2008, I was unable to vote on the following vote: rollcall No. 260: On motion to adjourn. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Madam Speaker, on June 3, 2008, I was unable to vote on the following votes: rollcall No. 367: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Con. Res. 138, as amended. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 368: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 923. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 369: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 1114. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Madam Speaker, on July 17, 2008, I was unable to vote on the following votes: rollcall No. 510: On agreeing to the resolution to H. Res. 1350. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''; rollcall No. 539: On motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 1370, as amended. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

I thank the gentleman for yielding; thank him for his strong moral leadership on this issue. And I want to commend the ranking member and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee for having the moral courage to bring this resolution to the House before Congress adjourns.

It is important that we speak truth to power. And with the 2008 Olympics in Beijing about to begin, it is important that the people of the United States be heard on our ideals, as athletes from around the globe and global media descend on China.

It is important that we say, as the late Tom Lantos, chairman of this committee, said in a hearing last year, a few months before his death, ``China is a police state.''

I personally believe that the selection of China as the site of the 2008 Olympic Games was a historic error. The Olympics is a symbol of the human spirit, and in that regard, a symbol of human freedom. And this police state, therefore, is precisely the wrong venue for a celebration of human dignity and the human spirit.

And so I commend to my colleagues support for H. Res. 1370. I am particularly grateful for the call on the government of the People's Republic of China to end abuses of human rights, to release those imprisoned for political and religious expression, and also challenging China to honor its commitment to freedom of the press of foreign reporters.

But I must say, while there is much talk in the media today about the crowd of smog hanging over Beijing as these games approach, let me say from my heart, the real cloud over the Beijing Olympics is the horror of forced abortion. And therefore, I am especially grateful to Congressman Chris Smith, from whom we just heard, for adding an important amendment to this resolution noting that, whereas the Chinese government limits most women to having one child and strictly controls the reproductive lives of Chinese citizens by systematic means that include mandatory monitoring of women's reproductive cycles, mandatory sterilization and contraception, mandatory birth permits, coercive fines for failure to comply and the like, that this legislation will call on Congress to--excuse me--call on the People's Republic of China to immediately end the practice of forced abortion.

And make no mistake about it, China's policy requires that unpermitted babies be aborted. Article 25 of the Henan Province Population and Family Planning Regulations reads: ``Under any of the following conditions, necessary remedial measures shall be taken and pregnancy terminated under the guidance of family planning technical service workers: Pregnancy out of wedlock, pregnancy without a certificate, or where the party already has one child.''

In the committee, Madam Speaker, we heard the most horrific stories of these so-called family planning technical service workers literally breaking into homes, dragging women in their ninth month of pregnancies off to clinics, forcing abortions on them and, in one case after another, going to horrific means to ensure that the newly born child's life had been completely snuffed out. There is not time in this debate to recount those instances, but they are legion in China, and they are the result of heartbreak among tens of millions of that country of good and decent people.

And so I commend the chairman of this committee, Mr. Berman, for his leadership. I commend Mr. Chabot for his leadership, and especially the gentleman from New Jersey, a leading voice for the sanctity of life in the United States of America, for ensuring that this legislation, this resolution comes before the Olympics, that we speak truth to power to the People's Republic of China; that here in the United States of America, the people of this country will say, with one voice, we believe in freedom and we believe in life, and we reject the policy of forced abortion in China, and urge them to do likewise at this time.