WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Congressman Chris Smith, Vice Chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, delivered the following speech on the House floor in support of a resolution condemning the crackdown by the People’s Republic of China on pro-democracy demonstrators on the 15th anniversary of the tragedy. The resolution passed the House today by a vote of 400 to 1.

In December of 1996, here in Washington at the invitation of President Bill Clinton, General Chi Haotian, the Defense Minister of the People’s Republic of China–the General who was the operational commander of the soldiers who slaughtered pro-democracy demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square in June of 1989 said, “Not a single person lost his life in Tiananmen Square.”

According to General Chi, the Chinese Army did nothing more violent than the “pushing of people.”

General Chi not only met with Mr. Clinton in the White House but was accorded full military honors including a 19 gun salute and visits to military bases.  Rather than getting the red carpet treatment, I would respectively submit that General Chi should have been held to account for crimes against humanity. 

To counter the big lie, I quickly put together and chaired a hearing of eyewitnesses to Tiananmen including several Chinese, a former editor of the People’s Daily and Time Magazine’s Beijing bureau chief.

We also invited General Chi to testify – or anyone from the Chinese government.  They were no shows although we left a chair for them.

One of our witnesses, Xuecan Wu, the former editor of the People’s Daily was singled out by Li Peng for punishment and got 4 years in prison for trying to tell his readers in Beijing the truth. 

Mr. Wu called General Chi’s lies about no one being killed “shameless” and told my subcommittee that he personally saw “at least 30 carts carrying dead and wounded people.”

Eyewitness, Mr. Jian-Li Yang, Vice President of Alliance for a Democratic China testified, “I saw a truck of soldiers who got out and started firing automatic weapons at the people…each time they fired the weapons three or four people were hit, and each time the crowd went down on the ground.  We were there for about a half an hour.  I saw 13 people killed…we saw four tanks coming from the Square, were going west at a very high speed.  The two tanks in front were chasing students.  They ran over students.  Everyone was screaming.  We counted 11 bodies.” 

Time Magazine’s David Aikman – another eyewitness – said “Children were killed holding hands with their mothers.  A 9-year-old boy was shot seven or eight times in the back, and his parents placed the corpse on a truck and drove through the streets of northwest Beijing Sunday morning.  `This is what the government has done,’ the distraught mother kept telling crowds of passersby through a makeshift speaker system… officials at the Chinese Red Cross reported 2,600 died, but then, they too were ordered to keep silent and to deny that they had ever given out such figures.”   

Today, 15 years after the Tiananmen massacre, the Chinese government perpetuates General Chi’s Orwellian fabrication that no one died.  It is now clear that thousands died – and approximately 7,000 were wounded. 

15 years after Tiananmen Square, some 2,000 people remain incarcerated for peacefully advocating human rights.  To be jailed by the Chinese means torture, humiliation and severe deprivations. 

In the early 90s, Congressman Frank Wolf and I visited Beijing Prison #1 – a bleak gulag where 40 Tiananmen Square prisoners were being unjustly detained.  We saw first hand the price paid by brave and tenacious individuals for peacefully petitioning their government for freedom.  And it wasn’t pretty.  They looked like the walking skeletons of Auschwitz. 

Mr. Speaker, despite the hopes and expectations of some that robust trade with China would usher in at least a modicum of respect for basic human rights and fundamental liberties, the simple fact of the matter is that the dictatorship in China oppresses, tortures and mistreats tens of millions of its own citizens. 

Moreover, China is the land of the one child per couple policy – a barbaric policy that makes brothers and sisters illegal. Forced abortion, forced sterilization and ruinous fines are routinely employed to ensure compliance with this draconian and cruel family planning policy.

According to the U.S, Department of State, the government’s human rights record remains poor, and the government continued to commit numerous and serious abuses, and the repression is getting worse.  The State Department Human Rights Report went on to say there was backsliding on key human rights issues, including arrests.  Abuses include killing, torture, mistreatment of prisoners, and forced confessions. 

            In April, the Chinese government openly gloated over the defeat, once again, of a U.S. sponsored resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission.  (Given the makeup of the Commission the outcome came as no surprise.)  In one stunningly absurd statement Chinese Ambassador Sha Zukang said the U.S. proposed the resolution out of “disappointment and jealousy.”  No, Mr. Ambassador, we proposed it because we stand in solidarity with the oppressed and seek to hold the oppressor to account. 

            I participated in the meetings in Geneva, Mr. Speaker, and confronted the Chinese leadership in an open forum.  They were amazingly inept and unprofessional.  All they could do was deny, deny, deny and question our motives.  And then abruptly, end the meeting. 

Mr. Speaker, someday the good and honorable people of China will live in freedom.  And the martyrs of Tiananmen – those who suffered unspeakable horrors at the hands of the government and were jailed wounded or murdered – will be even more revered and honored for their sacrifice than today.

This resolution honors those courageous champions of freedom and democracy.