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US House Passes Olympics Related Measure Calling on China to End Human Rights Abuses

Chris Smith calls one-child policy "one of the greatest continuous crimes against humanity in human history"

By Steve Jalsevac
WASHINGTON, July 30, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Today by a vote of 419 to 1, the U.S. House approved House Resolution 1370, introduced by Congressman Howard Berman, which calls on the Government of China to end human rights abuses to ensure that the 2008 Olympic Games take place in an atmosphere honoring Olympic traditions. An amendment, addressing China's brutally enforced one-child policy, was earlier proposed by Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) was included in the final resolution passed today. 

Recognizing the omission of the one-child policy in the original resolution, Rep. Smith offered the amendment in the Foreign Affairs Committee to strengthen the resolution. He stated, “My amendment seeks to bring some additional focus on the barbaric, cruel and hideous crime of China’s coercive population control program.” The Smith amendment calling on “the Government of the People’s Republic of China to abandon its coercive population control policy which includes forced abortion and involuntary sterilization,” was adopted by voice vote in the Committee.

In a July 30 statement, Congressman Smith listed and thoroughly condemned the massive human rights violations of the Chinese communist regime. He stated, "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."

“In recent months, the Chinese Government has been filling its jails, watching, intimidating, house arresting and warning all known dissidents,” said Smith who had his own trip to China disrupted earlier this month when several human rights lawyers were detained by the Chinese police when they attempted to meet with Smith and Rep. Frank Wolf.

“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,” said Smith.

The leading pro-life congressman's harshest words were focused on the Chinese government's one-child policy. “China’s coercive population control program has imposed unspeakable violence, pain and humiliation on hundreds of millions of Chinese women, many of whom suffer lifelong depression as a consequence. Massively violated by the state, it is no wonder more women commit suicide in China than anywhere else in the world,” said Smith who held more than 25 hearings on human rights abuses in China as chairman of House human rights committees.

“As a direct result of the government’s one child policy, tens of millions of girls are missing today—dead due to sex selection abortions—creating a huge gender disparity. The lost girls of China is gendercide. With its heavy reliance on forced abortion, involuntary sterilization and ruinous fines for illegal children, the policy, in effect since 1979, constitutes one of the greatest continuous crimes against humanity in human history,” he said.

Smith concluded, "we need to robustly combat it (the one child policy), and impress upon the Chinese government that they must abandon their coercive population control policy.”

Congressman Mike Pence expressed strong support for Smith's amendment during the debate and thanked him "for his strong moral leadership on this issue." Pence stated, “In the committee we heard the most horrific stories of these so-called family planning technical service workers literally breaking into homes, dragging women in the ninth month of pregnancy 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."

Pence concluded that the passage of the resolution ensured "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.”

See 3 minute video of Chris Smith statement on the resolution during the committee debate:
http://www.youtube.com/user/prolifeinformation

See role call of the vote on Res. 1370
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll539.xml

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