REP. CHRIS SMITH: Obama must pressure China’s President on human rights abuses

President Obama is slated to meet with President Xi Jinping today to discuss economic and security issues. As the entire world observed the grim anniversary earlier this week of the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of 1989, the timing could not be better to raise the issue of human rights abuses in China.

Twenty-four years ago, we all watched in amazement what was unfolding in China. Since mid-April of 1989, hundreds of thousands of mostly young Chinese people peacefully asked their government to reform and democratize. China looked like the next impending triumph for freedom and democracy—especially after the stunning collapse of the dictatorships in the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Then on June 3, the Peoples Liberation Army poured into and around the Square. Hope turned to shock, tears, fear and helplessness.

The Chinese dictatorship’s barbaric response that day has continued since in the form of mass murder, torture, incarceration, cover-up and the systematic suppression of fundamental human rights.

The government not only continues to inflict suffering on its own citizens, but the cover-up of the Tiananmen massacre is without precedent in modern history. Despite journalists’ reports and live television and radio which documented the massacre, the Chinese Communist Party continues to deny, obfuscate and threaten.

I recall vividly when in December of 1996, General Chi Haotian, the operational commander who ordered the murder of the Tiananmen protestors, came to Washington, D.C. as the Chinese Defense Minister.

Minister Chi was welcomed by President Clinton at the White House with full honors including a 19-gun salute—a spectacle I and others strongly protested. Minister Chi addressed the Army War College on that visit and in answer to a question said, “not a single person lost his life in Tiananmen Square.” He claimed that the People’s Liberation Army did nothing more violent than the “pushing of people” during 1989 protests. His absurd assertion that no one died that day would be laughable, were it not for the victims and the families who lost their loved ones. But that lie and countless others like it was—and is—the Chinese Communist Party’s line.

As chairman of the House Foreign Affairs’ human rights subcommittee, I organized a congressional hearing within a few days—December 18, 1996—with witnesses who were there on the Square in 1989 including Yang Jianli—a leader and survivor of the massacre—and Time magazine bureau chief David Aikman. I also invited Minister Chi or anyone the Chinese Embassy might want to send to the hearing. He—they—declined.

Minister Chi probably thought he was back in Beijing where the big lie is king, and where no one ever dares to do a fact check.

A few days ago, the U.S. State Department asked the Chinese government to “end harassment of those who participated in the protests and fully account for those killed, detained or missing.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s response was to acrimoniously assert that the U.S. should “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs so as not to sabotage China-U.S. relations.”

The United States asking for accountability and an end to harassment is called “sabotage.” It would seem like they have much to hide.

This is why President Obama’s meeting with President Xi Jinping must include a robust discussion of human rights abuses in China. It’s time to get serious about China’s flagrant abuse.

How can a government that tramples on the rights and freedoms of its own people be trusted on other matters, such as fair trade and security?

Today China is the torture capital of the world and victims include religious believers, ethnic minorities, human rights defenders like Chen Guangchen and Gao Zhisheng and political dissidents.

Hundreds of millions of pregnant women have been forced to abort their precious babies because of the draconian one child policy. The result of this forced practice has been gendercide—the violent extermination of unborn baby girls,simply because they are girls.

The slaughter of the girl-child in China is not only a massive gender crime but a “security” issue as well. A witness at one of my hearings, Valerie Hudson, author of Bare Branches, testified that the gender imbalance will lead to instability and chaos—even war, “that the One-Child policy has not enhanced China’s security, but demonstrably weakened it.  As Nick Eberstadt (a respected demographer at the American Enterprise Institute) famously phrased it, what are the consequences for a society that has chosen to become, simultaneously, both more gray and more male…The other face of the coin from the missing daughters of China, are the excess sons of China… the abnormal sex ratios of China do not bode well for its future.”

Tiananmen was a tipping point. The lessons learned and employed ever since by the Chinese government require much better understanding, due diligence and a more effective response from us.

I held a hearing Monday titled the Tragic Anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre featuring Tiananmen survivors and witnesses and human rights leaders.

Several heroic witnesses testified.

Dr. Yang Jianli is a former political prisoner and survivor of the massacre. He testified that soon after Tiananmen, the Communist Party embraced an ubiquitous code of corruption to enrich the elite at the expense of the general public. The Party believed that “economic growth means everything” to the survival and sustainability of the dictatorship. “All this was made possible thanks to the Tiananmen massacre and the political terror that was imposed on the entire country in the years following…”

Chai Ling, founder of All Girls Allowed, was one of the most effective—and most wanted—leaders of the protest movement in Tiananmen Square. Her courage and fight for democracy and remarkable escape is the stuff of legends. Today, as a strong woman of faith, her testimony before Congress was a message of remembering the lessons of the past—but also giving hope for the future.

Wei Jingsheng, an advocate for democracy in China for decades, has paid a heavy price. He has spent over 18 years in prison for fighting for freedom of the Chinese people. His testimony offered a perceptive study of the Chinese Communist system and the evolving views of the population regarding the events surrounding Tiananmen.

Human Rights Watch’s Dr. Sophie Richardson has been an expert and advocate of political reform, democratization and basic human rights in China for many years, told the congressional panel of the ongoing abuses by the Chinese government.

And Time Magazine’s former Beijing Bureau Chief, Dr. David Aikman, was also present during the Tiananmen massacre and covered the student protests prior to the conflict. He told Congress about his own experiences at Tiananmen, as well as his extensive studies on the status of religious freedom in China, the situation of Christianity in China today, and the historical influences on its development.

The dream that was the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 resulted in nightmare for those who dared to demand fundamental human rights for all Chinese women and men. By refusing to forget, we honor the sacrifice of that extraordinarily brave group of pro-democracy protesters.

I urge President Obama to use the opportunity afforded by President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States to secure a promise to crack down on the rampant human rights violations of Chinese citizens that continue to this day.

U.S. Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican, is co-chairman of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations.