Human
rights are trivialized by
China, and the United States
has been sending a message
that profits and
money-making trumps human
rights,” said Smith, a
senior Member of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee
and the Ranking Member on
the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China.
“As President Obama
embarks on this trip, we
appeal to him to seriously
raise the plight of Chinese
women,” said Smith who
was recently nominated by
President Obama to be
Congressional Representative
to the United Nations. “It
is outrageous that the Obama
Administration lavishly
funds—to the tune of $50
million—organizations,
including the U.N.
Population Fund, that
partner with China’s
National Population Planning
Commission.”
 |
|
Rep. Chris Smith |
The Chinese government
requires would-be parents to
obtain permits before
becoming pregnant.
Crippling, ruinous fines are
levied on families who break
the one-child policy, along
with harassment and coerced
abortions. Additionally,
China suffers from the
highest female suicide rate
in the world, five times the
international average, at a
rate of 500 suicides per
day.
Nicholas Eberstadt, a policy
expert from the American
Enterprise Institute,
testified that the
centuries-old traditional
Chinese family has been
abruptly dissolved, with
millions of children now
having no aunts or uncles,
and no brothers and sisters.
“We have seen the
emergence of the one child
family and the end of 2,500
years of the traditional
Chinese family,”
Eberstadt said.
Reggie Littlejohn of Women’s
Rights Without Frontiers,
called the one child policy
violence of individuals on
an historic scale. She said
that since Obama is now a
Nobel Peace prize winner, he
should act the part of a
protector of human rights.
“This is the worst
violence against women in
human history,” said
Littlejohn, noting that both
pro-life and pro-choice
advocates can agree that
forced abortion is immoral.
Smith thanked the panelists
for shedding new light on
what is three decades of
forced population control in
China.
“Few people outside China
understand what a massive
and cruel system of social
control the one-child policy
entails,” Smith told the
panelist. “As the U.S.
China Commission summarized,
the system is “marked by
pervasive propaganda,
mandatory monitoring of
women's reproductive cycles,
mandatory contraception,
mandatory birth permits,
coercive fines for failure
to comply, and, in some
cases, forced sterilization
and abortion.
“On Thursday, President
Obama travels to Asia, and
will be in Beijing for four
days of meetings with the
government responsible for
these crimes against
humanity,” Smith said. “I
hope he will not conduct
these meetings in the same
airy spirit that Secretary
Clinton expressed on her
first visit to China, when
she dismissed the human
rights of the Chinese people
as irrelevant to her
relationship with the
Chinese government. She said
that we can’t let human
rights “interfere” with
peddling U.S. debt.
“I believe the Chinese
government would respond to
the President if he were to
take the lead in speaking up
in defense of human rights
in China,” Smith said. “The
Chinese government is
sensitive to how it is
viewed by the rest of the
world. Its rapidly
increasing influence in the
world, serving as the new
model for authoritarian
regimes throughout Asia and
Africa, is all the more
reason for us to defend the
rights of the Chinese
people. If we are not
willing to work to improve
the human rights standards
by which China is governed,
we are going to find China
degrading the human rights
standards the rest of us
live by.
