WASHINGTON, DC, January 19, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Victims who have lived through imprisonment and harassment by the Chinese government, including the government’s vicious one-child policy, gathered together with human rights leaders on Capitol Hill yesterday to speak out on the arrival of Chinese President Hu Jintao in the United States. Hu is receiving a high profile welcome from the Obama Administration - including a formal state dinner – prompting House members and human rights groups to criticize China’s abysmal human rights record.
One activist, former Tiananmen Square student leader Chai Ling, pointed out, “As we gather here in Washington, over 35,000 forced and coerced abortions are taking place today in China.”
Ling called the “brutal” enforcement of the one-child policy “the largest crime against humanity.”
“It is the inhumane secret slaughter against mothers and babies,” he said. “It is a Tiananmen massacre taking place every hour; and it is an unending holocaust that has gone on for 30 years.”
Referencing the famous “I have a dream speech” by Martin Luther King, whose birthday was celebrated earlier this week, Ling said:
We dream a dream that tomorrow China’s Forced One Child Policy will become history; we dream a dream that children will grow up with brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts; we dream a dream that all tears will be wiped from the faces of parents whose children were taken; we dream a dream that all young men will have brides and taste the sweetness of being newly wed; we dream a dream that all mothers will mourn no more because they are with children.
Ling urged Obama and his administration to bring up the issue of the one-child policy with Hu during his visit: “We encourage you all to say Yes We Can to leaders of China: End forced abortions and gendercide.” (Click here to read Ling’s complete statement.)
Rep. Chris Smith Pro-life Congressman and human rights activist Chris Smith also used the press conference to criticize President Hu’s treatment of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize nominee Liu Xiaobo, who is imprisoned in China and was therefore unable to attend the award ceremony in Oslo. Hu also had Liu’s wife and friends placed under house arrest for fear they would come to Oslo to receive the prize for him.
“President Obama, as the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate, has an obligation to call for Liu’s release publicly and vigorously,” said Smith, a longtime human rights advocate in Congress, chair of the House Human Rights Subcommittee and Executive Committee Member of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC).
Smith said that over the years he has had the “privilege” of meeting many Nobel Peace laureates, and that “for the peace laureates, the idea that they could meet personally with and throw a White House state dinner for a political leader responsible for jailing another laureate and not demand publicly for their fellow laureate’s release would be something absolutely unthinkable.”
“I truly hope that in the next few days President Obama lives up to the award he received in 2009,” said Smith.
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