TEXT: REP. SMITH ON STATE DEPT. HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTS FOR 1996
(Human rights should play larger role in foreign policy)

Washington -- Human rights should play a larger role in U.S. foreign policy, according to the chairman of the House International Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights.

In his opening statement at a special subcommittee hearing on the State Department's annual human rights reports January 31, Representative Christopher Smith (Republican of New Jersey) said the reports appear to be "generally accurate and carefully compiled," but stressed that they should be "only the beginning of our official commitment to human rights."

"When the reports are not used as 'a basis for a plan of action,' they 'only serve to prevent the integration of human rights into the full range of policy development and implementation,'" he said, quoting James O'Dea of Amnesty International.

Smith called upon the Clinton Administration and congressional leaders to make human rights a central part of U.S. foreign policy.

"What is important is that we join together to send a strong message to the world that the United States is not content merely to identify tyrants and victims, but that the centerpiece of our foreign policy will be opposition to tyranny and support for those who would resist it," he said.

Following is the official text of Smith's opening remarks:

(begin official text)

STATEMENT OF REP. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH
Chairman, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights
1996 COUNTRY REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES

This hearing of the House International Relations Committee is for the purpose of hearing testimony from the State Department and from non-governmental organizations on the 1996 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. This hearing is usually held every year by the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. Because the Subcommittee will not be formally organized until next week, Chairman Gilman has graciously agreed to let us use the auspices of the full International Relations Committee hearing for the purpose of receiving the Country Reports and testimony about them.

The last hearing of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, just a little over a month ago, was on the occasion of the official visit to the United States of General Chi Haotian, the Defense Minister of the People's Republic of China.

The General, who was the operational commander of the forces that attacked the pro-democracy demonstrators at the Tiananmen Square massacre, had been invited to the United States by our government. The expenses of his visit were paid with U.S. tax dollars. He was given full military honors, a nineteen-gun salute, visits to several military bases, and a tour of the Sandia nuclear laboratory. He even had a personal meeting with President Clinton at the White House. During his visit General Chi stunned the civilized world by announcing, in response to a question about whether the Chinese government had learned anything from the killings at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, that nobody was actually killed at Tiananmen.

The official wining and dining of General Chi is an important symbol, not only of our government's disastrous one-way love affair with the brutal Communist government of China, but also of the broader systemic problem in the relationship between the protection of fundamental human rights and other goals of foreign and domestic policy. As James O'Dea, who testified for Amnesty International at our hearing on the 1994 Country Reports, put it, "human rights is an island off the mainland of U.S. foreign policy." This year's Country Reports, like those in previous years, appear to be generally accurate and carefully compiled. The reports, however, should be only the beginning of our official commitment to human rights. Instead, too many government officials treat them as items to display on a shelf and to point to when someone complains we are not doing enough about human rights. As Mr. O'Dea put it, when the reports are not used as "a basis for a plan of action," they "only serve to prevent the integration of human rights into the full range of policy development and implementation."

To put it even more bluntly, the message we are sending to the world is that the government of the United States is committed to the protection of fundamental human rights only insofar as such a commitment does not threaten to interfere with anything else it wants to accomplish. This is a terrible message to send -- not only to the international thugs who know that they can murder and torture with impunity so long as they are hospitable to U.S. trade and investment, but also to their victims. And the current Administration -- which came into office on a strong human rights platform, and justly criticized the previous administration for "coddling dictators" in China and elsewhere -- suffers from an even wider gap between its rhetoric and its record than the previous administrations of which it was so critical.

Our first witness today, Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck, has shown himself to be an encouraging exception to this rule. Mr. Shattuck, I know that you and the people who work for you in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor are working every day to give human rights protection the priority it should have in our foreign policy. But I also know that you have got a tough job. Not only has the Administration failed to provide strong leadership at high enough levels to make a difference on these issues, but you also have to struggle with the institutional mind-set of the career bureaucracy at the State Department, which is that human rights protection is at best one goal to be balanced against other priorities -- and at worst an embarrassing distraction from the real business of diplomacy, which frequently consists in maintaining friendly relations with terrible governments.

Unfortunately, the Reports themselves sometimes appear to reflect a sort of guerrilla struggle between those in the State Department who wish to tell it like it is and those who would rather avoid embarrassing dictatorial regimes:

-- For instance, the concluding paragraph in the introduction to the China report begins with the observation that "(i)n many respects, Chinese society continued to open further" during 1996. The principal evidence for this remarkable assertion was that "satellite television broadcasts are widely available" and that "(i)ncreasing numbers of citizens have access to the Internet" -- but the same paragraph also points out that the regime is doing its best to shut down access to the satellite broadcasts and Internet sites that might provide a genuinely free flow information to Chinese citizens. The pro-human rights forces also managed to include a final observation that during 1996 "the Government placed new restrictions on the news media." But they apparently did not prevail in getting the Department to delete the false conclusion about the alleged "opening" of Chinese society during 1996 -- or even to modify it to make clear that any such opening was despite the regime, not because of it.

-- Another section of the China report acknowledged the brutal crackdown on what the report calls "unofficial" Christian religious groups, including the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant "house churches." Unfortunately, the report carries over the ridiculous assertion from prior years' reports that the Beijing government has "returned" certain churches, mosques, and monasteries that were confiscated from religious organizations. The report fails to mention that the so-called "return" was not to the religious groups from whom the properties were confiscated, but to the new "official" religious organizations that were designed to supplant the real ones. As the report makes clear, these official organizations are directly supervised by government organizations which are dominated by atheists. So the report is giving the government credit for "returning" confiscated properties to itself, not to the people it stole the properties from.

-- To its credit, the Department has included in this year's Mauritania report a statement that "slavery, in the form of unofficial forced or involuntary servitude, exists." This replaces a statement in last year's report that only the "vestiges" of slavery still exist in Mauritania. Unfortunately, the report later includes a statement that "slavery in which government and society join to force individuals to serve masters no longer exists." This assertion is contradicted by the conclusions of anti-slavery activists and independent human rights observers, who believe that the government of Mauritania has never really enforced the anti-slavery law which it enacted in response to international pressures in 1980.

Despite these concerns, Mr. Shattuck, I know I speak for the other members of the Committee in saying that the Country Reports are a bright spot in the otherwise dismal landscape of international oppression and of silence in the face of oppression.

As you know many of us in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, are happy to work with people of good will in the Administration in restoring human rights to the central place it deserves in our foreign policy. During the 104th Congress the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights held 41 hearings, most of them about violations of human rights, including forced abortions and sterilizations in China; slavery in Mauritania and Sudan; child labor; torture; the forced repatriation to Vietnam of people who have been persecuted there because they or their family members fought on our side against the Communists; attempts to influence U.S. policy by Libya and other rogue regimes; the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere; and persecution of Christians in countries around the world. What is important is that we join together to send a strong message to the world that the United States is not content merely to identify tyrants and victims, but that the centerpiece of our foreign policy will be opposition to tyranny and support for those who would resist it.

I look forward to the testimony of Mr. Shattuck and of our other distinguished witnesses.

(end official text)