hearing transcript (pdf - 690 kb) - House Foreign Affairs Committee ...

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But it seems to me that China, when we think it has reached
bottom, plumbs additional depths that are unheard of.
Someone explained to me that there are some in China who
watched what happened in Eastern Europe. I heard this when I
was in Moscow, and Chris Cox had a Sino watcher who said this
rather matter of factly. They looked at what happened in Eastern
Europe, the impact that the Pope had and Lech Walesa and people
of faith, and they vowed it would not happen there. So they perceive
religious belief as a political threat and therefore repress it
with all of the terrible tools that a dictatorship has at its disposal.
What would you say to the President about China and what he
needs to say to Jiang Zemin?
Ms. GAER. Well, on a personal note I would say to him to follow
his heart and not his advisers. Officially, however, on behalf of the
Commission, we would advise him to look at three things. We
would also tell him to read our report, which has 10 more things.
We would urge him to actually establish goals and benchmarks
that mean something, and among those benchmarks should be the
release of prisoners who are confined on behalf of their religion, not
one prisoner here or there, but large numbers.
And we would also call for the U.S. to communicate to the President
of China America’s concerns about the thousands of North Koreans
who have fled to China seeking freedom, and urge them to
abide by their international commitments to refrain from forcefully
repatriating North Koreans, and to grant refugee status to those
who meet international criteria.
As I said, we would give him our report.
Mr. SMITH [presiding]. Thank you. Mr. Pitts.
Mr. PITTS. Thank you. I wish you could go on and on about your
recommendations, they were so excellent.
To go back to India, according to the religious freedom reports,
the National Human Rights Commission in India found, and I
quote, ‘‘no organized pattern of anti-Christian activity.’’ Do you
agree with this assessment, and do you believe that there is an organized
pattern of anti-Muslim activity? And then to explore a little
bit on your comment, do you believe that Gujarat is indicative
of a systemic problem, or it is militant, extremist activity?
Ms. GAER. Thank you, Congressman. I will try to answer on behalf
of the way the Commission has addressed this issue. The Commission
has studied anti-Christian violence in India for several
years now. And one of the things it identified in the last year, with
the violence in Gujarat and separately from it, in the State of Gujarat
and elsewhere in India we have identified a pattern of religiously
motivated violence against Christians and Christian institutions
as well.
So the National Commission may have been correct that in the
48 hours of rioting they could not identify specifically Christian-related
activity, but if you broaden your lens a little bit there, there
certainly has been an inadequate response to that.
Is this violence a systemic problem? Well, anyone who has studied
the violence in the south of Asia knows this is a thousand-yearold,
centuries-old problem.
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