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U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), a senior Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Ranking Member on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, today called on free people every where to reject China's self-aggrandizing "celebrations" of its 60 years of Communist rule and instead remember and honor the millions of people who have been killed and those who endure limited freedoms, harassment and torture at the hands of the Chinese Communist dictatorship.
"The Chinese Communist government will mark the 60th year of the People's Republic of China with massive but highly choreographed celebrations-coupled with a massive ramping-up of police control, and roundup of dissidents," said Smith who was recently nominated by President Obama to be Congressional Representative to the United Nations said. "Over 60 years, the PRC government has shown itself by far the most deadly enemy the Chinese people have ever faced. Scholars estimate that this government has been responsible for killing approximately 65 million people in China.
"Rather than bogus celebration, today should be a day of remembrance," Smith said. "The victims of this government may seem like numberless millions, but each one had a human face, loved ones and a contribution to make. I propose that we remember them today, and resolve to pray and work that what happened and is still happening to the Chinese people will one day be stopped-and the Chinese people can truly say, "never again."
Smith, who traveled to China during the Olympics last year on a human rights trip, said that the current Chinese government routinely and viciously persecutes Falun Gong practitioners, Muslim Uighurs, Tibetans, and Christians, as well as activists and journalists promoting human rights and democracy.
"Its most massive crimes were in the 1950s and 60s but even today it perpetrates grave human rights abuses, from widespread use of torture, massive censorship and surveillance of the Internet, jailing of dissidents, across-the-board religious persecution, and ethnic persecution that killed hundreds and jailed thousands of Tibetans in 2008, and Uighurs in 2009. We cannot forget the killing, in the past ten years, of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners.
"October 1 marks 60 years of human rights abuse in China on a scale we can hardly grasp," he said.
