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RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS IN ASIA:

STATUS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TIBETAN POLICY ACT,

BLOCK BURMESE JADE ACT, AND NORTH KOREAN HUMAN

RIGHTS ACT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 2, 2011

Serial No. 112–40

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

RON PAUL, Texas 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

DAVID RIVERA, Florida 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina 

VACANT 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

DENNIS CARDOZA, California 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

FREDERICA WILSON, Florida 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

YLEEM D.S. POBLETE, Staff Director 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Democratic Staff Director 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Robert King, Ambassador, Special Envoy for North Korean 

Human Rights Issues ........................................................................................... 9

The Honorable Joseph Y. Yun, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, East 

Asian and Pacific Affairs ..................................................................................... 17

The Honorable Daniel B. Baer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Democracy, Human Rights and Labor .......................................................................... 28

Mr. Richard Gere, chairman of the board of directors, International Campaign 

for Tibet ................................................................................................................ 51

Mr. Chuck Downs, executive director, Committee for Human Rights in North 

Korea ..................................................................................................................... 61

Mr. Aung Din, executive director & co-founder, U.S. Campaign for Burma ...... 70

Ms. Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director, Human Rights Watch ............. 78

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Florida, and chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs: Prepared 

statement .............................................................................................................. 4

The Honorable Robert King: Prepared statement ................................................ 12

The Honorable Joseph Y. Yun: Prepared statement ............................................. 20

The Honorable Daniel B. Baer: Prepared statement ............................................ 31

Mr. Richard Gere: Prepared statement ................................................................. 53

Mr. Chuck Downs: Prepared statement ................................................................. 63

Mr. Aung Din: Prepared statement ........................................................................ 73

Ms. Sophie Richardson: Prepared statement ........................................................ 80

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 100

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 101

The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress from the 

Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement .............................................. 103

Questions submitted for the record to the Honorable Robert King by the 

Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen .......................................................................... 105

Questions submitted for the record to the Honorable Robert King by the 

Honorable Donald A. Manzullo, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Illinois ..................................................................................................... 106

(1)

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY, HUMAN 

RIGHTS IN ASIA: STATUS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TIBETAN POLICY ACT, BLOCK 

BURMESE JADE ACT, AND NORTH KOREAN 

HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 

THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2011

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 o’clock a.m., in 

room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ileana RosLehtinen (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. For opening statements, I will recognize the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights Subcommittee for a 3-

minute speech. We will then hear from our witnesses, and I would 

ask that you summarize your prepared statements in 5 minutes 

each before we commence with the question and answers from 

members under the 5-minute rule. 

Without objection, the witnesses’ prepared statements will be 

made a part of the record, and members may have 5 days to insert 

statements, questions and additional material for the record, subject to the length limitations in the rules. 

The chair now recognizes herself for 7 minutes. 

Today we are here to discuss the dark clouds of oppression that 

hang ever heavier over the peoples of Tibet, Burma, and North 

Korea. 

I was proud to be a co-sponsor with our late chairman and strong 

human rights advocate, Tom Lantos, of the Tibetan Policy Act, and 

an original co-sponsor of the Block Burmese JADE Act. I was also 

privileged to author the reauthorization of the North Korean 

Human Rights Act, which was enacted into law in 2008. 

Congress has long sought to address the suffering of the people 

of Tibet, Burma, and North Korea through legislation to ease, to 

some degree, their pain. Let us now examine the executive branch’s 

track record in implementing these Acts. 

There is a common thread that leads to a massive spider web of 

human rights and religious freedom violations. At the core sits 

China. As we commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the 

Tiananmen Square massacre on Saturday, we must never forget 

those who fell as the tanks crushed the democratic aspirations of 

the Chinese people. 

2

We must never forget that the heirs to this shameful Tiananmen 

legacy and their comrades in blood lust continue to subjugate by 

the sword not only the Chinese people but also the people of Tibet, 

Burma and North Korea. Whatever the motive, a rising China is 

at the center of this trio of tyranny which casts a dark shadow over 

the otherwise optimistic projections for Asia’s future. 

Turning to the three laws that we are examining today, since 

2002 when the Tibetan Policy Act first called for the establishment 

of a U.S. official presence in the capital of Tibet, there has been 

absolutely zero diplomatic progress. The State Department must 

make it perfectly clear to China’s diplomats that there will be no 

more Chinese consulates opened in the U.S., not in Atlanta, not in 

Boston, not in Honolulu, until the stars and stripes are flying 

proudly over a U.S. diplomatic facility in Tibet. 

It is also regrettable that the Special Coordinator for Tibetan 

Issues, a position created by the Tibetan Policy Act, could not appear as a witness today to address the oversight concerns of Congress with regard to this act. 

I now would like to turn to the Block Burmese JADE Act. I understand that the administration has finally put forward the name 

of Derek Mitchell to serve as the Special Representative and Policy 

Coordinator for Burma, a position created by the act, and that he 

is awaiting Senate confirmation. 

I would like our administration witnesses to explain why it took 

almost 21⁄2 years to name this official to a key position legislatively 

mandated by Congress. I would also ask the administration witnesses to elaborate on the administration’s approach to the Burmese junta and if the administration remains committed to pursuing what it calls a policy of pragmatic engagement, a policy I 

strongly disagree with. 

Another key component of the Burma law was the prohibition on 

the import of Burmese gemstones, rubies and jade. A Government 

Accountability Office GAO report on September 30, 2009, stated, 

‘‘U.S. agencies have taken some steps, but have not shown that 

they are effectively restricting imports of Burmese origin rubies, 

jade and related jewelry, while allowing imports of non-Burmese 

origin goods.’’

If we could work so effectively with the African countries and our 

allies to ensure that we could block the importation of blood diamonds during the conflicts in Africa, one has to question why it 

would seem that we have not made the same efforts with blocking 

imports of Burmese rubies. 

Finally, let me address the North Korean Human Rights Act. It 

is especially appropriate that the Special Envoy for North Korean 

Human Rights Issues, a position created by the act, is here today. 

We welcome Dr. Bob King, a long-time trusted advisor to Chairman 

Lantos and former Democratic Chief of Staff for this committee. 

The North Korean Human Rights Act specifically clarified any 

confusion on the eligibility of North Koreans for refugee or asylum 

consideration in the United States. While the vast majority of 

North Korean refugees will continue to be resettled in South Korea 

for historic, linguistic, and cultural reasons, the Act spells out that 

the U.S. doors remain open to North Koreans fleeing savage oppression. 

3

Only about 120 North Korean refugees have made it to the 

United States in the 7 years since enactment of this legislation. 

That raises questions about the State Department’s purposefulness. 

Another issue addressed in the act is food assistance to North 

Korea. The act is clear in stipulating that ‘‘such assistance should 

also be provided and monitored so as to minimize the possibility 

that such assistance could be diverted for military or political use.’’

I share the concerns of my Senate colleagues in their May 20 letter to Secretary Clinton that any food aid provided would most 

likely be used for propaganda purposes to mark the hundredth anniversary of the North Korean founder. It should be clear that 

there should be strong opposition in the Congress to any attempt 

to provide food assistance paid for by the American taxpayer for 

more bread and circuses in Pyongyang. 

I now turn to the distinguished ranking member, my friend Mr. 

Berman, for his opening remarks. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Ros-Lehtinen follows:]

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Mr. BERMAN. Well, thank you, madam chairman, and thank you 

for convening this very timely hearing focused on the human rights 

situation in Tibet, Burma, and North Korea. 

Nearly 84 million Tibetans, Burmese, and North Koreans cannot 

speak freely, worship how they choose, or elect their own government leaders. There are few places in the world where people have 

endured as long under the yoke of oppression with little hope of a 

better life. In Tibet, the uniqueness of Tibetan culture is being 

slowly extinguished, strangled by Han, migration, and Chinese 

policies that restrict religion association and movement. 

As the State Department notes in its recent human rights report, 

government authorities continue to commit serious human rights 

abuses, including extra judicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, 

extra judicial detention, and house arrest. Hundreds of Tibetans, 

especially monks, remain incarcerated for their role in the 2008 

protests. 

Under the Dalai Lama, who will be in Washington this summer, 

Tibetans have sought to overcome adversity and hardship. Exiled 

communities have been established in India, the United States, Europe, and elsewhere to preserve Tibetan cultural identity, language, and religion. It is a tribute to the Dalai Lama’s moral leadership that the diaspora has remained strong, but he knows, and 

we know, that in the future this strength could be threatened with 

his eventual passing. 

China has long feared and sought to undermine the transition to 

the Panchen Lama, the second highest lama in Tibetan Buddhism. 

He has been held captive for 16 years, since he was 6 years old, 

and during that time has not been seen by the outside world. It is 

a sad commentary that Beijing felt it necessary to imprison a child 

for so long. 

In Burma, the leaders of the country fear their own people, and 

thousands have been imprisoned. Last November Burma held elections for the first time in 20 years. Regrettably, what should have 

been an important milestone for the people of that impoverished 

country turned out to be more of the same. The ruling military dictatorship fixed the process to ensure its continued dominance, and 

the vote was marred by widespread fraud and intimidation. 

I am pleased the Obama administration has put forward a nomination for the Special Representative and Policy Coordinator for 

Burma, as required by the Tom Lantos Block Burmese JADE Act 

of 2008. I hope the Senate will confirm him quickly. It is important 

that we redouble our efforts to pressure the government to end its 

repression. The economic and diplomatic sanctions the United 

States has imposed since the 1990s have too often been undermined by Burma’s neighbors. 

North Korea’s status is unique, a nation ruled absolutely by one 

family, in which millions live in desperate conditions, impoverished, often starving, living in constant fear of arbitrary arrest and 

possible torture or execution. According to Human Rights Watch, 

hundreds of thousands live in prison camps, with some children 

growing to maturity, if they are lucky, while imprisoned. 

In 2004, Congress passed the North Korean Human Rights Act 

with overwhelming bipartisan support to focus U.S. attention on 

the plight of the North Korean people. The Act provided new reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:56 Jul 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\060211\66780 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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sources to assist North Korean refugees, supported democracy and 

human rights programs, and improved access to information 

through radio broadcasts and other activities. 

It also required the President to appoint a Special Envoy on 

North Korean Human Rights, which is now filled, I am happy to 

say, by Ambassador King who, as the Democratic staff director of 

this committee, worked on the passage of this milestone legislation. 

We are fortunate to have Ambassador King with us today, and 

eager to hear about his recent trip to North Korea. We also welcome the other distinguished witnesses, and look forward to hearing their suggestions as to what we should be doing to help more 

effectively human rights in Asia. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Mr. Berman. Pleased to 

yield 3 minutes to Chairman Smith, chairman of the Subcommittee 

on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chairman. As you know, I had the privilege of working with Congressman Frank Wolf on the passage of the International Religious 

Freedom Act in 1998, which includes several important tools for 

ensuring religious freedom and that religious freedom is an essential component of U.S. foreign policy. 

I would note my subcommittee will hold a hearing tomorrow 

morning to examine IRFA and proposed amendments to strengthen 

our diplomatic efforts in this critical human rights area. 

In the context of this hearing, I would note that the People’s Republic of China remains a country of particular concern, so designated by the act and by the administration in official recognition 

that the government engages in systematic, ongoing, and egregious 

violations of religious freedom. 

I personally know scores of religious leaders who have been, and 

still are, suffering religious persecution in China. One of those individuals is Bishop Su of Guangdong Province, who I met back in 

1994. He was rearrested in 1997. Prior to that arrest, he had been 

jailed five times, spent a total of 20 years in jail, and had been 

beaten so savagely that he suffered extensive loss of hearing. 

I would also point out that Gao Zhisheng, a great man who several of us nominated for the Nobel Peace prize along with Liu 

Xiaobo—here is a man who disappeared, and he did provide, when 

he was out briefly, a detailed account of the torture that he had 

suffered, just like Tibetan Buddhists, just like the Uighurs, where 

cattle prods were put into his mouth and on his genitals, and was 

almost killed as a result of that torture. 

This is how the Chinese Government mistreats. The cruelty that 

is meted out against those who try to practice their faith, be they 

Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhists, Christians as part of the underground church, or other people who are just trying to practice their 

faith. 

Vietnam, of course, remains an egregious violator of human 

rights and already designated CPC. We welcome Dr. Bob King, our 

Ambassador, and I look forward to hearing his insights and recommendation as to how we might better implement the North Korean Human Rights Act. 

It seems to me that the time has come not just to promote aggressively our efforts to mitigate the nuclear threat on the Korean 

8

Peninsula in North Korea, but also to engage as robustly on the 

human rights violations committed by the dear leader in North 

Korea. So I look forward to their testimony. Thank you for this 

hearing. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Chairman Smith. 

Mr. Payne is not here. So we will recognize Ms. Wilson for 1 

minute for any opening remarks she would like to make. 

Ms. WILSON OF FLORIDA. I thank Chairman Ros-Lehtinen and 

Ranking Member Berman for holding this hearing today, and 

thank you for this opportunity. 

Human rights, democracy, and freedom have eluded the people 

of Tibet, Burma, and North Korea for decades. In Tibet, the Chinese Government continues with policies that undermine the proud 

culture and religion of the people. Although elections were held and 

the theoretical transition to a civilian government has happened, 

human rights is a foreign word in Burma, and in North Korea, the 

most hidden country in the world, the majority of the people face 

daily power outages, no food, and no human rights. 

I am interested in hearing how effective have American tax dollars been in helping the people of Tibet with projects supported by 

the United States. I need to know if there has been any significant 

improvement for the human rights in Burma, and if any sanctions 

need to be removed or renewed. 

I hope that we have a better understanding of the current security situation along the North Korean border for North Koreans 

trying to cross to and from China. Most importantly, we have to 

do what we can to ensure that all human beings have the basic 

human rights that we all deserve. 

The religious ethic that we are supposed to help the least of our 

brothers and sisters seems to be lost in the countries of Tibet, 

Burma, and North Korea. It is the job of this committee to help 

them find it. 

Again, I thank the chair for this time. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Ms. Wilson. The 

chair is now pleased to welcome our witnesses. 

Ambassador Robert King became the Special Envoy for North 

Korean Human Rights Issues on November 2009 following his confirmation by the United States Senate. Bob is an old friend of the 

committee due to his quarter-century of work on Capitol Hill—you 

are an old guy—serving for 2 years as staff director of this committee. 

Bob’s legislative work, including in support of the North Korean 

Human Rights Act, took root as he helped shape Congressman Tom 

Lantos’ excellent human rights agenda as his chief of staff for 24 

years. Ambassador King holds a PhD in international relations 

from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and he has just 

recently returned from a fact finding mission to North Korea. Welcome back, Bob. Thank you. 

We will also then hear from Joseph Yun, who was appointed 

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in August 2010. Mr. Hun’s portfolio is focused on Southeast 

Asian issues. Since last summer, he has been closely involved in 

the implementation of the administration’s pragmatic engagement 

9

policy directed toward the junta in Burma, and he, in fact, just returned from a trip to that area. 

His overseas Foreign Service postings include South Korea, Thailand, France, Indonesia, and Hong Kong. He holds degrees from 

the London School of Economics and the University of Wales. We 

look forward to your testimony, Mr. Yun. 

Finally, we have Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Mr. Daniel Baer, who will address 

human rights and religious freedom issues in Tibet. Prior to assuming his position at the State Department in November 2009, 

Mr. Baer was an assistant professor in Georgetown University’s 

McDonough School of Business where he taught business ethics. 

Daniel holds a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a Doctoral degree from the University of Oxford. He could not get into my college, Miami Dade community College. So you had to go to Harvard 

and Oxford. So welcome back, Mr. Baer. 

I would like to kindly remind our witnesses to keep your oral testimony to no more than 5 minutes. You know this drill well, Dr. 

King. Oh, Mr. Berman is recognized. 

Mr. BERMAN. I thank you very much, Madam Chairman. Just as 

so often happens around here, the Judiciary Committee is marking 

up four bills at the same time as this is going on. So if a couple 

of us—I know Mr. Deutch is also on both committees—are running 

in and out, it is not because you said something that offended us 

or bored us. It is because we had to cast a vote over there. Thank 

you. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. Dr. King is recognized. Mr. Ambassador. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ROBERT KING, AMBASSADOR, SPECIAL ENVOY FOR NORTH KOREAN HUMAN 

RIGHTS ISSUES 

Ambassador KING. Madam Chairman, I won’t mention your comment about my age, but I do want to thank you for my job. If it 

hadn’t been for you and Mr. Berman, I wouldn’t be in this position. 

So I appreciate that. Thanks also for the invitation to testify today. 

Your letter raised five questions with regard to North Korea, and 

I would like to talk a little bit about those. First, the implementation of the North Korean Human Rights Act. 

A couple of weeks ago, I sent to you and to Mr. Berman copies 

of a report, the annual report, of the Special Envoy on the North 

Korea human rights dealing with the implementation of the North 

Korean Human Rights Act. It is unclassified. It is available. If 

there are any questions, if you want additional information than 

what I have done there, I would be happy to do that. 

The one thing I do want to say in terms of implementation of the 

North Korean Human Rights Act: One of the things the act specified is that the Special Envoy should participate in formulation and 

implementation of activities carried out under the act. 

My office and the State Department is in the same suite of offices that Ambassador Steven Bosworth and Ambassador Sung Kim 

have, and we speak every day on issues. We have meetings together. We confer. So I think there is not a problem at all in terms 

10

of my being a participant in what happens in terms of State Department policy on North Korea. 

The second issue that you raised in your invitation was a question about programs to resettle North Korean refugees in the 

United States and to assist North Korean refugees in China. You 

mentioned the problems of North Koreans choosing to settle in 

South Korea rather than the United States. 

Over the lat decade there have been some 21,000 North Koreans 

who have settled primarily, as I said, in South Korea. Because of 

the unique situation and problems for these refugees, Assistant 

Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell has discussed the 

concerns with his particular group, with all of our ambassadors in 

East Asia. The Bureau on Population Refugees and Migration has 

had special sessions to train and instruct staff that deal with those 

issues. 

So I think we have made a conscious effort to try to deal with 

the problem of these refugees. We work very closely with our ally, 

South Korea, in dealing with these refugees, and work to allow 

them to get out as quickly as possible when that is the case. 

You asked about the issues of what we are able to do in China 

to assist these refugees. If you would like to go into detail in terms 

of that issue, I would be happy to come up, but I would prefer to 

do it in a classified session because of the sensitivity of some of the 

issues involved there. 

The third issue you mentioned was broadcasting information to 

North Korea. That is a particularly important element in terms of 

opening North Korea to outside news and information. 

Under the Broadcasting Board of Governors, we provide broadcasting assistance for Voice of America and for Radio Free Asia to 

broadcast. Under funding that is provided to the State Department, 

we have provided funds for so called defector radio, radio operations that are primarily staffed by North Korean refugees, primarily in South Korea, and those are also broadcast. So we have 

continued to put major efforts into the broadcasting area. 

On the human rights situation in North Korea, the State Department puts out a series of reports annually on these kinds of issues. 

One of them is the country reports on human rights conditions. The 

last report calls the human rights conditions in North Korea deplorable. Mr. Smith mentioned the International Religious Freedom 

report, and mentioned that North Korea is a country of particular 

concern, then identifies a particular problem in terms of religious 

liberty. 

The Trafficking in Persons report identifies North Korea as a tier 

three country, a country whose government does not fully comply 

with the minimum standards and is not making significant efforts 

to do so. There is no question that North Korea has serious problems in terms of dealing with those issues. 

The fifth question that you asked about was the food situation 

in North Korea. As you know, North Korea has serious problems 

in terms of providing food for its population. Under average conditions, it provides enough food for about 80 percent of the population. 

This year, the government of the DPRK has requested assistance 

from a number of governments, private institutions, the World 

11

Food Program. There have been assessments conducted by American NGOs, by the World Food Program, and as you mentioned last 

week, I led a team to Pyongyang to analyze the food situation in 

North Korea where we were able to have a field team that is out 

in the field analyzing what the circumstances and conditions are. 

I had the opportunity of discussing with North Korea leaders the 

requirements that we would have in terms of monitoring what goes 

on, if we are to provide food aid. 

I want to emphasize, first of all, that we have not made a decision on providing food. Our field team will be back from Pyongyang 

later this week, and sometime in the future we will be making a 

decision on that issue, but I would emphasize that the consideration that is most important in making a decision on food will be 

the need. We will not take political considerations into account in 

deciding whether to provide aid. 

We will also have to look at competing requirements for our resources, and we will have to be assured that we have the ability 

to monitor the delivery of the food aid. 

I want to mention one last comment in terms of my visit to 

Pyongyang. During the last meeting we had with the First Vice 

Foreign Minister, during the dinner he commented that my title 

caused them some problems. That became an occasion where we 

had an exchange on human rights that lasted some 20 minutes. 

The conclusion of that was they were willing to talk about 

human rights. They are willing to look into some of the issues that 

we are interested in raising with them. He invited me back to 

Pyongyang to have discussions on human rights, and I am looking 

forward to possibly having that opportunity. 

Thank you very much. I hope I didn’t take too long. 

[The prepared statement of Ambassador King follows:]

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Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Dr. King. Thank you so 

much. 

Mr. Yun. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOSEPH Y. YUN, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC 

AFFAIRS 

Mr. YUN. I thank you, Madam Chairman and Mr. Berman and 

members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to testify 

today. As you requested, I am very pleased to discuss the central 

aspects of our Burma policy, recent developments, and the implementation of the JADE Act. 

We are pursuing a dual track approach, combing pressure with 

principled engagement. The goals of this policy are to achieve the 

unconditional release of all political prisoners, respect for basic 


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human rights, an inclusive dialogue with Nobel Laureate Aung San 

Suu Kyi and others that would lead to national reconciliation, and 

adherence to U.N. Security Council resolutions on nonproliferation. 

I would say the last is especially relevant to North Korea and 

Burma military trade. 

The U.S. plays a leading role in shining a light on the Burmese 

regime’s dismal human rights record. We maintain extensive, targeted sanctions against the regime and its key supporters. We 

work closely with the European Union and its member states, Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asian nations and others 

to press the regime to undertake genuine reform. 

U.S. sanctions are based on a series of executive orders and key 

legislation passed over the past 20 years. The most recent Burmaspecific legislation, the Block Burmese JADE Act of 2008, helps to 

ensure that we do not allow the use of our resources to perpetuate 

authoritarian rule. The JADE Act includes provisions for financial 

and travel sanctions that target former and present leaders of the 

Burmese Government, officials involved in the repression of human 

rights, other key supporters of the government and their immediate family members. 

As you mentioned, Madam Chairman, the JADE Act requested 

the appointment of a special representative and policy coordinator 

for Burma to ensure high level focus on improving the situation in 

Burma and promoting democratic reform in human rights. 

As you mentioned, we are very pleased that the President has 

nominated Derek Mitchell for this position. He brings a wealth of 

the Asia experience and senior government experience to the table. 

If confirmed, Mr. Mitchell will carry out his mandate to advance 

all aspects of our Burma policy. 

The JADE Act also bans the import of Burmese jade, rubies and 

related jewelry to the United States. This aspect of the Act is effective, although Burma’s regime reaps significant revenues from its 

tightly controlled gemstone industry and exports to neighboring 

countries. 

Recognizing that sanctions alone have failed to produce significant reform, we have engaged in direct dialogue with senior officials over the past 18 months. Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell 

traveled to Burma in 2009 and 2010. I have also made two visits 

to Burma, one in December 2010 and, more recently, 2 weeks ago. 

Burmese authorities expressed the desire for improved relations 

with the United States, but to date have failed to address our core 

concerns. We are disappointed by the lack of results, although from 

the outset we expected that real change would be a long, slow process. We will continue to urge the regime in private and in public 

to engage constructively and undertake meaningful reform. 

Burma’s 2010 elections, its first in 20 years, were based on a fundamentally flawed process with restrictive regulations that excluded Burma’s largest pro-democracy party, the National League 

for Democracy. These elections were neither free nor fair. 

The regime’s proxy political party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, won the majority of contested parliamentary 

seats, while 25 percent of all seats were reserved for military appointees. Members of opposition and ethnic minority parties won a 

negligible number of seats. 

19

Subsequently, the ruling authority, the State and Development 

Council, officially dissolved, and President Thein Sein, the former 

prime minister and a retired general, assumed power. His government comprises almost all active or former military leaders of the 

regime. 

Following the election, the regime released Aung San Suu Kyi 

from 71⁄2 years of house arrest, the end of an unjustified sentence. 

Currently, members of the international community, when allowed to visit Burma, are able to consult with her, as is our Embassy in Rangoon. I had the opportunity to discuss a wide range 

of issues with her during my own visits. 

We are committed to supporting Aung San Suu Kyi’s efforts to 

seek reinstatement of the NLD and to hold a meaningful dialogue 

with the senior government authorities. 

Our challenges in Burma remain daunting, and the human 

rights situation remains deplorable. The U.S. alone cannot achieve 

progress in Burma, and we are working very closely with our European allies and our Asian and regional partners to urge the Burmese Government to engage constructively with the international 

community and address longstanding concerns. 

Thank you for inviting me to testify before you today. I welcome 

any questions you may have. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Joseph Yun follows:]

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Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. 

I am going to break protocol a second, and I would like to recognize Mr. Connolly for 1 minute, because he was not there for the 

opening statements, and you had 3 minutes—1 minute. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank you, Madam Chairman and, forgive me, 

I have another hearing in another room. So that is why I was absent. 

I just want to welcome our witnesses and, thank you, Madam 

Chairman, for holding this hearing today. Very important, and we 

are delighted to have a special guest, Richard Gere, to talk about 

Tibet as well. 

Highlighting the human rights issues in all three of these countries, I think, is very important to the United States Congress to 

send an unadulterated message that this congress is committed to 

the pursuit of human rights in every country in the world. We believe that human rights is a universal aspiration, not just an American value, though an important American value, and hopefully, 

this hearing will further that cause. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Mr. Connolly. 

Mr. Baer is recognized. 


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STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DANIEL B. BAER, DEPUTY 

ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, DEMOCRACY, HUMAN 

RIGHTS AND LABOR 

Mr. BAER. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

Before we begin, I ant to thank you also, not only for inviting me, 

but also for inviting the second panel, the citizen experts and advocates that are part of that panel are an important part of this conversation, and I am very grateful. I am also very grateful that the 

person whose Tibet testimony will be a focus today will not be my 

own. So thank you very much for inviting Richard as well. 

More seriously, before we begin, I want to say how much being 

in this chamber reminds me of how proud I am to be an American 

and how proud I am that our Government is so deeply and thoroughly committed to advancing the cause of human rights. Your 

holding this hearing today, the members of this committee holding 

this hearing today is an example of that commitment, and I am 

honored to be here to speak with you, and I am honored to do the 

work that I get to do at the State Department every day. 

It is my pleasure to be here on behalf of Under Secretary Maria 

Otero, the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, to report that 

the Department of State is aggressively implementing the provisions of the Tibetan Human Rights Act—Policy Act of 2002. 

The administration’s goals in implementing this act are twofold: 

First, to promote a substantive dialogue between the Chinese Government and the Dalai Lama or his representatives; and, second, 

to sustain Tibet’s unique religious, linguistic, and cultural heritages. 

The administration, including the President, Secretary Clinton, 

Deputy Secretary Steinberg, Under Secretary Otero, Assistant Secretaries Campbell and Posner and myself, has urged the Chinese 

Government to engage in a dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his 

representatives and, through dialogue, to seek results. Regrettably, 

the Chinese Government has not engaged in such a dialogue since 

January 2010. 

We continue to remind the Chinese Government that the vast 

majority of Tibetans advocate, not for independence, but rather for 

genuine autonomy in order to preserve Tibet’s unique culture, religion, and fragile environment. 

We believe that the Dalai Lama can be a constructive partner for 

China. His views command the respect of the vast majority of Tibetans, and he has consistently advocated nonviolence. Engagement with the Dalai Lama or his representatives to resolve problems facing Tibetans is in the interest of the Chinese Government 

and of the Tibetan people. 

In addition to pressing for results based dialogue, we are implementing the act with Congress’ support by helping nongovernmental organizations that work in Tibet and assist Tibetan refugees in the region. Through numerous programs, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development support 

cultural and linguistic preservation, sustainable development, and 

environmental preservation in Tibet and Tibetan majority areas, as 

well as Tibetan refugee communities in other countries. 

Under Secretary Otero recently visited programs in India and 

Nepal where we assist Tibetan refugees and where we are actively 

29

seeking ways to strengthen Tibetan refugee settlements. Next 

month USAID’s India mission expects to issue an award for a new 

$2 million, 2-year program to support Tibetan settlements in India, 

Nepal, and Bhutan. 

Of course, our own efforts continue against a backdrop of continuing repression. We are extremely concerned about the deteriorating human rights situation in China and, in particular, in the 

Tibet autonomous region and other Tibetan areas. Recent regulations restricting Tibetan language, education, strict controls over 

the practice of Tibetan Buddhism, and the arrests of prominent 

nonpolitical Tibetans reflect the troubling human rights situation 

there today. 

Religious restrictions in Tibetan areas have dramatically worsened in recent years. Discriminatory religious policies have exacerbated tensions between Han Chinese and Tibetan Buddhists, and 

triggered the 2008 riots that claimed the lives of Han and Tibetan 

civilians and police officers. 

Chinese authorities control Tibet’s monasteries, including the 

number of monks and nuns, and interfere in the process of recognizing reincarnate lamas. Monks and nuns are forced to attend regular political patriotic education sessions, which sometimes include 

forced enunciations of the Dalai Lama. 

As Secretary Clinton has said, we were deeply concerned when 

we received reports in mid-March of this year that a young Tibetan 

monk at the Kirti monastery in Sichuan self-immolated in protest 

over the removal of monks from the monastery following the 2008 

riots. Reports state that as many as 300 monks were forcibly removed from Kirti again in April of this year, and paramilitary 

forces still have the monastery on lockdown. 

The State Department’s international freedom and human rights 

reports state that the Chinese Government represses freedom of 

speech, religion, association and movement within Tibet, and routinely commit serious human rights abuses, including ex judicial 

killings, detentions, arbitrary arrests, and torture. 

President Obama and Secretary Clinton have raised Tibet 

human rights concerns directly with Chinese officials multiple 

times, including with President Hu during his January 2011 visit 

to Washington. The President and Secretary Clinton met with the 

Dalai Lama in February 2010, and the Secretary raised Tibetan 

issues directly and at length in the 2010 and 2011 strategic and 

economic dialogues with China. 

Under Secretary Otero has met with the Dalai Lama four times 

since October 2009, and with his special envoy, Lodi Gyuari, nine 

times in the last 12 months. In April at the human rights dialogue 

in Beijing, Assistant Secretary Posner and I raised our concerns 

about China’s counterproductive policies in Tibetan areas of China, 

and reiterated our call for resumption of dialogue, and also raised 

specific cases. 

We were joined in that effort by then Ambassador Huntsman, 

who visited the Tibetan autonomous region last fall. We also met 

with the United Front Work Department which handles Tibetan 

policy for the Chinese Government, and pressed the Chinese to set 

a date with Lodi Gyuari for the next round of talks. 

30

We again raised concern about Tibetan religious freedom with 

Minister Wang Zuo’an from the State Administration of Religious 

Affairs. Separately, we have provided to the Chinese authorities a 

comprehensive list of individuals from across China who have been 

arrested or are missing, and that list included many Tibetans, including six cases that we specifically raised during our meetings. 

As I said when I began, I along with the rest of the administration share the goals that Congress expressed through the Tibetan 

Policy Act. We will continue to press the Chinese Government to 

respect internationally recognized human rights in Tibetan areas 

and throughout China, and we will continue to support efforts to 

help Tibetans maintain their cultural, linguistic, and religious heritage. 

Thank you again for inviting me today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Baer follows:]

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Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. 

Thank you trio for excellent testimony. 

I would like to ask about the Dalai Lama’s upcoming visit, as you 

related the meeting that had taken place. But during the Dalai 

Lama’s October 2009 visit to Washington, he was not invited to 

meet with President Obama at the White House. The President 

then had a state visit to China just 1 month later, and prior to that 

the Dalai Lama had met with every President during every visit 

to Washington since 1991. 

The Dalai Lama, as you pointed out, did meet with President 

Obama in February 2010, but was escorted out a back door, 

blocked by snow drifts and garbage bags. We have all seen that disrespectful image. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, is coming back to 

Washington this July, next month. Do you see any reason why the 

White House would not invite the Dalai Lama to meet with the 

President next month? 

Mr. BAER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. As you said, every 

President for the last 20 years has met with the Dalai Lama as an 

internationally recognized religious leader and a Nobel laureate, 

and including President Obama. I don’t know the specific plans for 

the upcoming visit, but I know that he met with him in February 

2010, and we are aware that the upcoming visit is planned for 

July. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. I would strongly encourage the President to pay the proper respect that this leader deserves, and that 

that sad escort out the back door was shameful. He deserves better 

treatment than that. So we hope that they have a productive meeting, and we also hope that he is treated with the respect that he 

has earned. 

On Burma, I would like to ask about the administration’s pragmatic engagement policy, whether it is principled engagement, 

pragmatic engagement, with the junta in Burma. It is a test case 

for President Obama’s statement that he made, his inaugural 

pledge to ‘‘extend a hand, if you are willing to unclench your fist.’’ 

However, this engagement policy appears to have borne little fruit. 

Since its adoption, we have seen an American citizen imprisoned 

and tortured, Burmese generals engaged in possible nuclear proliferation with North Korea, a flawed election last year, and the 

continued imprisonment of over 2,000 political prisoners, with only 

one, Aung San Suu Kyi, released. Can you please comment on 

what, if anything, has actually been gained from over 2 years of 

this pragmatic engagement with the generals in Burma? 

Mr. YUN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would agree with you 

that the engagement side of our dual-track policy has yielded very, 

very limited, if any, gains so far. I wouldn’t like to point any items 

as having made progress. 

I think there are a number of enormous challenges there. Number one, what do we do about political repression, as you mentioned, represented by over 2,000 political prisoners? 

What do we do about ethnic minority groups that are especially 

on the border area that continues to be deprived of some of the 

basic rights; and then, number three, the economic backwardness 

and lack of basic health care, basic education, and so on. While we 

do very much admit that engagement has made very little traction, 

36

I think our overall assessment is we got to continue the dual track 

side, both engagement as well as pressure track. 

We would say that one of the more bright aspects is our effort 

to engage ASEANs, especially neighbors such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries, and I think they are coming 

around to having a discussion with us. If anyone has leverage over 

Burma and the government, we believe it is the neighbors in 

ASEAN. So working with that side, the regional side, multilateral 

side, we believe very important, and we are having some traction 

there. Thank you. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, sir. Ambassador King, congratulations on gaining the release of U.S. citizen Eddie Jun. As 

you know, many of us have been worried about any quid pro quo 

about food aid in exchange for his release. I know that you spoke 

about it in your statements, but we worry that, if there had been 

any discussions about an exchange for someone’s life, that that only 

encourages these hostile regimes to take further hostages so that 

they can get something in return. But my time is up, and I will 

be glad to yield now to my friend, Mr. Berman, for his questions. 

Mr. BERMAN. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I have 

5 minutes for both question and answers. We have three countries, 

three witnesses. So I will try to keep myself under control and ask 

three questions, and then—ask questions to each of you, and then, 

hopefully, enough time for you to answer. 

North Korea: Ambassador King, assuming a decision is made to 

provide food aid based on this need criteria, what can we realistically do to ensure there is no diversion of that food assistance? Mr. Baer, we now give assistance, about $16 million a year, helping Tibetan refugees who cross the Himalayas, helping Tibetans 

preserve their cultural identity, giving political support to the 

Dalai Lama in negotiations with Beijing. How would cuts to these 

programs affect the Tibetan refugee population in India and Nepal 

as they seek to preserve their culture? Would the Chinese Government see or portray such cuts as diminishing support for Tibet in 

the U.S.? Would this action undermine—not that I see great hope 

for it—the Tibetan-Chinese dialogue that the U.S. has promoted? 

Mr. Yun, on Burma: The chair asked a question that I was going 

to ask regarding what we are getting. I supported the decision to 

go to a principled and pragmatic engagement with Burma, but 21⁄2

years later, one asks, other than Aung San Suu Kyi, what we have 

gotten for it. What role will the special envoy play on things like 

the Burmese regime’s refusal to release all political prisoners? Play 

that out for us, what do we do now? 

Ambassador KING. Do I get to go first? 

Mr. BERMAN. 3 minutes left. 

Ambassador KING. I will take one. With regard to monitoring 

and being certain that food is not being diverted, if we provide food 

aid to North Korea, there are a number of things that we have 

done in the past that we continue to work on with the North Korean Government now. First of all, we would provide monitors who 

would be on the ground in North Korea, who would have access to 

the delivery of the food, who would follow its delivery and make 

sure that the food that is allocated would be delivered to places 

where it is supposed to arrive. 

37

We would make sure that those monitors are Korean language 

speakers or that there are Korean language speakers there, so that 

we will be able to follow it fairly closely. 

The kinds of food we provide would be the kinds of food that are 

less desirable for the elite, for the military. For example, we would 

not provide rice. We would focus on some kind of a nutrition program that would provide other kinds of food that would be harder 

to divert, and we would also bring the food in at a very deliberate 

pace rather than having a large amount come in at one time that 

would have to be delivered in large quantity. 

So it is a process that we have developed over time that, I think, 

would be——

Mr. BERMAN. I can’t control myself. Let me add a question to this 

mix. What would a decision to provide food aid—how would that 

affect South Korea? What would their reaction be to that decision? 

Ambassador KING. We have had lengthy discussions with South 

Korea about providing food assistance. They would prefer that we 

not provide food assistance. On the other hand, they have allowed 

NGOs in South Korea to provide on their own. 

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Baer? 

Mr. BAER. Thank you, Mr. Berman. You asked about the $60 million a year of programming support that we provide both within 

and to Tibetans outside of Tibet. One way to look at that is, depending on how you count, it is about $2 a person for Tibetans, and 

I think those investments are very well made in terms of supporting the sustaining of linguistic, cultural, religious culture as 

well as in providing support, particularly for the refugee communities in neighboring countries. 

You asked what the impact would be. The impact would be significant of reducing that, I think, both the direct impact on the people who benefit from that support and, as you rightly put, we can’t 

control the way that a cut like that would be perceived, and we can 

predict that it would likely be perceived as a weakening of our commitment in a political sense. 

So we very much support continuing that support for the Tibetan 

people. 

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Yun, you got 20 seconds. 

Mr. YUN. Thank you, Mr. Berman. We cannot do this alone. We 

have to have the international community with us to bring about 

any significant change in Burma. That means especially the 

Asians, Southeast Asians, Europeans. They have to be with us. We 

cannot do it alone, and that will be the main job, I believe, of the 

special envoy. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. You did a good job of controlling yourself. Thank you. Mr. Smith, the subcommittee chairman on Africa, 

Global Health, and Human Rights. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you again, Madam Chair. Let me just ask Mr. 

Baer. I guess my question would be to you. Mr. Gere in his testimony notes that the Chinese Government has intensified its already restrictive policies that undermine Tibetan culture and religion, increasingly so since the 2008 uprisings in Tibet. 

Tibet remains largely sealed off to the outside world, and he goes 

on to talk about how hundreds of Tibetans, including monks and 

38

nuns, remain imprisoned for engaging in nonviolent dissent, and 

are subjected to torture or reeducation. 

He concludes in his testimony that China, again, is intensely focused on debate for rational and irrational reasons, and obviously 

makes a strong appeal and admonishes all of us to push for the autonomy issue as a win-win situation. 

My question is: What role, in your opinion, does Hu Jintao, the 

man who, when he was deployed to Tibet in 1989, even before 

that—he met with the Panchen Lama mysteriously, the Panchen 

Lama, we believe, was murdered. Nobody knows for sure, and it 

was Hu Jintao who ordered, as we all know, martial law and a 

crackdown in the immediate aftermath when the Dalai Lama got 

the Nobel Peace prize, all of this immediately prior to the 

Tiananmen Square massacre. Then all of a sudden, Hu Jintao is 

on a meteoric rise, a vertical rise, in the government, obviously 

landing where he is today. 

So my question is the Hu factor. Do we fully appreciate the bias, 

the, I would call it, hatred that Hu Jintao has toward the Tibetan 

people, the monks, the Dalai Lama in particular, and when President Obama did meet with him, many of us were profoundly disappointed that, when he had his press conference with Hu Jintao 

at the White House followed by a state dinner with all the flourishes, that human rights were not addressed by the President of 

the United States publicly. 

It was so bad that the Washington Post editorial the next day 

noted that President Obama defends Hu on rights, and President 

Obama went on to say that they have a different culture, they have 

a different political system. Yet the culture is one that desperately 

desires freedom and democracy, and the political system happens 

to be a brutal dictatorship. Don’t offer a defense for that, President 

Obama. And yet he did. 

So my question is—and I know you can say how many times we 

have dialogues and this and that, but it seems to me that, if there 

is not a focused, concerted, consistent, predictable, absolutely 

transparent statement from the President of the United States to 

his counterpart unelected dictator, Hu Jintao, much of what we are 

trying to do collectively on both sides of the aisle to help the Tibetan people and all those who are suffering in China goes and is 

laid aside. 

The Hu factor, the autonomy—was autonomy raised by the President in his visit with Hu Jintao at the White House or at any other 

meetings, and again that press conference will long live in my 

memory and many others’ as a grotesquely missed opportunity. He 

could have done it in very diplomatic tones, but he didn’t. So if you 

could. 

Mr. BAER. Thank you, Congressman. First of all, I agree with 

you that President Hu’s record on Tibet is not a good one. President Obama engaged him directly on the autonomy issue on his 

visit, and he also called for him, publicly, to meet with the Dalai 

Lama in February of this year. 

I agree that we need to maintain a focused, concerted effort. We 

need to not lose focus, and we need to not let things fall by the 

wayside. We need to continually raise these issues. When I was in 

Beijing in April with assistant Secretary Posner for the Human 

39

Rights Dialogue, this was raised repeatedly in many meetings with 

different parts of the Chinese Government. 

I think that Secretary Clinton and Vice President Biden, most recently when the Chinese were here for the strategic and economic 

dialogue, made clear that not only the issue of Tibet, which the 

Secretary raised at length in her meeting with her counterpart but 

also the broader issue, the broader repression in China right now 

is a serious, serious concern. 

It is problematic for the U.S.-China relationship. As Vice President Biden said, we can’t have a firm foundation for that relationship——

Mr. SMITH. On that point, if I could, because I am almost out of 

time: Sophie Richardson asks—she has a number of urges to the 

committee and to the administration—that there needs to be an 

ask for the release of Tibetan prisoners prior to Vice President’s 

visit to China later this summer. Will Vice President Biden ask for 

the release of those prisoners before his visit, and insist upon it? 

Mr. BAER. We routinely ask, and I expect that we will continue 

to routinely ask for the release of not only Tibetan prisoners but 

other prisoners. We raised the case of Gao Zhisheng, who you 

raised. The Secretary has raised his case several times, and we will 

continue to do that. Yes. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. 

Smith. Mr. Connolly is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Mr. Baer or Mr. 

Yun, with respect to Burma, the administration announced back in 

the fall of 2009 a shift in policy toward—we characterized as pragmatic engagement. In the ensuing 20 months, are there things we 

can point to that we think show positive development from a shift 

in that policy to pragmatic engagement? 

Mr. YUN. Thank you very much. As previously mentioned, I 

think the key item, the key gain from principled engagement is our 

ability to have meaningful exchanges with neighbors, ASEAN countries as well as the regional countries. I would agree with Madam 

Chairman’s assessment that, in terms of concrete gains coming out 

of Burma, we have had very few. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Not much. 

Mr. YUN. Yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. In terms of human rights, good for them in positively engaging with their neighbors, but what about internally in 

terms of the plight of Burmese citizens who are still incarcerated, 

detained, and abused? 

Mr. YUN. That remains the same and deplorable. There are still 

about 2050 political prisoners there. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. One likes the idea of pragmatic engagement, but 

one wonders whether that policy is working. 

Mr. YUN. I think, having said that, we have had this policy for 

now about 2 years, and I think we should give it a chance. In order 

for any policy to work, we have to bring along the international 

community. We cannot do it alone, and how do you bring along the 

international community? I think that is the key question. 

Right now, you have heard ASEANs saying that, in January, 

that sanctions ought to be lifted. So we need to engage them saying 

that we need to go the same direction. As you know, what has hapVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:56 Jul 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\060211\66780 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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pened in Burma is that it has turned increasingly to China, and 

how do we manage that in terms of their less dependence on other 

countries and more dependence on China? 

So I think all these things have to be taken into account, and to 

say that right now the engagement policy has had limited gains, 

I don’t think it translates into we should not pursue it. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Yes, although it is your own testimony you just 

gave that said it was limited gains. 

Mr. Baer, speaking of China, you cited the fact that Secretary 

Clinton brought up the issue of the Dalai Lama and the need for 

the Chinese to meet. How is that going? 

Mr. BAER. The Chinese have not offered dates for another round 

of that dialogue since January 2010. That is the longest gap since 

the dialogue started in 2002. 

We will continue to raise, as we have several times in recent 

months, the fact that we think that it is, as Richard Gere’s testimony says, a win-win, that the dialogue can be a fruitful way of 

finding solutions to problems facing the Tibetan people, that raise 

tensions that are problems for the Chinese Government, and that 

they should not shy away from the dialogue. They should embrace 

the dialogue, that the Dalai Lama is a good interlocutor for them, 

and that the dialogue can be productive, if they will engage. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. No, I understand our message, Mr. Baer. The 

question is results. Have the Chinese responded positively to that 

importuning from the Secretary of State? 

Mr. BAER. They have not. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. They have not. Do we have any reason to believe 

they are going to? 

Mr. BAER. I hesitate to make predictions about the decisions of 

the Chinese Government. We will continue to raise it. I think that 

we will continue to press the point that it is in the pragmatic interest of the Chinese Government. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Well, as the chairman said, perhaps one way to 

do that is to make sure he is fully welcome at the White House. 

That might be an interesting symbol for the Chinese to underscore 

the point you are making. 

Mr. King, Ambassador King, I have only 36 seconds, but don’t we 

need, speaking of the Chinese, the Chinese, frankly, to use their leverage with the North Koreans if we are going to ever get behavioral changes in Pyongyang? 

Ambassador KING. Definitely, and we are working with the Chinese. I think the Chinese find some of the same frustrations working with the North Koreans that we do. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. There was just a visit by the North Korea leader 

to China. Do we have reason to believe that the Chinese sort of sat 

him down and a Chinese uncle talk with him? 

Ambassador KING. We have reason to believe that they raised 

the issue of resuming the Six-Party Talks and more cooperative response on the part of the North Koreans, yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. Mr. Rohrabacher, 

the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations chair, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

41

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, and especially greetings to Ambassador King on having him back with us. 

One of the proudest moments I have had in my 22 years in Congress was when your former boss dragged up corporate leaders 

here to this hearing room to demand that they explain their complicity with the repression of the Chinese people, and I will never 

forget that, and I am very proud to have known Tom Lantos and 

served with him. 

China has allied itself with the world’s worst human rights abusers, and is itself one of the world’s worst human rights abusers; 

and you find a rogue regime murdering its people, you will find an 

alliance with China in that equation. 

We are trying to figure out why our protests haven’t had any impact, why when Mr. Hu gets invited to the White House, he doesn’t 

change his policies after something is mentioned somewhere to a 

Chinese official that we don’t like repression. 

This is nonsense. This is total nonsense. We have built the economy of China. We have created a Frankenstein monster. It has 

been American businessmen making profit off dealing with that repressive, corrupt regime that is the real message that America is 

sending to China. As long as we are sending technology and capital 

investment, building their economy, permitting them the technology they need to repress their own people, they are not going 

to take any protest from us seriously. What is this win-win? 

The Chinese policy we have had has been a lose-lose, not only 

are the people of China losing and the people of Tibet and the other 

repressed groups there, the Uyghurs, and the people who want 

freedom of religion and democracy, the Falun Gong. Yes, they have 

all lost. 

America has lost at the same time. We have our corporate leaders over there transferring all of our technological jobs and our 

basic industry to China, strengthening their dictatorship. 

As long as we permit that to happen, don’t think they are ever 

going to take us seriously about our protests that they put the 

Dalai Lama’s next successor in prison, and we don’t know where 

he is. Why should they? Why should they take us seriously, if there 

is no price for them to pay at all? 

Madam Chairman, I think we need to call corporate America 

here, the way Tom Lantos did, and put them on record, because 

these guys are obviously giving the right message, but America by 

our policy and by our building up of their economy is sending the 

wrong message to the dictators in China as well as in Burma and 

North Korea and elsewhere. 

One note. I would like to ask about Korea. There is a free trade 

agreement going through now with South Korea. Does that free 

trade agreement permit goods that are being built in that zone in 

which North Koreans can come down and work in that zone so that 

they don’t have to pay them as much as they pay them in South 

Korea? Are we going to permit items from that zone to be exported 

into the United States under that free trade treaty? 

Ambassador KING. I am sorry, Congressman. You are getting beyond my level of expertise on that. I know there has been concern 

about it. 

42

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, I can tell you this much. We end up 

with a free trade treaty with South Korea that permits their business elite, of course, cooperating with our business elite, to sell 

products that were made basically by slave labor, people coming 

down from North Korea into that zone, working at wages that then 

go to North Korea—and they pay them a pittance, Madam Chairman, a pittance of that, and the rest of it will go to North Korea. 

If we permit that to happen, how could anybody take us seriously 

that we believe that there should be sanctions on North Korea or 

that we are opposing the dictatorship in North Korea, when we are 

financing them, and we have been financing them for 15 years. 

I think that the world, and especially these poor people who are 

repressed in these various countries—they can’t hear what we say, 

because our actions are too loud. Our actions speak louder than our 

words, and they know when we are serious, and so do their oppressors. 

We will have progress in this world when people know that 

America is serious about liberty and justice and who we are supporting, but we haven’t been serious. Thank you very much, 

Madam Chairman. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Sires of New Jersey is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Madam Chairlady. I think there are a lot 

of things that haven’t been said here that should be said. One of 

them is the fact that I don’t think the Chinese are ever going to 

take us seriously as long as we turn around, we say to them, look, 

we are worried about human rights, and at the end of the conversation say, look, we need another $100 billion. How can anybody 

take us seriously when we complain about human rights, when 

they go into a State Department, they hack our computers, they 

steal our technology, we protest, and they ignore it? 

How can anybody take us seriously? We have the issue with bin 

Laden. We have the stealth helicopter. We had to blow it up. We 

were worried that the Chinese were going in there to steal the 

technology. 

The relationship that we have with China is too uneven, because 

every time we turn around, we are borrowing money from China. 

So I think that is a factor that has to be taken into consideration 

every time we make a case for human rights. They are just not 

going to take us seriously. 

They don’t care. They are moving forward. We are moving backward. They just do not care about human rights. I guess we do 

have to make the efforts, but sooner or later, it has got to change. 

I was just wondering, how would the election of a Tibetan prime 

minister affect the relationship between Tibet and China? Can anybody answer the questions? If we have an election where we have 

a prime minister, can you tell me, Mr. Baer, and the relationship 

between Tibet and the United States? 

Mr. BAER. I am not sure how the recent election of the prime 

minister of the government in exile will affect the relationship with 

China. We continue to support Chinese engagement with the Dalai 

Lama and his representatives. 

Mr. SIRES. That’s it? 

43

Mr. BAER. It has been the longstanding policy through a number 

of administrations to continue to see the positive benefits that are 

available to the Chinese of engagement with the Dalai Lama, because of the moral authority that he commands within Tibet and 

outside of Tibet, and to believe that that is the best path forward 

for political dialogue. 

Mr. SIRES. Well, I am certainly of the opinion, as Mr. Connolly 

was, that I think the President should invite him and should meet 

with him. He is a world leader. He is someone who represents millions of people, and to have him to go through the back of the 

White House, that is just not acceptable. 

We are supposed to be the leader in the world of human rights. 

We stand up for something. So for whatever it is worth, you might 

just want to relate to the President that there are a lot of people 

in this Congress that feel that he should receive and give him the 

honors that he deserves. Thank you very much. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Mr. Sires. Judge Poe, the 

vice chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, is 

recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, gentlemen, for 

being here. 

I think the overall picture should be addressed, and the overall 

focus should be on China. China is the culprit everywhere in the 

world. No matter where we are, China is snooping around causing 

trouble, and it is not good for the United States, and it is certainly 

not good for people around the globe. 

Human rights: China doesn’t believe in humans or rights. It is 

an organized, criminal activity that is the government. They steal 

American trade secrets. They steal our products. They use slave 

labor, and yet they own most of our debt, and we seem to have, 

in my opinion, a little cozy relationship with the Chinese and don’t 

take them for what they are. 

North Korea: Human trafficking, engaged in human trafficking 

into China. I think China is in on it and, when you have people 

escaping from North Korea to China—not necessarily the greatest 

stellar rights organization in the world found in China—you know 

things are bad in North Korea as far as human rights go. 

China gives a wink and a nod to the human trafficking of women 

into China. Probably goes back to their one child philosophy. I don’t 

know, but it is going on, and that is just one of the many problems 

in China, besides Tibet, that is taking place as well. 

Burma: Once again, you got the Chinese nose in Burma doing 

what it can to prevent, I think, human rights in that nation. 

So I don’t know if it is because they own our debt, if it is because 

we ignore the fact they are stealing all our products, then they reproduce them and then sell them back to the United States, whether they are a trade partner with us, but do we have as a nation 

a policy dealing with the human rights violator, China? 

Their tentacles are through the world, North Korea, Burma, 

China, but as opposed to looking at each country by itself, do we 

have a policy of dealing openly and honest with the world and 

Americans about the Chinese tentacles of consistently violating the 

rights of people throughout the world? Mr. Baer, do you want to 

weigh in on that? 

44

Mr. BAER. That is a big question. Look, I appreciate and agree 

with the fact that China, both domestically and as an international 

actor, has a very deeply disappointing record on human rights. 

I think that one of the things that will define our engagement 

with China on human rights in the years ahead is the increasing 

degree to which we recognize that, when we advocate for human 

rights and when we raise it, as we do and as we should and as Secretary Clinton did publicly during the strategic and economic dialogue, as Vice President Biden did, as President Obama did a few 

months earlier, as we continue to do that, it is not really about us. 

It is about us in that our commitment to human rights is deeply 

a part of who we are, but what we are advocating for is that the 

Chinese Government should recognize that people want to be treated with dignity. people everywhere want to be treated with dignity, 

and it is not sustainable to deprive them of that. 

The desire of the Chinese people and the people in other countries with which the Chinese have relations, including North Korea 

and Burma, to voice their own view of their futures, to have a say 

in how they are governed, to be able to freely assemble and associate and express themselves online—that is a right, a universal 

human right that will not be denied. It will not be denied forever. 

Mr. POE. Let me reclaim my time. But do we have a policy of 

dealing with China, not just with the human rights violations in 

their own country, but the fact that they are snooping around all 

over the world violating human rights of other people in their country? Do we have a plan? 

China ignores us. They don’t take us seriously. Is it because they 

control our debt, because of the balance of trade? They just ignore 

what we have to say. Do we have a plan? I guess that is what I 

am asking. Then I will ask Mr. King to weigh in on that or Ambassador King to weigh in on the remaining of my time. 

Mr. BAER. Sir, yes, we do engage with them on their engagement 

outside of China. It is an issue that I myself raised during the 

human rights dialogue and that the Secretary and others have 

raised in our engagement with them, because, obviously, China’s 

influence is not just within the context of our bilateral relationship 

but also as a rising player in the globe. 

So we certainly engage them, and we certainly engage them not 

only on their economic and military influence, but also on their influence on human rights conditions. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Judge, we are going to hold Dr. King. 

Maybe someone will follow up. Thank you. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Burton, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. There is an estimated 8–10 million people in reeducation camps or gulags in 

China, and I would like to follow up just briefly on what Mr. Smith 

was talking about, that we rolled out the red carpet for the head 

of the Chinese Government, and at the press conference there was 

no mention about the human rights violations that are taking place 

there and in the other countries that surround China. Do you have 

any idea why this administration and why the President hasn’t 

been very public about these horrible human rights abuses? 

45

I would really like to know. Mr. Poe just mentioned, is it because of the debt that we have with them, the $1 trillion-plus debt, or 

what is the reason the administration in a diplomatic way can’t be 

very, very strong in expressing our concern about the horrible 

human rights situation that the Chinese have and use in that part 

of the world? 

Mr. BAER. I share your view that it is critically important to 

make it clear to the Chinese Government that their human rights 

practices, including the reeducation through labor camps, etcetera, 

are not satisfactory, are intolerable, and that they are a serious 

issue to the United States Government and an impediment to our 

bilateral relationship. But I believe that they know that. 

Mr. BURTON. Well, when the head of the Chinese Government 

comes here and gets the red carpet treatment, and they have a 

state dinner for him and they then have a press conference with 

the President of the United States, it seems to me that there 

should have been some mention of the human rights atrocities that 

are taking place over there and in the surrounding countries. 

Mr. BAER. I believe that President Obama did raise human 

rights concerns publicly with President Hu, and I can tell you that, 

from the way that the Chinese Government reacts when we raise 

human rights, that they are aware that this is a serious concern 

and that it is a serious concern to them that we are concerned. 

Mr. BURTON. Well, if that is being done or if that has been done, 

I am not aware of it. I have been on the Foreign Affairs Committee 

now for a long, long time, and since this administration took place, 

I have heard nothing from the White House about the human 

rights violations and atrocities that are taking place in that part 

of the world. 

I would like to also ask Ambassador King. South Korea opposes 

giving food aid to North Korea. They are closer to the problem and 

know more about the problem of North Korea than probably anybody, because they are threatened by North Korea all the time. 

You said that there are monitors that go in when we send food 

aid, and obviously, we want to feed starting people. But I remember Mengistu in Ethiopia, and Mengistu was taking millions of dollars worth of food and the trucks to deliver the food to the starving 

masses in Ethiopia, and he was selling it to italy and to other countries. 

So I would like to know how we monitor that and, if we are monitoring that and it is helping the North Korean people, why is it 

that South Korea is opposing it? There must be some reason, because they are at loggerheads with North Korea all the time. 

Ambassador KING. We have a particularly close relationship with 

South Korea. We work with them very carefully, very closely. We 

consult with them on issues that relate to North Korea and that 

relate to regional security issues. 

We agree with them on many issues. There are some issues that 

we disagree. We have not made a decision to provide food. We are 

considering the possibility, and we have sent a team to determine 

whether there is a need that would justify it. 

Mr. BURTON. Well, you said you were in Pyongyang, and you met 

with them, and you anticipate going back, and you have a fairly 

good relationship with them. I would hope that the President of 

46

South Korea would be included in your discussions, not necessarily 

with the North Koreans, but that you would have the opportunity 

to sit down with him and find out in detail the reasons why they 

think this is a mistake, number one; and number two, I think it 

is extremely important, if the administration goes ahead with this 

humanitarian aid, that it gets to the people who are starving to 

death there. 

Like money, like gold, you can move it around to the benefit of 

the government in question, and I certainly wouldn’t like to see 20 

percent of the people in North Korea continue to starve while this 

food aid or the money from the food aid goes to the Government 

of North Korea so that they can further their Communist ideology. 

Ambassador KING. I have spent more time—a lot more time in 

South Korea than I have in North Korea, and I have met with very 

senior government officials, and we have had long conversations 

about the food aid situation. 

In terms of the monitoring, we have experience in the past. We 

have provided some food aid to North Korea in 2008, 2009. We had 

a letter of understanding in terms of how the aid would be monitored, and we think we were reasonably successful in terms of assuring that the aid that we provided was going to those who were 

most in need, to children, to nursing mothers, to the elderly, and 

we have ways of monitoring to make sure that it does. 

Mr. BURTON. Well, I hope that is the case. I remember when we 

had the nuclear issue, we thought they were going to be trustworthy, and they weren’t then as well. 

Ambassador KING. Well, that is why we verify. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. Congresswoman Schmidt of Ohio is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. SCHMIDT. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I first am going to 

direct my attention to Mr. Baer. 

Last fall I had the rare opportunity, quite by accident, to have 

a private meeting with the Dalai Lama for almost 30 minutes, and 

I found him to be a remarkable, honest, holy man, somebody that 

exudes peace and tranquility, and there were a few messages that 

he gave to me, one being to make sure that you take care of your 

family, but he also wanted me to understand that the family extended beyond the borders of those that are in my own home. 

So now I feel a little bit of a responsibility toward my extended 

family in Tibet and the human rights atrocities that are occurring 

because of the Chinese Government. 

First, a simple little question, because I don’t know whether this 

reflects the attitude of the administration or we just haven’t gotten 

around to it, but I understand that today, and much of 2010 as 

well, there has only been one permanent staff member in the Tibet 

Coordinator’s office in this administration. Yet under the appropriations legislation, the Tibet office has been given a $1 million 

annual budget for three staff members. Can you tell me why the 

Tibet Coordinator’s office is not fully staffed? That is just a simple 

question. 

Mr. BAER. Thanks very much. You are right. There is one permanent staff member currently in that office. 

Ms. SCHMIDT. But it has been over a year. Why don’t we have 

three? Why aren’t we working harder? 

47

Mr. BAER. The transition in the last 6 months—the current occupant of the permanent staff member sitting is directly behind me 

right now, and the former occupant is now working for Senator 

Kirk. So there is only one permanent staff member. You are right. 

Since the coordinator is in the Under Secretary’s office, there are 

a number of us who work on a daily basis——

Ms. SCHMIDT. Mr. Baer, we appropriated money for this particular office to focus on this particular issue, and while we can 

talk about all the other reasons why China is acting in the way 

that it is, this is just one little thing that is a simple fix. If we gave 

you the appropriations for three staff members, maybe we can do 

a better job resonating the problems that Tibet is undergoing if we 

had it fully staffed. 

So it has had well over a year. Why isn’t it fully staffed? 

Mr. BAER. I understand, Madam Congressman. We have been 

trying to bridge the gap with visiting fellows, etcetera, and we will 

have—assuming the final security clearance goes in, we will have 

the second full staff member in the next few weeks. 

Ms. SCHMIDT. Moving on, I can see we are not going to be doing 

this in a quick time frame, and I have only a few seconds left. 

In eastern Tibet, sir, the Kirti Monastery is under siege by the 

Chinese security forces. Following the self-immolation by a Tibetan 

monk in April who was protesting Chinese policies, policies that he 

could no longer tolerate, the police descended on the monastery, 

and some 300 monks have been taken away for ‘‘patriotic education.’’ I fear what that means to them. 

Two townspeople were killed trying to protect the monks from 

being taken away. What has this administration, albeit limited 

with only one person on board, done to protest the crackdown on 

the Kirti monastery? Was it brought up in the recent U.S.-China 

human rights dialogue and strategic and economic dialogue, and 

have you as diplomatic personnel sought to visit Kirti Monastery 

to assess this situation? 

Mr. BAER. Thank you. I will try to be expeditious in my reply. 

Yes, as soon as we heard about the reports about the events at 

Kirti, starting with the self-immolation on March 16 and the crackdown following, we immediately engaged, but we raised this incident at length, particularly, in a meeting with United Front Work 

Department in Beijing. 

Ms. SCHMIDT. Have we visited the monastery? 

Mr. BAER. We have not visited the monastery. 

Ms. SCHMIDT. Why haven’t we visited the monastery? 

Mr. BAER. We have requested a visit to the monastery. We requested that several times during the course of the humans right 

dialogue, both with our interlocutor at the MFA, as well as the 

State Administration for Religious Affairs, as well as the United 

Front Work Department. We have made it clear that, if the Chinese Government would—if the reports of the Chinese Government 

are accurate, they should not——

Ms. SCHMIDT. What would happen if we just showed up at the 

door and said I want to look? 

Mr. BAER. My understanding is that it would be very difficult for 

us to get to the door. 

Ms. SCHMIDT. Have we ever tried? 

48

Mr. BAER. I do not know the answer to that question. 

Ms. SCHMIDT. Thank you. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much, Ms. Schmidt. I 

am very pleased to recognize Ms. Buerkle, the vice chair of Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, for 5 minutes. 

Ms. BUERKLE. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Quite honestly, I 

am sitting here listening to China’s record, the concern that we 

have, whether it is that they own our debt, the abysmal human 

rights record that they have and they continue to perpetuate, and 

as I listen to you all, it is a pretty tepid response we are getting 

here today. There doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency. 

So with that, I want to follow up with my colleague, Judge Poe. 

He talked about a plan and understanding and appreciating—making sure this administration understands and appreciates what is 

going on. 

We didn’t get to Ambassador King about his thoughts. If you can 

articulate for us, what is this administration’s plan that illustrates 

to us an appreciation of what is going on? 

I guess I would ask all of you, why the tepid response? There 

doesn’t seem this sense of urgency. Is it because they own our 

debt? Is it because we—you know, we are tiptoeing around here. 

Mr. Baer, you mentioned that—this is when you were asked by 

Judge Poe about the plan, you said it is not about us; China should 

recognize that people wanted to be treated with dignity. 

Well, guess what? They don’t, and they won’t unless the United 

States of America stands for and sends a clear message to them 

that we are protectors and preservers of human rights. That is 

what the United States of America stands for, and that should be 

the message that they get from us. 

So I will just give you an opportunity to respond to that, and I 

want to save to 1 minute to yield to my colleague, Mr. Smith from 

New Jersey. 

Mr. BAER. Let me be brief, and then my colleagues can weigh in. 

I appreciate very much your comments, and I share with you the 

sense of urgency about the condition of human rights in China. 

There has been a backsliding in recent months. 

It is of deep, deep concern, and I don’t believe that either—

speaking for myself or for Secretary Clinton, that there is any tepidness in our response. I think the comments of Secretary Clinton 

starting in January on the eve of President Hu’s visit, her comments at the rollout of the human rights reports, her comments at 

the recent strategic and economic dialogue have made it very clear 

that we see this as an urgent concern, that we see it as China not 

acting in China’s interest, but as Secretary Clinton said, through 

the arc of history countries that disrespect human rights will be 

less likely to be stable, prosperous and successful. 

So we have made it very clear, I think. It hasn’t been tepid at 

all, and I would say to you today, I certainly—for my own part, in 

my work within the department and when I travel to Beijing, Ambassador Huntsman was engaged. I expect Ambassador Locke to be 

deeply engaged in these issues. 

These are an urgent concern for the United States Government. 

49

Ms. BUERKLE. If I could just interrupt here, why then—how do 

you account for the backsliding that you just referred to? 

Mr. BAER. Well, the backsliding has to do with decisions made 

by the Chinese Government, and it is true that we, the United 

States Government, are not the only lever that affects how the Chinese Government makes their decisions, but we are taking a number of actions to make clear to them that, from our perspective, this 

is not in their interest, and it is also inconsistent with what we 

need to see in order to have a positive bilateral relationship in the 

future. 

Ms. BUERKLE. Thank you. I have 30 seconds left before I yield 

to the gentleman. 

Ambassador KING. I will be quick. One of the difficulties with our 

relationship with China is that it involves not only human rights 

but a whole range of other issues. 

We depend on the Chinese in terms of dealing with Iran. We depend on the Chinese in terms of dealing with North Korea. The 

Chinese are a major player economically. The Chinese are a major 

player in the United nations, and we have things we would like 

them to do in the Security Council. 

Human rights is one of many issues, and we don’t have the luxury of being able to concentrate just on human rights. Human 

rights is important. We try to put our efforts into it, and we, I 

think, have made some progress in that area. 

Ms. BUERKLE. Thank you, Ambassador King. I yield my time. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Buerkle. I appreciate you yielding. 

Let me just ask Mr. Baer a brief question. 

Since Nuremberg war crimes tribunal and Tokyo as well, it has 

been very clear that there is no statute of limitations on either 

genocide or crimes against humanity. A few days ago Bosnian Serb 

Miladic was found and will face trial at The Hague for genocide at 

Srebrenica and crimes against humanity for the bombing of Sarajevo. 

As we all know, Hu Jintao ordered the murder of Tibetans in 

1989. It began his rise to power where he now metes out terrible 

human rights abuse on a daily basis. My question is: I believe it 

is time for an emphasis not just on government responsibility, but 

on holding individuals personally responsible. 

So my question would be: Do you believe, does the administration 

believe that Hu Jintao and others who are committing crimes 

against humanity and genocide, especially in Tibet, each and every 

day should be held accountable at The Hague or any other venue 

like it? 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Mr. Smith. That is an excellent question. 

Mr. SMITH. That is a yes or no question. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. I am very sorry, but we are out of 

time, and I thank the panelists for appearing before us, and we 

hope that you come back again with more concrete answers. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Now I would like to introduce our second witness panel. The chair is pleased to welcome our witnesses. 

Mr. Richard Gere really needs no introduction. While Richard is 

celebrated throughout the world for his impressive career in film, 

50

he is here today in another role of equal importance as an advocate 

for His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet. 

Richard’s interest in Buddhism in Tibet traces back to a trip he 

made to Nepal in 1978. He is co-founder of the Tibet House, the 

creator of the Gere Foundation, and the chairman of the board of 

directors of the International Campaign for Tibet. He has previously appeared before this committee as a witness in March 2007 

under the chairmanship of Tom Lantos. We are very glad to have 

you back, Richard, and I thank you for being always so gracious 

as we line up our summer interns, and you are very kind to take 

a photo with each and everyone of them. 

Next we have Mr. Aung Din, who also previously testified before 

this committee in October 2009. Aung Din not only talks the talk, 

but he has walked the walk. Why do I say this? He has served over 

4 years behind bars as a political prisoner in Burma. His arrest resulted from his political activities in 1988 when he helped lead the 

country’s nationwide pro-democracy uprising as vice chairperson of 

the All Burma Federation of Student Unions. 

After Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience and helped gain his release, Aung Din came to Washington, 

DC. Here, he founded the U.S. Campaign for Burma, an umbrella 

group of Burmese dissidents in exile and American activists. 

He has received a degree in master of international service from 

American University’s School of International Service in 2007, as 

well as degrees from the Singapore Institute of Management and 

Rangoon Institute of Technology. Welcome back, Mr. Aung Din. 

We also would like to welcome Mr. Chuck Downs, the executive 

director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. He 

gave us a copy of his latest publication, ‘‘Taken: North Korea’s 

Criminal Abduction of Citizens of Other Countries: A Special Report by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.’’

His career in defense and national security issues has spanned 

more than two decades. He previously served as Deputy Director 

for Regional Affairs and Congressional Relations in the Department of Defense’s East Asia Office. 

As a senior fellow at the National Institute for Public Policy, he 

chaired the North Korea Working Group, which provided policy recommendations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. 

He has published numerous articles in the New York Times, the 

Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and is the author 

of a celebrated work on North Korean diplomacy, ‘‘Over The Line: 

North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy.’’

He graduated with honors in political science from Williams College. Glad to have you, Mr. Downs. 

Finally, the committee welcomes Sophie Richardson, the advocacy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division. 

Ms. Richardson has conducted research and published articles in 

such publications as the Far Eastern Economic Review and the 

Wall Street Journal on democracy and human rights in China, 

Hong Kong, Cambodia and the Philippines. She is also a commentator on Asian human rights issues, having appeared on CNN, the 

BBC and the National Public Radio. 

51

Ms. Richardson is a graduate of the University of Virginia and 

Oberlin College and speaks Mandarin Chinese. Welcome, Ms. Richardson, to our committee. 

I kindly remind our witnesses to keep your oral testimony to no 

more than 5 minutes, and without objection your written statements will be made as a part of the record. So we will start with 

Mr. Gere. Thank you, Richard. 

STATEMENT OF MR. RICHARD GERE, CHAIRMAN OF THE 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS, INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR 

TIBET 

Mr. GERE. How are you all doing, by the way? Everyone awake? 

Madam Chairman, thank you so much for having this testimony 

today. This hearing is very important, and I, for one, am so extraordinarily moved by the words I hear but, even more so, the 

passion in the voices and the hearts of all of you on this committee. 

You are educated. You are feeling. You are committed people, and 

as a U.S. citizen we couldn’t ask for more than that of you. So I 

thank you very much for bringing that with you today. 

I have a long written statement. I think you all have that. I am 

not going to go through that, but I hope you would look at that 

later, because I spent a lot of time working on that. I will read the 

first few pages just for context, and I want to have more of a lively 

dialogue between us. I think it will be more fruitful. 

Much has been covered, by the way, so many excellent questions 

and excellent responses. I felt a little sorry for Mr. Baer who, obviously, is a working stiff and is defending a lot of things that he 

probably personally doesn’t want to defend, but he did a very good 

job at that. I want to thank him for being here and taking minimal 

abuse today. 

As chairman of the Board of the International Campaign for 

Tibet, I appreciate the opportunity to testify here on an issue that 

challenges our moral compass and our ability to settle fundamental 

differences between people without resorting to violence. 

There are few international issues that have remained unresolved as long as Tibet has, nor one that has so intensely engaged 

the emotions of the American people. We Americans care about 

Tibet. As Senator Daniel Moynihan once said, ‘‘The Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1949 does not become less criminal because it has 

remained in place over such a long period of time. The Chinese 

have been brutal. They have made no bones about it and have 

made no apologies.’’

The question of Tibet’s incorporation into the People’s Republic 

of China and the status of the Tibetans impacted by Chinese rule 

in an issue that continues to create obstacles in the U.S.-China relationship, and for good reason. China resolutely refuses to recognize the Tibetans’ basic rights as defined not only by the Universal 

Declaration of Human Rights but also by the Chinese constitution 

that contains clear protections for national minorities, whether 

they are Uyghurs, Mongolians or Tibetans. 

I would like to note that, more recently, we have begun to witness the same intensified persecutions against Chinese citizens 

also, artists, writers, poets, lawyers, free thinkers, even simple 

farmers who have been aggressively pursued, in some cases disVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:56 Jul 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\060211\66780 HFA PsN: SHIRL
52

appeared, imprisoned or even tortured, all outside the framework 

of law. The vast apparatus of the People’s Republic of China moves 

against any expression of free thinking that is perceived as challenging the authority of the Communist party, no matter how nonviolent or benign, which sounds suspiciously like North Korea, 

Burma and any other authoritarian regime on the planet. 

I think we should view the subject of today’s hearing, North 

Korea, Burma and Tibet, as case studies that are not dissimilar to 

failed systems where long simmering tensions have erupted into violence elsewhere in the world, cases we have seen today where legitimate grievances are left unattended, and fundamental freedoms 

are violently suppressed, where the voice of the people is stifled, 

and the rule of law fails to protect chronically and systematically. 

Now to quote Secretary Clinton, Beijing is on a ‘‘fool’s errand’’ to 

think it is immune to change or that it can continue to suppress 

the will of its people to communicate freely as human beings on 

this small interconnected planet. 

If the concept of the will of the people is meaningful to us at all, 

as many of us believe—I think everyone in this room does—then 

we need to look very carefully at how we engage the People’s Republic of China vis a vis Tibet. We can do, and we must do much, 

much better. 

Just something I would like to offer before I finish this part of 

my discussion is that neither the International Campaign for Tibet 

nor the people of Tibet are interested in China bashing. We have 

no interest in China failing. We would like to see a successful 

China, but one that is worthy as being, as the Dalai Lama says, 

an older brother to the other nations of Asia, a kind, generous, 

open, beneficent entity in Asia, and for it to be that is a success, 

truly a success. 

I think, if we follow our own hearts as Americans, and as we 

have evolved our own system and insist that all of our decisions vis 

a vis China come from that place, we can help them to become 

truly successful, and in that process, of course, Tibet will prosper. 

I have no doubt about that. Thank you all very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gere follows:]

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Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Downs. 

STATEMENT OF MR. CHUCK DOWNS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA 

Mr. DOWNS. Thank you, Madam Chairman. It is a great pleasure 

for me to be here today. As some of you may recall, I spent a few 

years working on Capitol Hill for the Policy Committee. I have the 

greatest respect for this particular committee and everything you 

have done for North Korea. 

I appear before you today as the executive director of the U.S. 

Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and my statement 

goes through a number of issues relating to North Korea, all of 

which you are familiar with. But you have asked me to focus on 

the North Korean Human Rights Act today, which this committee 

sponsored in 2004, and Madam Chairwoman, you reauthorized as 

recently as 2008. It is a great piece of legislation, one that stands 

as a hallmark of the American people’s interest in the human 

rights of the people of North Korea. You are to be commented for 

that incredible achievement, and it gives us a roadmap from which 

we can look at a number of issues relating to North Korean human 

rights. 

Bob King, whose excellent appearance today, his fine testimony, 

and his recent trip to North Korea, is a living example of how wise 

it was to create a position of Special Envoy for North Korean 

Human Rights. 

My organization had the pleasure of having as its distinguished 

co-chair for many years the late Congressman Stephen Solarz. I actually remember helping people prepare for testimony before Congressman Solarz when he was the chairman of one of your subcommittees. His death is a great loss, as is that of former Congressman Lantos, he is with us in spirit today. 

Two thousand and four was an extremely interesting year for 

human rights in North Korea. You will all immediately think that 

that was the year that the North Korean Human Rights Act was 

passed. I believe it was passed on July 21st of 2004. The same 

year, a former U.S. military defector, Charles Jenkins, managed to 

put the North Korean Government in a position of having to release him so that he could join with his wife, a former Japanese 

abductee, in Japan. He left North Korea on July 12th. 

There was another big event also in July. Some 468 North Korean refugees who had made it through China, went through 

Yunnan Province, made it to Vietnam, and were sent back to South 

Korea with the approval of the government and the cooperation of 

the Government of Vietnam, socialist Vietnam, and the Government of the Republic of South Korea. 

These actions, starting with the North Korean Human Rights 

Act, infuriated North Korea, and North Korea said in a formal 

statement issued by KCNA, the North Korean mouthpiece, ‘‘The 

DPRK will certainly make NGO organizations in some countries 

pay for the North Korean Human Rights Act.’’

On August 14, an American citizen, a young man from Utah, 24 

years old, decided to travel by himself in Yunnan. He said goodbye 

to his friends who went back to Beijing, and he decided to go up 

62

the Leaping Tiger Gorge to a place called Zhongdian. He visited a 

restaurant there, a Korean restaurant, three times, and disappeared. 

Our organization is looking very closely at the possibility that 

this American citizen, who spoke perfect Korean because he had 

been a Mormon missionary in Korea, and he spoke Chinese very 

well and, of course, he spoke English very well with a Midwestern 

standard dialect—he may, in fact, have been abducted by North 

Korea. 

This would make the United States the 14th country to have lost 

an individual to North Korea. We quite often think that the Japanese were the only ones abducted from seaside resorts along the 

coast of Japan, but that is not, in fact, the case—the North Koreans have abducted four Lebanese, people from the Netherlands, 

people from France, and a Romanian. 

The Romanian was lured to Hong Kong, found herself in 

Pyongyang. Malaysians and Singaporians were also lured to what 

they thought were job offers from people they thought were Japanese, and they ended up in Pyongyang. Many of these people were 

never heard from again except that they had made it into the notes 

of other abductees and other defectors and agents who eventually 

defected. 

So thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I appreciate the opportunity 

to be here and to focus on the wide range of crimes that North 

Korea commits against human rights. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Downs follows:]

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Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. Din? 

STATEMENT OF MR. AUNG DIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & COFOUNDER, U.S. CAMPAIGN FOR BURMA 

Mr. DIN. Madam Chairwoman and Mr. Berman and members of 

the committee, thank you very much for holding this hearing today. 

Last week the Chinese Government hosted leaders from North 

Korea and Burma in its capital, Beijing. So the Burmese President, 

Thein Sein received more than $760 million interest-free loan, and 

Kim Jong Il also received financial and moral support from the 

Chinese Government. So with the strong backing and blessing from 

the Chinese Government, Thein Sein and Kim Jong Il continue 

their oppression against their own citizens unabated. 

I believe they also learned from their big brother how it controls 

its own citizens under severe restrictions and how it brutalizes different people and cultures. 

So this is the duty of the United States. Where the Chinese Government has opened its arms to embrace its fellow dictators, the 

United States Congress supports people living under the oppressed 

regimes in Burma, North Korea, Tibet and all over the world. 

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The Tom Lantos Block Burmese JADE Act authorized a procedure to terminate the sanctions clearly if the President determines 

and certifies that the military regime has (1) unconditionally released all political prisoners; (2) entered into a substantive dialogue 

with the democratic forces led by National League for Democracy 

and ethnic minorities; and (3) allowed humanitarian assistance to 

the populations affected by the armed conflict in all regions in 

Burma. Sadly, these conditions are not met yet. 

Almost all of the generals who have held power over the last 20 

years are still doing so under the veneer of civilian rule. There are 

still more than 2,000 political prisoners. There are still more than 

2 million refugees and illegal immigrants in neighboring countries 

who are forced to flee Burma to avoid political, ethnic and religious 

persecutions as well as economic hardship. 

There are still about a half-million ethnic people who are hiding 

in jungles and mountains inside the country to avoid being killed 

by the Burmese soldiers, and more than 3700 villages were destroyed or burned down by the Burmese regime in the eastern 

Burma area in its decades old military campaign against ethnic minorities; and there are still tens of thousands of child soldiers within the Burmese military. 

Basic freedoms such as the freedom of press, freedom of association, freedom of religion and Internet freedom are restricted. The 

gap in the country between the powerful and the powerless, the 

rich and the poor, the privileged and the disenfranchised continues 

wider, unattended, and unabated. 

Therefore, I strongly call on the United States Congress not only 

to approve the renewal of the sanctions on Burma, but also to 

strengthen it and fully implement it. Let me explain 

The JADE Act has imposed targeted financial sanctions on 

former and present leaders and officials of the regime, as well as 

any other Burmese persons who provide financial, economic, political support for the regime, as well as their family members. 

The Department of Treasury has added names and entities of 

targeted people under their Special Designated Nationals (SDN) 

list. However, the Burmese cronies under the targeted sanctions by 

the Department of Treasury are much fewer in number than those 

who are sanctioned by the Governments of Australia and European 

Union. Many business cronies who are under the EU or Australian 

sanctions are still at large from the U.S. financial sanctions. I mention some names in my prepared testimony. 

Also, the financial sanctions should also target cronies who are 

providing the regime with political and propaganda support. For 

many years, the regime has carried out a campaign called Attack 

the Media with Media to counter international criticism against its 

illegal rule through international media and foreign based radio 

stations. 

In addition to the regime owned newspapers and TVs and radio 

stations, the regime allows some cronies to set up media companies 

and produce publications of journals and magazines, as well as 

broadcasting of FM radio stations. These publications and broadcasts portray the military as the one and only institution that can 

save the country from disintegration, attack Aung San Suu Kyi and 

the democracy forces as the puppets of the western powers, and deVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:56 Jul 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\060211\66780 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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nounce international pressure on the regime as unfair and biased, 

and praise China, Russia and Cuba as true friends of Burma. So 

I mention some names in my prepared testimony. 

However, financial sanctions alone will not hurt the regime and 

cronies substantially enough. Over time they can find ways to 

avoid the U.S. financial sanctions by moving their assets to other 

countries, using the Euro instead of American dollars, engaging 

with some agents to make U.S. dollar transactions, and setting up 

front companies to cover up their real identities. 

Therefore, the crucial part of the JADE Act should be implemented. The additional banking sanctions contained in the JADE 

Act has the power to penalize any foreign bank that is doing business with the regime or managing the regime cronies’ money. So 

this one should be implemented. If it does, it will be an effective 

threat to the regime and its cronies and foreign banks that manage 

their money. 

So the dictators in Burma, the military and its proxy party do 

not run their country themselves alone. They are fully supported 

by the business cronies who are allowed to control over entire sectors of the country’s economy, trade, and natural resources in exchange for the allegiance and wealth sharing with the generals. 

They are like Ruhr industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who supported Hitler and have funded Hitler and his Nazi party in Germany before 

the Second World War. 

So the United States should identify cronies like Fritz Thyssen 

in Burma and imposed financial and banking sanctions on them. 

This will be the best way to cut economic lifeline of the generals 

and further prevent them from stealing from the people. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Din follows:]

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Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you for that recommendation. 

Thank you. 

Ms. Richardson. 

STATEMENT OF MS. SOPHIE RICHARDSON, ASIA ADVOCACY 

DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Madam Chairwoman, in an effort to cover all 

three in 5 minutes, I am going to cut to the chase. We are compelled to start with North Korea where, despite lip service to the 

human rights provisions in the constitution, the regime remains 

one of the most abusive in the world. This is a government that 

happily continues to pursue collective punishment, public executions and a range of forms of arbitrary detention. It also harshly 

people who leave the country without state permission. 

The economic mismanagement and Kim Jong Il’s proclaimed 

‘‘military first’’ policy are also threatening the lives of countless 

North Koreans. This year the World Food Program has reported 

that North Korea could face its worst food crisis since the famine 

of the 1990s, which claimed over 1 million lives. 

Given these circumstances, we do urge that the U.S. respond 

positively and immediately to the humanitarian imperative of resuming food aid to North Korea, though donors should insist on the 

kinds of steps that Ambassador King articulated about monitoring 

of the delivery and the delivery of food assistance. 

We believe that some of the startling increases in access granted 

by the North Korean Government to the U.S., the U.N. and others 

is perhaps evidence of the regime’s growing desperation, and that 

that should be acted on, and that the State Department should 

move to try to make those changes permanent. 

We also urge that the U.S. continue to strongly press the Chinese Government to stop practicing refoulement, essentially sending people back to a well founded fear of persecution by sending 

them back to North Korea where they face severe penalties. 

We also encourage the U.S. to continue to lean on the North Koreans to let in the relevant U.N. special rapporteurs who can report 

on human rights, on food aid, and on issues related to arbitrary detention and ex judicial executions. 

Burma: I am going to spend an extra minute on Burma, because 

I am a little bit taken aback by some of the State Department’s testimony this morning. 

Some people have looked at the political changes in Burma, the 

election of a President and a Parliament, and concluded that this 

is a new government. That is a fiction. These are the same people 

behaving in the same ways as were running the country 6 months 

ago. 

We supported the Obama administration’s decision to try to engage the Burmese military 2 years ago, and we welcomed along the 

way domination of the United States Special Representative and 

Policy Coordinator for Burma, but the question remains, what policy is there to be coordinated? 

I think we also need to spend a few minutes talking about 

whether the regime’s lack of concessions is in part a lack, in part 

a function of the State Department not necessarily—or the administration not necessarily pulling all the levers that are available to 

79

it. I want to talk about two in particular that were not mentioned 

this morning, and that are worth serious consideration. 

The administration has said that it is committed to maintaining 

sanctions against the Burmese Government, but in reality it has 

refused to implement the full complement of sanctions envisioned 

by the JADE Act, including the one option most likely to be effective, which is pursuing the banks and other financial institutions 

that are holding funds on behalf of the Burmese junta. 

Moreover, 6 months ago Secretary Clinton said that the administration was committed to—and I quote—‘‘seek accountability for 

the human rights violations that have occurred in Burma by working to establish an international commission of inquiry.’’ But in reality, the administration has made little or no effort to make the 

commission a reality. 

Now this morning we heard Mr. Yun talk about how the U.S. 

can’t do things alone. Well, you know what, 15 other governments 

have agreed to support the idea of a commission of inquiry, and I 

keep asking what the U.S. has actually done to make this a reality. 

Instead, I get told that it is hard. 

You know, what is really hard? it is really hard being a Burmese 

political prisoner right now, and if the U.S. doesn’t pull these levers and pursue all of the means that are available to it in these 

circumstances, it is in effect saying to people like those political 

prisoners, monks and students and other people who have come out 

on the street, you know what, guys, you are going to have to do 

it again; you are going to have to offer yourself up as human sacrifices to try to get the world’s attention again. That is unacceptable. 

In Tibet, since March 2008 when protests blew up across the plateau, the human rights situation, in our view, has worsened considerably as a result of several new developments, including a significant increase in the number of troops garrisoned on the plateau, 

and intensified propaganda campaigns and hard line discourse 

from the government that blames the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan 

exile movement for any unrest. 

Tibetans now endure even sharper restrictions on their movements within Tibetan areas and increased surveillance in other 

parts of China, and are forced to endure more restrictions on monasteries and religious activities. 

Prior to 2008, when we all know that there were severe and systematic human rights abuses, the Chinese Government tried to 

conceal its security apparatus and political control to project the 

impression of Tibetan acquiescence to government policies. This is 

no longer the case. We are now talking about blatant militarized 

repression. 

In addition to urging that Vice President Biden raise cases of Tibetan political prisoners, we believe that the Chinese leadership 

and the U.S. leadership should meet with the Dalai Lama and the 

newly elected head of the government in exile. 

I am happy to provide some other thoughts about China strategy 

in particular, and happy to answer any of your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Richardson follows:]

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Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. 

Thank you very much. Thank you for excellent testimony. 

Mr. Gere, I will start with you. 

There will be likely a struggle over the next Dalai Lama when 

the current one, who is 75, passes away. Beijing authorities will 

seek to interfere with the selection of Tibet’s new next spiritual 

leader, and they would hope to put a puppet probably that they can 

control. 

We can’t imagine in a similar circumstance a European secular 

power intriguing in the Vatican to manipulate the selection of the 

heir to the See of St. Peter. So as the selection of the Dalai Lama, 

according to the reincarnation system of Tibetan Buddhism, is 

clearly an issue of religious freedom, what can or should the U.S. 

Government do to persuade Beijing to keep its hands off a purely 

religious matter? 

Mr. GERE. The total absurdity of the Chinese Government saying 

that they will be naming the next Dalai Lama, when they are an 

atheistic organization, is pretty absurd. This is totally for the Tibetans themselves and, frankly, with this Dalai Lama, who is much 

bigger than Tibet, belonging to the world, it is certainly not up to 

the Chinese to make this decision. 

This Dalai Lama has said also that he will not be reborn in a 

Chinese occupied area. So, clearly, he will be born in freedom, 

whether it is in India, but clearly outside of Tibet as long as it remains under Chinese control and the kind of repression that there 

is now. 

In terms of the U.S., just be very clear in saying, no, this is up 

to the Tibetan people and the religious organizations within the Tibetan culture to make that decision. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. Mr. Downs, on 

North Korea, the North Korean Human Rights Act provides for 

broadcasting inside of North Korea, including by North Korean defectors. 

Last month, a defector run radio station, based on sources that 

it had cultivated inside North Korea, carried a report on the systematic murder of special needs children. The reported rationale 

was to keep the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, devoid of disabled people. If true, this would represent a horrific human rights 

violation of epic proportions. 

Can you comment or can Ms. Richardson on the likely credibility 

of this report, and can you comment on the overall effectiveness of 

these broadcasts into North Korea? 

Mr. DOWNS. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I saw that report, 

and personally I thought that it had a high level of credibility, primarily because it actually identified individuals involved in the 

process and identified the source of the information to a deep degree. 

It is not inconsistent with things that we have known that the 

North Korean Government has done in the past, and it makes 

sense from their perspective. So I take it as a serious concern. I 

know that Sophie will want to have some time to comment. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Yes, and also on the effectiveness of 

the transmissions. Ms. Richardson. 

88

Ms. RICHARDSON. I think the broadcasting is incredibly important, and here I will insert a plea about VOA’s Chinese language 

services. This is not the time to cut them, rather to double them. 

I think in North Korea, too, these services are incredibly important for bolstering people’s sense of a connection with the outside 

world, but also transmitting information into and out of countries 

that don’t have free presses. These services are crucial, in our view 

and, to some extent, in our own research. 

On the issue about that report in particular, I haven’t seen it, 

but I agree entirely with Mr. Downs that those kinds of practices 

are consistent with behaviors that we have reported on in the past. 

Mr. DOWNS. Let me add one thing, if I could, specific to your 

question. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DOWNS. Defectors are particularly adept at getting information out of North Korea and sending information back into North 

Korea. They know what is on the minds of the people in North 

Korea. They know how to get the information, and they have been 

extremely effective. 

I can remember 10 years ago everyone questioned whether defectors were a good and legitimate source for information from North 

Korea. That skepticism has diminished over the years. People no 

longer doubt that they are obtaining the best information. After 

looking at this issue for 20 years, I can tell you that there has been 

a tremendous track record on the part of defectors for saying accurate things that we were later able to prove actually happened. 

Thank you. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. Then on Burma, I won’t 

have time for your answer, but I wanted to bring up again that the 

administration has taken over 2 years to name a Special Representative for Policy and Coordination for Burma, and it is legislatively mandated in the Block Burmese JADE Act. 

I think that this prolonged delay in naming this special envoy 

has impeded our U.S. focus on the deteriorating human rights condition inside Burma and on the necessity to enforce the sanctions 

mandated in the Act. So we certainly hope that we see some movement there. I thank the witnesses again for their excellent testimony. Pleased to yield to Mr. Berman for his 5 minutes. 

Mr. BERMAN. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I guess 

I would like to ask, on Tibet, Mr. Gere and perhaps Ms. Richardson. 

We have had a vivid demonstration from your testimony and 

what the members of the committee have said regarding what is 

going on with the Chinese in Tibet. The Chinese like to say, oh, 

the Dalai Lama just wants an independent country; he wants to secede. He has publicly said that is not his goal, but still no direct 

meeting with the Dalai Lama. Now he has turned over governmental responsibilities to the democratic elected leadership of the 

Tibetan Government in exile in India, and Lobsang Sangay has 

been elected to head the Tibetan exiled government. 

Do either of you see this as an opportunity where the Chinese 

might consider directly negotiating with him? Is there some strategy change here that offers any hope of working or is this just an 

implacable opposition? They will always have—they always invent 

89

some reason, and we shouldn’t expect anything to come from this 

transfer of power? 

Mr. GERE. I don’t think we can expect anything, but I am an optimist. I think things can change radically, as we have seen in our 

lifetimes. Out of nowhere, things have changed. 

Mr. BERMAN. In the last couple of months. 

Mr. GERE. And I think this can happen in China, because the 

elements are all there for this kind of radical change. When people 

have been repressed this long—and I am talking about in China, 

not just Tibet or Mongolia or with the Uyghurs or anywhere. 

Change can come extremely quickly. 

Now in terms of these negotiations, which between the Tibetans 

and the Chinese which were restarted in 2002, fruitless—to this 

point, there is nothing that has been gained. The key negotiator, 

Lodi Gyari, tries to put a good face on this, and he says, well, we 

are getting to know each other. But beyond that, and maybe a 

more civil meeting that they have every year or 2, nothing really 

has come out of the dialogue. 

Still, from the Chinese side, it is the insistence that they only 

want to talk about the fate of the Dalai Lama, where he will reside, 

what his circumstances might be. They do not want to enter into 

what the real negotiation is from the Tibetan side, which is the 

fate of 6 million Tibetans. Now until they decide to do that, of 

course, there will be no fruitful negotiations. 

Now the other question that you had about Lobsang Sangay, 

very interesting case, and I wrote about it a little bit in my paper. 

This is a boy who was born in an exiled community, in a refugee 

community and was given the possibility of becoming much more 

than that. 

Long story short, he took advantage of a Fullbright scholarship 

and was educated here in the U.S., became a professor at Harvard, 

and is now the first freely elected, fully empowered prime minister 

of Tibet, in exile, but I think the evolution of this kind of a systematic movement toward true democracy in the exiled Tibetan community is extremely important. 

The willingness of the Dalai Lama, who by all accounts—the psychic energy, the physical energy, everything about him—is the 

leader of the Tibetan people, by his own powers stepped back, because it was good for the people to engage the ideas of democracy. 

Now if the Tibetans can do that outside of Tibet with all of the 

negative circumstances of being a refugee community, certainly 

that signals to inside of Tibet that that is also possible, and also 

by extension in China that it is possible. 

Mr. BERMAN. You are an optimist, and that is good. There is no 

reason to be here if you were not. 

Mr. GERE. I will not have it beaten out of me by anyone. 

Mr. BERMAN. I have 52 seconds left here. Mr. Din, Ms. Richardson, let’s assume the administration—and I do believe truly that 

the only way they are going to get real change in Burma is to get 

the neighbors of Burma to decide that this is a goal that they will 

take up with the Untied States. What is your evaluation of that 

strategy, and that, therefore, that is why they haven’t imposed the 

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able, and would it make a difference? Now 1 second. You have until 

the chair——

Mr. DIN. Mr. Berman, we are not asking for saving our country 

from the dictatorship. U.S. sanctions alone will not make my country free. U.S. engagement also will not make my country free. The 

people of Burma are the ones who will save their country from the 

dictatorship. 

What we are asking is strengthen us better and better, and we 

can get stronger and stronger. The stronger we are, the weaker the 

region, the chance—the better we have chance to win the victory. 

So with the United States, rising of the history and make themselves whatever effort they can to supplement our movement in 

terms of financially, physically and morally, as well as make the 

region weaker and weaker by imposing economics and other sanctions on the region as strong as possible. That is all we are asking. 

Mr. BERMAN. Could Ms. Richardson just get a word in on this 

subject as well? 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. Could we leave that for 

maybe another—maybe Mr. Connolly will help you out. 

Mr. BERMAN. No, that is all right. I could pursue directly. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. Mr. Smith is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me thank all four of 

our witnesses for your very concrete and very serious recommendations. I think you do each of the countries in question a great service by having very serious recommendations. 

I mentioned earlier in some of my comments to Mr. Baer a concern that I have about a lack of personal accountability on the part 

of dictators and their henchmen and people who are just following 

orders who do heinous things to other people. 

Tomorrow in remembrance of the Tiananmen Square massacre, 

I will be introducing the China Democracy Promotion Act, which 

will empower the President to deny visas to those individuals who 

have committed atrocities, and the President would have that ability to say you are not coming to the United States. 

It mirrors what we did with the Belarus Democracy Act, and I 

was the author of that, and it does work when we tell the dictatorships we are not kidding, you are not coming here. I hope that 

maybe we could get a full head of steam for that piece of legislation. 

I mentioned earlier, Mr. Gere, and you might want to touch on 

it, Hu Jintao’s personal animosity toward Tibet cannot be overlooked. I would say, if it is not hate, I don’t know what it is, and 

I find it very discouraging that we fail to realize people’s personal 

animosities who then get into these positions of power, and they do 

terrible things. So you might want to speak to that. 

Again, I found all of your testimonies very compelling. Mr. 

Downs, you point out that there is no reason for China to have to 

bear the burden of resettling all North Korean refugees. 

Well, as we all know—and I have actually chaired three hearings 

on this, and I would agree with you—the Chinese Government continues to commit the grave crime of refoulement. 

They send people back to certain incarceration, if not death, but 

we also found during those hearings that many of the women who 

91

make their way across into China are then sold into sex trafficking 

and area abused, sex slavery and are abused horrifically, and 

China, to the best of my knowledge, has never been held to account 

for its gross violations of the refugee convention at the U.N. Again, 

the U.N. doesn’t even do a slap on the wrist vis a vis China for 

any of its crimes in this case. 

So if you could speak to that, and again—and I hope to get Mr. 

Baer to answer the question in the administration. It is time to 

hold people like Hu and others personally accountable either in a 

criminal venue like The Hague, certainly in other venues as well 

like the Refugee Convention. 

Mr. GERE. You raised a lot of very good points here, Congressman. We had a long talk about this earlier this morning, actually, 

and the reality of dealing with the Chinese—I think our President 

has found new footing on how to deal with the Chinese. I would 

like to see him go further, as I think most of the Congresspersons 

here would. When he made the decision not to see the Dalai Lama 

in September 2009, I believe it was, he said, no, I want to go to 

China first and start fresh with the relationship with them. 

On a certain level, that made a great deal of sense, and he talked 

to the Tibetan community about that before that decision as made 

public. It was the wrong decision, because the reality is the Chinese only deal with pressure, seriousness, firmness, and every time 

we are wishy-washy with them, they take advantage of it, and this 

is not true only of the U.S. but of every other country they have 

dealings. 

A stick and a carrot is very important in dealing with the Chinese. Firmness is deeply important. They do understand that, and 

anything short of that is viewed as weakness, and they will take 

advantage of it, absolutely. 

Now as to Hu Jintao, when it was clear that he was going to take 

over leadership, I asked some of our people in some of our agencies—let me put it that way—about him, and they had a psychological report on him. 

They said, look, this is a guy who came out of the Party. From 

a young man, he was in the Party, and he has group-think, Partythink. This is not a kind of alpha personality who can bring 

change. He is not a Gorbachev. He is not someone who can think 

out of the box. He is always going to be within the box of the Communist party, and for his tenure there, he has proven himself to 

be exactly that. 

He wasn’t a businessman. Jiang Zemin actually was able to 

make some large moves laterally. The army at a certain point 

pulled a choke chain on him and stopped the entire process of that, 

but I think any of these guys that come out of the party system, 

there is no way that they will be the free thinkers that we want 

them to be to make radical change or even, really, systematic 

change. 

Hu Jintao, I have no doubt, has animus against the Tibetans. He 

showed it, as you said, in 1989, and he continues to show it now. 

There were many opportunities and there continue to be opportunities in Tibet to make things right. 

There is a soft way in Tibet for the Chinese to get everything 

they want, and for the Tibetans to have everything they want, and 

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coming from strength, as Hu Jintao has come from, or apparently, 

he has been willing or unable to see that. It is a great misfortune 

for China as well as Tibet. 

One other thing I would like to bring up in terms of this stick 

and carrot, the visa thing is real. They do listen to these kind of 

things. We want a consulate in Lhasa. That is important to us. As 

it is now, the closest we have is in Chengdu, and Chengdu is actually much further away from Lhasa than Kathmandu or Dhaka. 

So we want this, and we have had it on the table since the last 

time I actually spoke to you all, which was in 2007, I think, and 

I think it actually was talked about as early as 2002 very seriously. 

We want that. Now that is at the top of our list with China. 

They want consulates in Boston, Atlanta, elsewhere. This is a 

quid pro quo. If you want Boston, we want Lhasa, and to be very, 

very clear about it——

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Smith. Mr. Connolly. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Let me pick up 

where Mr. Gere was just leaving off. I am going to ask a devil’s 

advocate question. That is, what real leverage do we have on the 

Chinese, frankly, with respect to Tibet? 

They have been resettling Tibet with Han for a long time. You 

talked about 6 million Tibetans. There are 1.3 billion Han. Our relationship, if anything, has shifted in a way where we are much 

more susceptible to their leverage than they are to ours, from an 

economic point of view. The largest trade deficit we have in the 

world is no longer Japan. It is China. 

They have invested in U.S. debt to the point where, frankly, they 

are our largest debtor country—or creditor country. So when we 

look at, well, what points of leverage, I know you cited visas, but 

given the enormity of Chinese presence in Tibet, given their intransigence with respect to any discussion about Tibetan autonomy, the 

return of the Dalai Lama under reasonable circumstances, and so 

forth, how realistic can it be that the United States could meaningfully influence the Chinese to a much more enlightened and reformed view about Tibetan freedom? 

Mr. GERE. Everything you say is absolutely true, but the situation in Tibet can radically change quickly. The investment in Tibet 

is fairly superficial from the Chinese side. They have already taken 

the natural resources. The hundreds of billions of dollars in natural 

resources, including wood, timber, etcetera, etcetera, that is all 

gone. 

They have a large contingency of military there at this point, and 

that costs them a lot of money. But we are not invading China. We 

are not going to stop having economic relations with China, but 

there are areas that they are very sensitive to. 

Human rights, brought up consistently, is annoying to them. It 

is like having a thing in your tooth of a lion, a lion with a little 

stick stuck in his tooth. It is annoying to the point he would do 

anything to get rid of it, and that is what we have been doing from 

the Tibetan side now for 40, 50 years. 

There is a reason why they still think why do people care about 

Tibet; why do they keep bringing up Tibet? It annoys them, and 

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it is right, and it is true, and it is coming from a powerful place 

from us. 

Now I agree so totally with you who have spoken ill of the President for not receiving the Dalai Lama properly. That is annoying 

to them, to see the President of the United States publicly engage 

in the most appropriate way with the Dalai Lama. That is a big 

deal to them. 

The fact that the President of the United States would talk about 

human rights publicly in front of them saying this is what we 

stand for, and we are really not happy with what you are doing 

there—that is incredibly annoying to them. Now we have to do this 

consistently. 

Every time a Congressman goes near the Chinese, they have a 

list of Chinese prisoners, every single time. Every single time Tibet 

is brought up, every single time the Dalai Lama is brought up, 

every single time the negotiations between the exile government 

and the Chinese is brought up, in every situation, whether it is economic, political, etcetera, educational, artistic exchanges, every single one, these key points that we care about are brought up, and 

believe me, they hear it. They are so annoyed by this. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I really take your point. We need to be speaking 

consistently and unwaveringly, because weakness is not respected 

on the other side. 

Mr. GERE. No. Taken advantage of. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. That is right. 

Mr. GERE. Immediately taken advantage of. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you. Ms. Richardson, real quickly, I heard 

your disappointment in the administration testimony in the first 

panel, and I shared it, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to 

expand a little bit on Mr. Yun’s answer to my question about how 

is it going with pragmatic engagement in Burma. 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Now well, is the short answer. The administration has, obviously, sent a number of envoys to Burma, tried to engage in conversations, obviously reached out to Aung San Suu Kyi 

and others, but there haven’t been any confessions. 

I think that really is a function of the regime not feeling any real 

pressure or obligation to make those kinds of confessions, and why 

we need to wait any longer or wait until the EU, for example, decides that it thinks the new government is problematic or not all 

that new or ASEAN allies have a sudden change of heart and decide to take a tougher position against one of their own is a little 

bit of a mystery to me. 

We know what this government is. We know how it will act. The 

U.S. has leverage available to it, and if it has exhausted other options and hasn’t seen the desired change——

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Ms. Richardson. Thank 

you, Mr. Connolly. Mr. Rohrabacher is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman 

and, Mr. Smith, I hope you will put my name on as an original cosponsor to your China Democracy Promotion Act, and that sounds 

exactly right. You are actually doing something rather than just 

annoying them. 

Mr. Gere, I really appreciate you over the years. Very few people 

in your business have had meaningful commitments to human 

94

rights, and you have. What was the name of your movie where you 

were the businessman in China? 

Mr. GERE. Red Corner. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay, there you go. 

Mr. GERE. A very large seller in mainland China. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me suggest that any of you who have not 

seen that movie should see it, and I thought it was very courageous 

of you to participate in something like that that could have had 

economic repercussions, for yourself. 

I do not believe that annoying dictators and gangsters makes a 

difference. I’m sorry, and the bottom line is that, if you have—and 

I always have—when I go to these countries, I carry the list of political prisoners. 

Mr. GERE. God bless you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I do this all the time. Frankly, the other 

Americans who are carrying contracts and blueprints for technology development and the plan for the latest plant that they 

want to move from the United States to China—that means more 

to them than——

Mr. GERE. I think, if every single one of them had that list, your 

list—and that was primary before you got into the business. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, I will tell you, the businessmen—as I 

say, America’s actions speak so loudly that they can’t hear our 

words of support for human rights, and that is a sad, sad story. I 

am saying that, because I disagree with you on that one point. You 

are my hero on being committed to human rights the way you are, 

and the points you are making are very important for us to listen 

to. 

The reciprocity demanding for a consulate and Lhasa, for example, is an important point to make. We need reciprocity rather than 

annoyance. We need—for example, Beijing has permitted two VOA 

reporters in their country. They have hundreds of government reporters from China here. 

Mr. GERE. Good point. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let’s have some reciprocity. In fact, what we 

are showing them, instead of demanding reciprocity, we are closing 

up VOA. I mean, how insane. What kind of message does that 

send. All the other messages we are going to send, but we are 

going to close up the China section of VOA. Yes, we are sending 

messages, all right, and I agree with you. We should never, never 

try to have violence as our tactic that will bring about freedom in 

China. 

The people of China are our greatest ally in this fight for freedom and peace in the world. The Chinese Government is our worst 

adversary and enemy. We need to expand that alliance. 

One note, Ms. Richardson. Where I agree with many of the 

things that you stand for, instead I want to note one thing that I 

disagree with your testimony. That is for us to be feeding the people of North Korea is catastrophe for the cause of freedom and the 

cause of peace, and it will not bring a more peaceful world. 

If we end up, which we have done for the last 15 years, providing 

fuel and providing food for North Korea, they will then use their 

money to buy weapons and to repress their people. There is a track 

record. It is demonstratable that that is what they will do. 

95

This is what tyrants do. They don’t care about their own people. 

So we should not shift the responsibility of feeding them and providing them fuel to the Americans or other people. We should leave 

that—I’m sorry. The North Koreans will suffer because of their 

own government, not because we are not giving it to them. 

So, Madam Chairman, we have had a lot of good suggestions 

here today, and this has been a great hearing, and I appreciate you 

taking the leadership. I hope this committee—we have had these 

suggestions now, reciprocity for Lhasa and these other things that 

we have heard today. I hope that we follow up on that, and I do 

hope that we do call Americans here to explain when they are 

doing things that actually help the tyrants in places like China, but 

also in Burma and these other countries. Thank you very much. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Burton, chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe and 

Eurasia, is recognized. 

Mr. BURTON. I just learned that we are cutting off the funding 

for VOA to China. I didn’t know that, but I will be happy to join 

with you in getting signatures on a letter to try to get that money 

reappropriated for that. I think that is a crazy thing. That is the 

first thing I didn’t know. 

The second thing I didn’t know is that you could sing. When I 

saw Chicago, I just couldn’t believe you were singing. So I want 

you to know that that was very impressive. 

Mr. GERE. I just want you to know I am not going to sing right 

now. 

Mr. BURTON. That is fine. That is fine. Incidentally, this morning 

while I was getting ready to come to work, on the History channel 

they had a documentary on Tibet, and I wish you could have seen 

it, because I thought maybe you put them up to that, because it 

went into all the things that you were talking about, from the birth 

of the Dalai Lama all the way up to the problems that they are 

having today. So it was kind of timely. 

First of all, let me talk about North Korea. My colleague just 

said, Dr. Richardson, that we shouldn’t be sending food there. I 

concur with him. I would love to make sure that the starving people there get food. I think that is important, but I remember—and 

I mentioned before, and you probably heard it when I was talking 

the first time around—that Mengistu got millions of dollars in 

Ethiopia, and he made money off of it and used it to repress his 

people, and it went on and on and on. 

I think that a better use of our funds and our resources would 

be to really go after North Korea in every possible way to make a 

change, and I know it is going to be very difficult, but giving them 

food aid for the starving masses, unless we could make sure it gets 

to them—and the monitors you talked about—that was talked 

about with the first panel, I just don’t have much confidence in 

them. 

You said the election in Burma was a sham. I think that most 

of us were not really aware of all the ramifications of that, but I 

will try to make sure that we communicate that to the rest of our 

colleagues who aren’t here on the Foreign Affairs Committee with 

us today. 

96

North Korea said that, when we passed the Korean Government 

sanctions legislation, the Korean Human Rights Act, that the 

NGOs will pay for that. Can you elaborate on that real briefly? 

Have they done that? Has there been any repression of the NGOs 

that were there in North Korea? 

Mr. DOWNS. There were no NGOs in North Korea, and the statement actually said NGOs ‘‘operating in some countries.’’ I have considered that an additional bit of circumstantial evidence that suggests that the mysterious disappearance of David Sneddon was actually a North Korean abduction. There are a number of other circumstances that support the same conclusion. 

You can say that they have taken other actions as well against 

NGOs around the world, but in that particular time period there 

was one action that, I think, is attributable to North Korea that 

was responsive to the anger that they felt at that time. 

Mr. BURTON. I don’t know how much pressure this will put on 

these tyrannical governments, but I think your idea of a bill, which 

I will co-sponsor with you, to deny visas to anybody from those 

countries that are involved in human rights violations is very good, 

and I will try to help you get co-sponsors to that. 

Mr. Gere, you said that you hope that China, like other countries, will be successful and that there will be positive change. We 

all share your view that that, hopefully, will happen, but with the 

military government that they have and the Communist government, I am not too optimistic that that is going to happen. 

So I am going to give you one more chance to elaborate on how 

you think we could put pressure on them or Burma or any of these 

other countries, Tibet, and their governments to bring about positive change. 

Mr. GERE. This is a very long discussion. 

Mr. BURTON. I know, but you are very knowledgeable, and I 

would like to hear what you have to say. 

Mr. GERE. But, I think, philosophically, too. Look, my feeling is 

that nonviolent change, real change, takes a long time, but once it 

is achieved, it is solid. It is real. It has longevity. 

There is no way that China is going to change from the outside 

rapidly. They will change from the inside, as we see. Communication becomes desperately important. We see what the Internet has 

done. 

We know what the Voice of America has done. I can tell you, the 

people, the Tibetans, nuns and monks, friends of mine who have 

gotten out of Tibet have said that that kept them alive. The hope 

that kept alive in them was extraordinary. For us to stop that, for 

the minimal amount of money, considering budget-wise what that 

is, is insane to cut that off. 

Same in China. People get information. They hear other ideas. 

As much as I do agree in this stopping visas, I want more people 

to come to the U.S. I want everyone to come to the U.S. Even if 

it is unbalanced, I want them to come and see how other people 

live, see how we live, see how we think, see the mistakes we make, 

the context of our lives. That has changed our planet rapidly, just 

seeing each other, engaging each other. 

I was in China—I think the only time I was allowed in the mainland was in 1993, I think it was, and I have seen since then many 

97

of the Chinese people that I had met at that point outside and how 

quickly they changed in the process of just seeing the rest of the 

world, hearing the rest of the world. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. 

Mr. GERE. Engaging the rest of the world. It is huge. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our 

last question and answer period will be led by Mr. Bilirakis of Florida. 

Mr. BILIRAKIS. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I want to thank 

the panel for their testimony. I only have one question. It is not 

directly related to Tibet, North Korea or Burma, but it characterizes Beijing’s influence in their neighborhood. 

Recent media reports—we have been discussing this issue, but 

recent media reports from the Economist, BBC, and the Taipei 

Times have disclosed the Beijing pressures, some of its Asian 

neighbors, to interfere with and even stop some independent media 

in these countries from broadcasting either locally or to mainland 

China. 

Such media include Radio Era Baru in Indonesia, Sound of Hope 

Radio Network in Vietnam, and the New Tang Dynasty TV in Taiwan. This is particularly troubling, since two out of the three countries are democratic countries. 

I would like to hear from the panel your thoughts on China’s 

reach into undermining democracies. 

Ms. RICHARDSON. I will try to give you a succinct answer to that. 

Yes, these cases that have been reported, I think, clearly represent 

the Chinese Government’s efforts to shut down transmissions by 

particular kinds of media outlets. 

The ones you just referred to are affiliated with the Falun Gong, 

and we have seen a very concerted effort to make sure that those 

can’t broadcast either into the mainland or to Chinese speaking 

communities across Southeast Asia. 

I think it is absolutely true that especially the regions and the 

places we are talking about today, feature regimes that, in and of 

themselves, are deeply committed to brutality, and would continue 

to be so even if China dropped off the map tomorrow, but the Chinese Government does provide crucial economic support, diplomatic 

support, and certain kinds of other recognition that those regimes 

really, I think, rely on. 

One of my concerns about the hesitation on Burma of needing 

the neighborhood support—is the U.S. really looking for the support of Laos and Vietnam and Cambodia, three governments that 

have terrible track records on human rights, to help protect the 

people of Burma? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But I 

think it is very clear to see that the Chinese Government will try 

to influence efforts of activism, either by Tibetans or Uyghurs. 

In other parts of Southeast Asia, we have seen a number of horrifying cases of people being refoule’ed back to China from Southeast Asia, not least 20 Uyghurs who were sent back from Cambodia 

at the end of 2009 and literally not been heard from since. 

These are very worrying trends that, I think, deserve a certain 

amount of public scrutiny from the State Department. 

Mr. DIN. Those radio services such as Radio Free Asia Burmese 

service, Voice of America, Burmese service, and BBC, Burmese 

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service, also the Democratic Voice of Burma, Oslo, Norway—they 

all are very reliable and a treasure for the people of Burma, because they only have the true news information from these radio 

outlets, not from the government-controlled media. 

That is why the regimes have tried to block these radio assets. 

There are many laws in Burma. You can’t own a radio or television 

without having permission from the local authority, and you can be 

sentenced, imprisoned for 3 to 5 years for listening to the BBC or 

VOA radio services. 

I think that the regime issued the order, and then the order is 

government stuff, not to listen to these radio services. I believe that 

the regime also received such a so restricted a declaration from the 

Chinese Government to suppress all the radio coming from the 

international media. 

Mr. DOWNS. If I might very quickly, I think that the Chinese 

support of the North Korean regime is pretty well known, but we 

need to keep in mind its full range—that they use their U.N. power 

quite often to support North Korea blocking resolutions, against 

the sinking of the Cheonan, for example, and this goes all the way 

down to the local level. They allow North Korean agents to come 

in and operate against North Korean refugees inside China, remove 

them, and send them to camps, and it is not like this is completely 

unofficial. 

The Chinese Government itself repatriates North Korean refugees, and sends them to their own punishment, persecution, and 

death back in North Korea, in violation of international law. I 

think it is well known. Thank you. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Mr. Bilirakis. I 

want to thank our excellent witnesses. Thank you so much. I also 

want to thank the audience. Thanks for being with us, because this 

sends us a good signal that you are interested in human rights, 

and you want to hold those human rights violators accountable. We 

thank you so much. Thank you to the members of the press who 

were with us. 

Mr. Gere, you know I have another special request of you. We 

have somehow found another crop of interns who would appreciate 

a few minutes of your time, whenever you get done with the interviews and discussion. 

Mr. GERE. I will give you the time to do that gladly, but I want 

you to commit to have an executive meeting with Lodi Gyari and 

other representatives of the Tibetan movement. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. I will do this. Thank you. 

Mr. GERE. Thank you. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. We will do this. 

Mr. GERE. Love to have you in part of that as well. 

Chairman ROS-LEHTINEN. You know these guys will always be 

with you. Thank you so much. Thank you, all of you. 

The committee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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