IV
105TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
H. RES. 364
Urging the introduction and passage of a resolution on the human rights
situation in the People’s Republic of China at the 54th Session of
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FEBRUARY 12, 1998
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey (for himself, Mr. GILMAN, Mr. GEPHARDT, Mr.
WOLF, Ms. PELOSI, Mr. ROHRABACHER, Mr. LANTOS, Mr. FRANK of
Massachusetts, Ms. NORTON, Mr. UNDERWOOD, Mr. BURTON of Indiana,
Mr. TIERNEY, and Mr. CLAY) submitted the following resolution; which
was referred to the Committee on International Relations
RESOLUTION
Urging the introduction and passage of a resolution on the
human rights situation in the People’s Republic of China
at the 54th Session of the United Nations Commission
on Human Rights.
Whereas the State Department’s Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices for 1997 state that ‘‘[t]he Government
[of China] continued to commit widespread and well-doc-
umented human rights abuses, in violation of internation-
ally accepted norms,’’ including extrajudicial killings, the
use of torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, forced
abortion and sterilization, the sale of organs from exe-
cuted prisoners, and tight control over the exercise of the
rights of freedom of speech, press, and religion;
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Whereas, according to the State Department, ‘‘Serious
human rights abuses persisted in minority areas [con-
trolled by the Government of China], including Tibet and
Xinjiang [East Turkestan], where tight controls on reli-
gion and other fundamental freedoms continued and, in
some cases, intensified [during 1997]’’;
Whereas, according to the 1997 Country Reports, the Gov-
ernment of China enforces its ‘‘one-child policy’’ using
coercive measures including severe fines of up to several
times the annual income of the average resident of China
and sometimes punishes nonpayment by destroying
homes and confiscating personal property;
Whereas, according to the 1997 Country Reports, as part of
the Chinese Government’s continued attempts to expand
state control of religion, ‘‘Police closed many ‘under-
ground’ mosques, temples, and seminaries,’’ and authori-
ties ‘‘made strong efforts to crack down on the activities
of the unapproved Catholic and Protestant churches’’ in-
cluding the use of detention, arrest, and ‘‘reform-
through-education’’ sentences;
Whereas, each year since 1990, the United States has partici-
pated in an unsuccessful multilateral effort to gain pas-
sage of a United Nations Commission on Human Rights
resolution addressing the human rights situation in
China;
Whereas the Government of China has mounted a diplomatic
campaign each year to defeat the resolution and has suc-
ceeded in blocking commission consideration of such a
resolution each year except 1995, when the United States
engaged in a more aggressive effort to promote the reso-
lution;
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Whereas China’s opposition to the resolution has featured an
attack on the principle of the universality of human
rights, which the United States, China, and 169 other
governments reaffirmed at the 1993 United Nations
World Conference on Human Rights;
Whereas United States leadership is critical to the possibility
of success for that resolution;
Whereas, in 1994, when the President announced his decision
to delink Most Favored Nation (MFN) status for China
from previously announced human rights conditions, the
Administration pledged that the United States would
‘‘step up its efforts, in cooperation with other states, to
insist that the United Nations Human Rights Commis-
sion pass a resolution dealing with the serious human
rights abuses in China’’ as part of the Administration’s
‘‘new human rights strategy’’;
Whereas a failure vigorously to pursue the adoption of such
a resolution would constitute an abandonment of the ‘‘ex-
panded multilateral agenda’’ that the Administration
promised as part of its ‘‘new human rights strategy’’
toward China;
Whereas Chinese democracy advocate and former political
prisoner Wei Jingsheng has stated that ‘‘[t]his [United
Nations Commission on Human Rights] resolution is a
matter of life and death for democratic reform in China’’;
and
Whereas a broad coalition of human rights organizations, in-
cluding Amnesty International USA, Lawyers Committee
for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for
Human Rights, International Human Rights Law Group,
International League for Human Rights, Jacob Blaustein
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Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, Min-
nesota Advocates for Human Rights, and the Robert F.
Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, have
stressed ‘‘the critical importance of a multilateral effort
to pursue a resolution on China at this year’s session of
the [United Nations Commission on Human Rights]’’:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives urges
the President to initiate an immediate and determined
United States effort to secure passage of a resolution on
human rights violations in China at the 54th Session of
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
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