106TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. CON. RES. 28
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Whereas the Government of the People’s Republic of China
has signed two important United Nations human rights
treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, So-
cial, and Cultural Rights;
Whereas the Government of the People’s Republic of China
recognizes the United Nations Universal Declaration of
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Human Rights, which calls for the protection of the
rights of freedom of association, press, assembly, religion,
and other fundamental rights and freedoms;
Whereas the Government of the People’s Republic of China
demonstrates a pattern of continuous, serious, and wide-
spread violations of internationally recognized human
rights standards, including violations of the rights de-
scribed in the preceding clause and the following:
(1) restricting nongovernmental political and social
organizations;
(2) cracking down on film directors, computer soft-
ware developers, artists, and the press, including threats
of life prison terms;
(3) sentencing poet and writer, Ma Zhe, to seven
years in prison on charges of subversion for publishing
an independent literary journal;
(4) sentencing three pro-democracy activists, Xu
Wenli, Wang Youcai, and Qing Yongmin, to long prison
sentences in December 1998 for the announced effort to
organize an alternative political party committed to de-
mocracy and respect for human rights;
(5) sentencing Zhang Shanguang to prison for ten
years for giving Radio Free Asia information about
farmer protests in Hunan province;
(6) putting on trial businessman Lin Hai for pro-
viding e-mail addresses to a pro-democracy Internet
magazine based in the United States;
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(7) arresting, harassing, and torturing members of
the religious community who worship outside of official
Chinese churches;
(8) refusing the United Nations High Commissioner
on Human Rights access to the Panchen Lama, Gendun
Choekyı´ Nyima;
(9) continuing to engage in coercive family planning
practices, including forced abortion and forced steriliza-
tion; and
(10) operating a system of prisons and other deten-
tion centers in which gross human rights violations, in-
cluding torture, slave labor, and the commercial harvest-
ing of human organs from executed prisoners, continue
to occur;
Whereas repression in Tibet has increased steadily, resulting
in heightened control on religious activity, a denunciation
campaign against the Dalai Lama unprecedented since
the Cultural Revolution, an increase in political arrests,
the secret trial and sentencing of former Middlebury Col-
lege Fulbright Scholar and Tibetan ethnomusicologist
Ngawang Choephel to 18 years in prison on espionage
charges, and suppression of peaceful protests, and the
Government of the People’s Republic of China refuses di-
rect dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his representatives
on a negotiated solution for Tibet;
Whereas the annual meeting of the United Nations Commis-
sion on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, provides
a forum for discussing human rights and expressing
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international support for improved human rights per-
formance;
Whereas during his July 1998 visit to the People’s Republic
of China, President Clinton correctly affirmed the neces-
sity of addressing human rights in United States-China
relations; and
Whereas the United States did not sponsor a resolution on
China’s human rights record at the 1998 session of the
United Nations Commission on Human Rights: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate
concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that the
United States—
(1) should introduce and make all efforts nec-
essary to pass a resolution criticizing the People’s
Republic of China for its human rights abuses in
China and Tibet at the annual meeting of the
United Nations Commission on Human Rights; and
(2) should immediately contact other govern-
ments to urge them to cosponsor and support such
a resolution.
Passed the House of Representatives March 11,
1999.
Attest:
Clerk.