Katie Porter: “I just wanted to say to the gentleman who just finished speaking that I certainly respect the consistency of his ideas…”

“I just wanted to say to the gentleman who just finished speaking that I certainly respect the consistency of his ideas, but I disagree. If he had expressed those ideas as a member of the parliament in Turkey or if he expressed them in Iraq or in Indonesia, he might well find himself in the same situation as Leyla Zana and the Kurdish parliamentarians found themselves and, that is, behind bars. It seems to me that if we do not recognize that we are our brothers' and sisters' keeper, that our freedoms and theirs are in some way connected, we will invite the kind of terrorism that Saddam Hussein practices on his people and others practice on their people throughout this world. Let me agree with him, however, in part. Let us stop giving money to the Turks as long as they repress their people. Let us stop giving money to the Indonesian Government that takes away the religious freedoms of the people of East Timor. Let us stop supporting dictators that deny the basic human rights of their people. I believe that we attempt very strongly to be consistent. We passed nine bills dealing with China. Those bills do have a potential, particularly the one on Radio Free Asia that will broadcast to China and Tibet and North Korea and Burma. I think we have a potential for positively impacting their society.”