Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding and thank him for giving us this opportunity to talk about Liu Xiaobo on the floor of the House today. I especially want to thank Chris Smith, the gentleman from New Jersey, Frank Wolf, Dana Rohrabacher, three Members whom I heard speak on the subject, and I know many others have, David Wu, who is with us on this side, for their commitment to democratic freedoms in China. Madam Speaker, Mr. Smith, Mr. Rohrabacher, and Mr. Wolf and I have been working on this issue for decades. Even before Tiananmen Square, many of us met with our former colleague, now gone from us, Tom Lantos, to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I think that was in 1987. A couple years later, we saw what happened in Tiananmen Square. And at that time, as advocates for human rights throughout the world, we were advocating for human rights in China as well. For a long time, we had that debate. We were joined then by our colleague David Wu and others in this important statement that said, if we are advocating for human rights throughout the world, which this Congress has done over and over again, we lose all moral authority to talk about human rights in the rest of the world if we do not talk about human rights in China, despite the commercial interests we have in China, despite a number of other issues that had been called to our attention.…”