Joe Scarborough: “today from this center of freedom in this people's House, I come to raise my voice in support of a lonely voice for…”

“today from this center of freedom in this people's House, I come to raise my voice in support of a lonely voice for freedom halfway across the globe. I speak of Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng. Yesterday, in a New York Times editorial notebook piece, Tina Rosenberg wrote an article called Letters From a Chinese Jail: The Blunt Demands of Wei Jingsheng. She wrote: For nearly 20 years, the Chinese Government has sought to silence one of the world's most important political prisoners, Wei Jingsheng. Once an electrician in the Beijing Zoo, Mr. Wei is the strongest voice in China's democracy movement. He has spent all but six months of the last 18 years in prison and in labor camps, mostly in solitary confinement in conditions that would have killed a less stubborn man a long time ago, and may soon kill Mr. Wei, who is 46 and very ill. Now serving his second long sentence, he is watched around the clock by nonpolitical criminal prisoners who ensure that he does not put pen to paper.”