Jim McGovern

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Vilsack, first, I want to thank you for saying that access to affordable, nutritious food is a fundamental human right, and I couldn't agree with you more on that.

The U.S. must state loudly and clearly that the Tibetan people have a right to their language, their culture, and to determine how they are governed.

My answer to that question is H.R. 533, the Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Conflict Act that I introduced in January with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul.

Those same authorities constantly interfere with the practice of Tibetan Buddhism.

If thousands of children, including children of preschool age, are coerced into attending boarding schools where the instructional language is mostly Mandarin, while also being prevented from studying Tibetan language, history, and culture…

The grave, well-documented violations of the human rights of Tibetans that are the subject of this hearing have been going on for a long time.

The vast majority of Tibetan children are now placed in colonial boarding schools, as the chairman has referred to; 80 percent of the children six to eighteen being placed in these schools.

There are too many people who just care about the trade so much and about getting along with the Chinese diplomats.

They also have used the forced abortion, coercive population control program very effectively as a tool of genocide.

I'm wondering if you can shed some light on what the consequence of these boarding schools is on the hearts and minds of these children.

Thank you for your steadfast and groundbreaking leadership on the Tibetan issue.

The Chinese Communist Party invaded Tibet without any provocation whatsoever.

We have to engage our European likeminded partners in a unified voice against this Chinese oppression.

And I would note, parenthetically, that last night the House passed with just two votes in opposition a bill that throws the book at this horrific forced organ harvest transplantation effort.

Indeed, the most nefarious misuses of DNA collected have been to find matches for organ recipients from unwilling, healthy innocent people.

We know this--and more importantly, he knows this--because there have been multiple reports by Toronto-based Citizen Lab.

What is also shocking is how intrusive the CCP's totalitarian reach really is.

This is child abuse of the cruelest kind.

Cultural erasure happens when a people's language, and religious and cultural heritage are stripped from them.

Beijing has never demonstrated the standards defined within them in any concrete terms.

I respectfully ask that the committee provide $16 million for the Wounded Warrior Service Dog Program.

I look forward to Chairwoman Foxx continuing to honor this committee's tradition.

We pledge to work with Dr. Foxx in areas where we find commonality.

Simply put, when Americans were struggling, the committee and staff delivered.

How Congress chooses to allocate funding should be demonstrative of our values.