Chris Smith: “I yield myself 1 minute to thank my friends and colleagues for their very strong statements and their passion on this…”

“I yield myself 1 minute to thank my friends and colleagues for their very strong statements and their passion on this issue. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin), who is the ranking Democrat on the Helsinki Commission, we work together. There is no division. There is no air between our shoulders as we promote human rights in general and the elimination, or a zero tolerance policy towards torture within the OSCE. There are 55 countries that make up the OSCE. At the parliamentary assemblies and with bilateral meetings and with country visits, we bring this issue up. We bring it up with the heads of state, we go to gulags, like the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), who is also a member of our commission, and we do all that we can to stop torture in the first place. But as this bill seeks to do, there are victims, they number in the millions, and their needs are not being cared for in many instances, especially overseas. The lucky ones make it here as emigres and as asylum seekers, and we have to make sure that both domestically and internationally, we try to mitigate that enormous pain and the nightmares they carry with them.”