Chris Smith: “I thank my good friend, Mr. McCaul, the ranking member, for his leadership, for his very, very strong and passionate…”

“I thank my good friend, Mr. McCaul, the ranking member, for his leadership, for his very, very strong and passionate statement today. I thank my good friend and colleague, Mr. McGovern, the chairman of both the China Commission, as well as the Lantos Commission--and I serve as cochair with him on the Lantos Commission and as ranking member on the China Commission. And I am very pleased to be the principal Republican cosponsor of this bill. I see Mr. Suozzi over there, who has been a great leader as well. We have been teaming up for years on this issue, and I thank him for his leadership as well. And Eliot Engel, our chairman, for his work on this as well. Madam Speaker, at a 2018 Congressional hearing I cochaired, Mihrigul Tursun recounted her ordeal of torture, sexual abuse, and detention in one of China's mass internment camps in Xinjiang. She broke down weeping, telling us that she pleaded with God to end her life. Her Chinese jailers restrained her to a table, actually increased the electrical currents coursing through her body, and mocked her belief in God. She was tortured simply for being an ethnic Uyghur and a Muslim in China. Madam Speaker, there are millions of stories like this waiting to be told. Nightmarish accounts of President Xi Jinping's genocide. And make no mistake about it, this is Xi Jinping's genocide. I point out to my colleagues that this includes the mass internment of millions.…”