Chris Smith

I will never forget when he told us that when the Boko Haram radical Islamists put the AK-47 to his nose... he said, I am ready to meet my Lord.

We hope that we can come into future hearings and talk about these issues.

And I can assure you, your testimonies will be widely disseminated.

My hope is that the statements that emanate out of Washington, and particularly the White House, are not empty calories.

Chairman Smith, and this is where I want to turn to, we know what we can do in the United States.

It is time for all of us, those of us in the human rights advocacy world, those of you in Congress, those in the administration, to take note of what is happening to members of this peaceful faith who do no one any harm, who seek nothing…

Let us put them back on the CPC list and see if we can bring some more pressure.

By any measure, religious freedom remains under serious assault across the globe.

It is an honor to be able to stand up and speak out for persecuted people around the world.

I want to take this occasion to say that the excellence of this report is mainly the product of our extraordinary staff.

It must include the right, Congressman Franks, to act on one's religiously inspired moral convictions about justice and the common good.

The right of religious freedom is not some tiny cramped, crabbed principle of freedom of worship.

What we must do is make sure that religious freedoms are protected, not just for Christians and Jews but for Muslims and Hindus and all religions.

I think we need to be even-handed in our treatment.

The situation in China is deteriorating.

Sometimes it is very difficult to get bills out of the Senate.

We have got to be able to call it for what it is.

He made it very clear then--he is now accompanying Deborah Peter--how this is only going to get worse unless all means are used to destroy this terrible threat.

Obviously, words are inadequate to express our concern--and I say that collectively for all of us--for the welfare and whereabouts of the abducted girls.

The Leahy Amendment is having the unintended consequence of precluding best practices military training.

It should have been done for years--not months, years.

It is about radical Islamic belief.

The prospects for greater civil and political rights in China seems as remote today as it did the day after the tanks rolled through the Square.

We remember Tiananmen annually here in Congress because of its enduring impact on U.S.-China relations.

We must continue to honor the sacrifices endured by the pro-democracy movement, by advocates for independent labor unions, and those demanding fundamental human rights for all Chinese.