Chris Smith

We have a vested interest in Egypt moving ahead. We have a vested interest in Egypt for all Egyptians.

In the last foreign operations appropriations bill, Frank Wolf, Trent Franks, Kay Granger, and I, and others, included language conditioning our aid on religious freedom.

I would hope that we reaffirm not just in words, but are willing to reaffirm in policy and in deed that when people, especially as we focus on the Christians in Egypt, are being brutalized, that we will not stand idly by and not just…

Egypt has a second chance now, and that chance needs to be taken.

This administration's shortsighted approach of not clearly linking aid to the protection of human rights in Egypt has been unequivocally ineffective.

It is not democracy per se that is to be the goal, but rather duly-elected constitutional government that respects minorities, the separation of power, and fundamental human rights.

It is the strategic interest of the United States to encourage governments to respect the rights of their own people because governments have failed to do so are, in the final analysis, unstable.

The persecution of Christians is escalating.

It is fitting that we are holding this hearing today on International Human Rights Day, December 10th.

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, en route to Beijing, said that she would not allow human rights to interfere with global climate change and selling U.S. debt

The appeasement policy of harmony diplomacy adopted by some western societies toward totalitarianism is enabling the dictatorship to do what it wants.

What are you doing in-country? Has the Ambassador, our U.S. Ambassador, tried to see Chen Kegui?

We will reiterate our request that he do so. We will write him today and write the Secretary of State, John Kerry, as well

When China bullies, incarcerates, tortures, and even executes a prisoner of conscience, their entire family and friends suffer an excruciating sense of loss, bewilderment, emotional pain, and agony.

The United States must remain committed to monitoring the continued violation of the rule of law by the Chinese...

The people who rule China today employ these ugly methods of control to prop up their own political power and increase their personal wealth.

The repression is systematic, pervasive, unrelenting, and unnecessary.

I do believe your fathers would be extraordinarily proud of you being here and for your tenacious defense of them for so many years.

I can assure you that our human rights subcommittee will continue doggedly to try to reach the hearts and minds of our own Government officials.

Today, we will hear the cries for release and freedom from five remarkable daughters on behalf of their wrongly imprisoned fathers and from a dad on behalf of his unjustly jailed son.

How can it be that the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo remains in prison while his wife, Liu Xia, is forced to endure the extreme isolation of house arrest and is now reportedly experiencing severe depression?

Far too many of us who live in freedom often fail to exert ourselves in a meaningful way to assist prisoners of conscience and their loved ones, in China, and frankly, elsewhere.

And that is a hope, making it a forefront of our agenda, that has not been achieved.

We must make sure that we are loud and clear when Muslims are being murdered genocidally in countries like Burma.

The Burmans are free but the Muslims are not, and the ethnic tribal people are not. That is not acceptable.