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Chris Smith is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing New Jersey's 4th congressional district since 1981. Throughout his tenure, he has focused on a range of issues including human rights, foreign affairs, and health care. Smith has been involved in various legislative efforts aimed at improving health services and advocating for the rights of individuals both domestically and internationally. His long-standing service in Congress has made him a prominent figure in New Jersey politics.
In the ensuing weeks since Don Payne's untimely passing, I, along with all who knew and deeply respected him, keep expecting to hear his gentle voice admonishing us to care more and to do more for those trapped in poverty or suffering from…
Mr. Speaker, it is with deep sorrow that I inform the House that our dear friend and colleague, Don Payne, has passed.
We call upon China to stop its forcible repatriation of North Koreans and provide them with the needed human rights and humanitarian protection.
What a tremendous witness, that all people hear this, that the President of the United States hears what you have said so eloquently today.
Opening statement of Hon. Chris Smith, a U.S. Representative from New Jersey; Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
this is a huge embarrassment to China that more and more people know about this issue.
Neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party would be willing for a second, no matter what China's pressures would be, to risk the loss of the votes in support of the Korean-American community over the next 25 or 30 years.
As draconian as these measures have been, the current situation is even more critical for the North Korean defectors recently arrested in China, most face execution because of three factors.
Congressman Smith, you will remember that in September you hosted a hearing with a North Korean defector, Kim Hye Sook, the longest serving survivor of the North Korean political prison camps.
The international community--especially the United Nations, the Obama administration, and the U.S. Congress--must insist that China, at long last, honor its treaty obligations, end its egregious practice of systematic refoulement, or be…
The international community has to be involved aggressively on this, as well as South Korea and the United States, in taking a lead.
the Chinese Government, so that repatriation will not occur and that these refugees will be able to go to South Korea or the United States.
it is literally a matter of life and death for those refugees that are being held by China right now.
Get the human rights piece right and all the others follow, not the other way around.
We consider it essential to defend the fundamental rights of North Koreans to leave their country and seek asylum abroad.
Dozens of North Koreans are today at imminent risk of persecution, torture--even execution--owing to China's decision to forcibly repatriate them in stark violation of both the spirit and the letter of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the…
Let me just ask you, in total candor, has the United States raised the issues of these defectors in a robust manner?
I do hope in that regard that we can reach Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, because when she was a mere Member of Congress her voice was one of the loudest, and clearest, and bravest on human rights violations by the Chinese Government.
I think we will begin to have a means of peacefully imploding the regime in North Korea, of sending a signal to China that keeping this regime in business costs them more than it gets them.
Shame on us, frankly, in the Congress, shame on us in the United States and at the United Nations, and every other body that cares about human rights and the rule of law if we don't make this the case.
the balloon launches, radio broadcasts by stations like Free North Korea Radio, those are important.
I want it understood, Mr. Chairman, that your passion for human rights is not 'merely' because you care about vulnerable human beings; it is a shrewd, strategic means of getting better deals on the weapons side.
A young Christian pastor sits today in prison in Iran--separated from his wife and young children, facing the death penalty--because he will not lie about his beliefs. He will not lie even to save himself. He will not lie even to spare his…
Politicians like Chris Smith
