Chris Smith

I would respectfully ask that this committee mark up a bill that I have been trying to get passed for some time, the End Neglected Tropical Disease Act, which Karen Bass and I co-authored, and Gregory Meeks, bipartisan bill.

We are very encouraged by his release of political prisoners.

We are saving lives, and you are walking point saving those lives.

There has been continuity from administration to administration, and it continues.

When I see a budget come up that has draconian cuts, it is in a way not worth the paper it is printed on.

Every single Presidential budget that has come up here is dead on arrival.

The idea of bringing a defamation suit when you are a public person is nil and none and almost never is successful.

The lack of press freedom in Ethiopia as well as individuals who were being incarcerated for their journalistic writings.

I find it appalling. I think we all must find it appalling.

The Saudi Arabians have been very, very unforthcoming when it comes to information, even those who conspired in 9/11.

The Magnitsky sanctions ought to be imposed upon the very top, including the Prince.

There is just no way that anything is happening inside of China that is being reported on and that includes on the internet.

But it certainly had a chilling effect on the press during those 8 years, and we do not want to have any more of that, frankly.

There is now a new law, a new cybersecurity law in Vietnam where Google and Facebook are blocking posts by Vietnamese in the United States.

But things are going from bad to worse in Vietnam.

Three times, three separate congresses, I have had the Vietnam Human Rights Act pass this House with a heavy emphasis on press censorship and what they are doing to bloggers, only to die in the Senate.

I think we need to pursue this more aggressively.

My hope, and I said it in my opening, would be that there would be, minimally, sanctions meted out against those who were part of this.

I want to thank you for your testimonies in advance and thank you for bearing witness to a very ugly truth about the censorship, the incarceration, the intimidation of those men and women who are journalists who are trying to bring truth…

Erdogan is waging a war on journalists, and again Joel Simon will talk about the fact that they are the single largest jailer of journalists in the world and that is appalling.

I held hearings in this committee years ago when Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and Yahoo were enabling the dictatorship to censor just about everything on the internet, and still do, sadly.

It shows you how the skin-deep and how easily offended, and then of course there is retaliation against real people, not characters from the Disney folks, that occur.

I for one believe that Magnitsky sanctions need to be meted out against those individuals and I am sure we have very good actionable information on them for their role in this terrible atrocity.

I introduced a bill, the Azerbaijan Democracy bill, an act, and really began saying Aliyev needs to release all of his political prisoners and that includes members of the press.

Freedom of speech is doubly implicated when journalists are targeted by a repressive government.