Chris Smith

We are no longer going to have human rights dialogues with China. We are going to require them to be publicly labeled human rights sequential monologues.

We need the U.S. Trade Representative, we need people in the military, particularly when there is a government-to-government contact.

Mark Meadows, a member of our subcommittee, has introduced H.R. 2537 to rename Liu Xiaobo Plaza.

The more people we can get to go to Google and type in Liu Xiaobo's name and understand what he did in the face of the odds in which he did it, the more Liu Xiaobos there will be.

He shared the suffering of his compatriots and made great sacrifices for them. He is a saint.

The regime is undergirded, obviously--and we are taking about Iran, not China now, but we are on the same subject, which is global human rights--by the perpetuation of the IRGC, and specifically the Quds Force thereof.

We need this whole-of-government approach so that everyone--and that would go for Members of Congress as well.

Just for the record, Senator Cruz's bill to rename International Drive Liu Xiaobo Plaza has been hotlined in the Senate.

What can we do within the purview of Article I to help perpetuate the legacy of this great leader to convey to our Chinese partners that we care, that we will not sit by idly as members of, say, for example, the Falun Gong, are imprisoned.

There needs to be a pivot to human rights. The old days have to be over of just thinking that backdoor diplomacy and mentioning it, you know, under your breath is going to work.

My hope is--and we will, as the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which I also co-chair with Marco Rubio--I think it would be very timely for us to write them and ask them to raise the issue of Liu Xiaobo's widow, Liu Xia.

If American advocacy for human rights and justice is to mean anything at all, the U.S. Government must do more to support these political prisoners and to hold accountable the government and the individuals who so brazenly abuse their…

Democracies must engage this brutal face of this regime and must not look the other way when human rights tragedies take place.

It is a sad and disturbing fact that many leaders of the free world... have been less willing to stand up for those rights for the benefit of others.

It is just couldn't be clearer the stark difference between the gross evil of what is done by the leadership of the PRC and a man of light of Liu Xiaobo's character.

What kind of a government would refuse to grant the final wish of such a peaceful, kind of man as Liu Xiaobo, a man who sincerely believes that he has no enemies, to die as a free man, to die with dignity?

And we must demand repeatedly and clearly that unconditional release of political prisoners is in the interest of a better U.S.-China relationship.

We should all agree that what was done to Liu Xiaobo and his wife Xia was a grave injustice.

The Chinese Communist Party has tried to curtail his ideas, they call them dangerous and subversive, and they seek to silence, censor, and repress them.

We owe Liu Xiaobo a debt of gratitude because he demonstrated that the noble idea of democracy and due process, liberty, and the rule of law are not foreign ideas to China.

Liu Xiaobo's premature death was a jarring shock to everyone who admired this champion of freedom and democracy.

The first, of course, and most importantly, is to help get Liu Xia and her brother out of China as rapidly as possible.

Liu Xiaobo represents the best of what China can be, in death as well as in life.

I believe that someday China will be free, someday the people of China will be able to enjoy all of their God-given rights, and a nation of free Chinese women and men will honor and celebrate Liu Xiaobo as a hero.

No nation should be judged entirely by crimes of the past, but this crime, the death and silencing of Liu Xiaobo, should follow the Chinese Communist Party like an unwashable permanent stain.