Chris Smith

But because non-state actors are now among the primary and worse perpetrators of egregious abuses, permitting our Government to designate these non-state actors as severe violators would both reflect reality.

Our Government should, in response to these efforts, vigorously support those groups, those organizations and institutions and associations comprising civil society.

We must shine a light on them and the laws and policies that led to their imprisonment, and we need to hold the governments responsible for persecuting them accountable.

It is vitally important that Congress signals that blasphemy laws must go, that Congress signals its understanding that these laws are used for no reason other than persecuting minorities and that these laws are simply intolerable.

I urge Congress to pass House Resolution 290, introduced by Representative Pitts and Representative Jackson Lee, which calls for the global repeal of blasphemy laws.

I hope that behind the scenes--I don't expect you to say anything bad about your boss, but at least we expect you to raise holy hell behind the scenes.

This is totally unacceptable, and it indicates that the administration isn't listening.

What really is upsetting to me about what the administration... is we are not just in a world where people are being persecuted for their faith.

I am afraid in Vietnam they are going to have to prove it to us.

This looks like a carbon-copy repeat of what they did during the bilateral agreement.

What kind of background check do we do on the communist dictatorship?

They reverted right back to the old ways.

Vietnam should be a CPC.

Four times, the Congress has passed my bill, called the Vietnam Human Rights Act.

Secretary Kerry was particularly strong at the seed dialogue that took place just a couple of weeks ago.

I would hope that there would be a ratcheted-up effort to say to China: Stop it.

I have never seen anything like it.

Under Xi Jinping, the sinofication of religion, just like the draft law on NGOs, is a further tightening, the likes of which I haven't seen.

I chair the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. I have chaired 60 hearings on Chinese rights abuses.

The food stuffs, the medicines were not getting to the Christians. It was almost like, they are not only at the bottom of the totem pole, they are just--they just don't get it.

That is why I introduced the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, H.R. 1150, along with Representative Anna Eshoo.

It is no coincidence that the worst violators of religious freedom globally are often the biggest threat to our Nation.

I will never forget being in Jos, Nigeria, visiting with survivors who told harrowing stories of what it was like to have car bombs and people with AK-47s bursting into their congregations to destroy as many people as they possibly could.

I have authored a resolution and had a series of hearings in this room about establishing a hybrid, a regional court.

The situation has significantly deteriorated and begs a significant, expanded, and sustained response from the United States.