{"database": "openregs", "table": "congressional_record", "rows": [["CREC-2010-12-22-pt1-PgE2252", "2010-12-22", 111, 2, null, null, "EMPTY CHAIR IN OSLO FOR LIU XIAOBO", "HOUSE", "EXTENSIONS", "ALLOTHER", "E2252", "E2252", "[{\"name\": \"Christopher H. Smith\", \"role\": \"speaking\"}]", null, "156 Cong. Rec. E2252", "Congressional Record, Volume 156 Issue 173 (Wednesday, December 22, 2010)\n\n[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 173 (Wednesday, December 22, 2010)]\n[Extensions of Remarks]\n[Page E2252]\nFrom the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]\n\n                   EMPTY CHAIR IN OSLO FOR LIU XIAOBO\n\n                                 ______\n\n                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH\n\n                             of new jersey\n\n                    in the house of representatives\n\n                      Wednesday, December 22, 2010\n\n  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, in the theatrical adaptation\nof Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Marius sings a haunting song--Empty\nChairs and Empty Tables--an expression of agony at the loss of his\nidealistic comrades, gunned down on a barricade.\n  ``There's a grief that can't be spoken,'' he sings, ``there's a pain\nthat goes on and on. Empty chairs and empty tables, now my friends are\ndead and gone . . . .''\n  ``Here it was they lit the flame . . . Here they sang about tomorrow\nand tomorrow never came . . . from the table in the corner they could\nsee a world reborn . . . And they rose with voices ringing. I can hear\nthem now . . . Empty chairs and empty tables, where my friends will\nmeet no more . . . .''\n  When prisoner of conscience Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize winner for\n2010, learned that he was selected, he wept and dedicated his prize to\nthe martyrs of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.\n  Throughout China today, families and friends know heartbreaking loss\nand the agony of empty chairs and empty tables--where young, brave,\nidealistic democracy activists were gunned down, bayoneted, or beaten\nto death by Chinese government troops and secret police. Both before\nand since Tiananmen, Chinese men and women have sacrificed their\nfreedom--even their lives--in the struggle for faith and liberty. Yet\nthe struggle for freedom, rule of law, and respect for human rights\ncontinues despite the enormous cost to individual Chinese men and\nwomen.\n  At Oslo a couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of witnessing the\nconferring of the Nobel Peace Prize on Liu Xiaobo's empty chair--empty\nbecause this courageous nonviolent man of principle languishes in a\nlonely prison cell, serving an eleven-year sentence for promoting\ndemocracy in China, most recently through Charter 08, a human rights\nmanifesto. In a stunning revelation of Beijing's weakness, fear, and\nmoral deficiency, even Liu's wife and friends were barred from\nattending the Nobel ceremony.\n  Amazingly, at his government show trial in 2009, Liu expressed\nabsolutely no malice toward the dictatorship that so cruelly mistreats\nhim--and millions of others like him.\n  He said, ``I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who\nmonitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who\nindicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies . . .\nHatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience. Enemy\nmentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal\nstruggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity and hinder a\nnation's progress toward freedom and democracy. That is why I hope to\nbe able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our\nnation's development and social change, to counter the regime's\nhostility with utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love.''\n  The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony has come and gone. And, I would note\nparenthetically, it was an honor to join you in Oslo, Madam Speaker, as\nwell as Representative David Wu and numerous Tiananmen Square alumnae--\nChinese men and women who peacefully demonstrated for freedom in 1989--\nincluding Yang Jianli, Chai Ling, Bob Fu, Fang Zheng, and Kaixi Wuer.\nIt is now more important than ever that all of us who treasure freedom,\ndemocracy and human rights empathize more, pray more and do more to\nexpose and combat the cruelty and the crimes committed on a daily basis\nby Beijing.\n  The brutality and violence that were witnessed by all the world in\n1989 at Tiananmen continues unabated today, especially in the gulags--\nlaogai--and detention centers throughout China, where people are\nsystematically tortured, sometimes to death, particularly Falun Gong\npractitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Christians, and democracy activists.\n  The brutality and violence of unrestrained dictatorship has--and\ncontinues to be--unleashed against hundreds of millions of Chinese\nwomen and children--victims of the barbaric one child per couple\npolicy, a cruel policy that has made brothers and sisters illegal and\nrelies on forced abortion--a crime categorized as a ``crime against\nhumanity'' at the Nazi war crime trial at Nuremberg.\n  As a result of the one child per couple policy, an estimated 100\nmillion girls are missing--dead through sex-selective abortion--which\nis a gender crime of unimaginable depravity and has made China a magnet\nfor sex trafficking. Chai Ling--one of the heroes of Tiananmen--has\nlaunched All Girls Allowed--an NGO that appeals to Beijing, the world,\nand especially mothers in China to protect the girl child in the womb.\n  And finally, even the Internet has been turned into a tool of\nrepression and surveillance by the secret police.\n  The selection of Liu Xiaobo as the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate\nobliges us to undertake sustained scrutiny and meaningful action.\n  Indifference or silence or feigned ignorance concerning the Chinese\ngovernment's appalling and massive human rights violations simply isn't\nan option.\n\n                          ____________________"]], "columns": ["granule_id", "date", "congress", "session", "volume", "issue", "title", "chamber", "granule_class", "sub_granule_class", "page_start", "page_end", "speakers", "bills", "citation", "full_text"], "primary_keys": ["granule_id"], "primary_key_values": ["CREC-2010-12-22-pt1-PgE2252"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 50.40158098563552, "source": "Federal Register API & Regulations.gov API", "source_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/developers/api/v1", "license": "Public Domain (U.S. Government data)", "license_url": "https://www.regulations.gov/faq"}