ICYMI: Sen. Cruz Op-Ed in TIME: President Obama Must Not Fear Diplomatic Provocation
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today penned an op-ed for TIME, calling on Congress and President Obama to actively oppose the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) disregard for human rights and pass legislation that would put the PRC on notice that the United States will not stand for the Communist regime’s oppressive tactics. Sen. Cruz detailed the plight of Dr. Liu Xiaobo, a pro-democracy dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who has been imprisoned in China since 2008 for peacefully advocating for basic political reforms.
Following are excerpts of Sen. Cruz’s op-ed:
President Obama Must Not Fear Diplomatic Provocation
TIME
By Sen. Ted Cruz
September 12, 2016
President Obama has returned from the final visit to Asia of his administration—a trip in which protocol breaches grabbed the headlines… Undeterred, Mr. Obama announced that in coordination with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he intends to use executive fiat to try to shackle the United States to the wide-ranging United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—without submitting it to the Senate for ratification, instead choosing to impinge American sovereignty.
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One thing President Obama did not find time to do on his trip to China, however, was meet with Liu Xiaobo, the eminent author, academic and political activist who succeeded Mr. Obama as the Nobel Peace Laureate in 2010, and who happens to be the only living Peace Prize winner currently in prison…He was one of the key architects of the Charter 08, published 20 years after Tiananmen and on the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Charter 08 calls for basic political reforms, including freedom of assembly, expression and religion, as well as a fair and independent judiciary.
But even putting such words on paper, let alone peacefully advocating for their implementation, is deeply dangerous in the PRC. Dr. Liu has suffered for his audacity, enduring a series of punitive and arbitrary prison sentences, which is why he could not travel to Oslo to receive his Nobel Prize.
Dr. Liu’s case recalls the previous example of a Nobel Peace Laureate having to accept the award in absentia due to being unjustly imprisoned by an oppressive regime—Andrei Sakharov, who was honored in 1975 while imprisoned by the Soviets.
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The Sakharov case is a worthy model for the sort of support the United States government could be showing for Dr. Liu today, and Congress took the first step in February when the Senate passed the legislation that I introduced to rename International Plaza in front of the PRC Embassy “Liu Xiaobo Plaza.” Swift passage by the House could have it on President Obama’s desk this month. He should sign the legislation and then follow up by naming December 28th, Liu’s birthday, “National Liu Xiaobo Day.”
Unfortunately, President Obama’s administration insists that such steps are too provocative and that they know better how to get political prisoners released. In fact, astonishingly, Mr. Obama has threatened to veto the Plaza legislation in deference to the PRC’s objections.
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The Chinese regime has now demonstrated that it is not afraid of a little diplomatic provocation, and we shouldn’t be either… Congress can and should act quickly before the next recess to take an unambiguous stand with Liu Xiaobo, instead of with his Communist oppressors.
Read Sen. Cruz’s op-ed in its entirety here.
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