US lawmakers fear impact of China crackdown

WASHINGTON — US-based lawmakers and activists on Friday urged pressure on China to end its sweeping crackdown on dissent, fearing that authorities were trying to redefine permanently the boundaries of criticism.Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee called a hearing to throw a spotlight on human rights in China, where authorities have rounded up dozens of lawyers, artists and other perceived critics."In recent months, the human rights situation in China has gone from abysmally bad to worse," said Representative Chris Smith, a longtime human rights advocate who chaired the hearing.Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, referred to Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part Two" in which a character hatching up a plot for an authoritarian takeover says, "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.""It is no different in China today," Smith said, calling the clampdown on dissent the worst since authorities crushed the 1989 pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square.Representative Donald Payne, a Democrat from New Jersey, saluted the "courage" of lawyers, civil society and religious minorities in China who put themselves at risk by speaking out."It is my strong belief that the United States cannot be indifferent to Chinese human rights violations," Payne said."I firmly believe that a nation that pursues growth by silencing its citizens is building a foundation in sand which cannot resist the tides of civilian unrest," he said.China launched the clampdown in apparent alarm over a wave of uprisings against authoritarian leaders in the Middle East.Phelim Kine, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that while China in the past has relied largely on short-term detention of critics, it is now using harsher tactics such as beatings and threats against family members."The current crackdown is more than a routine weeding-out of critics; it is an effort to redefine the limits of permissible expression and roll back the advances made by Chinese civil society over the past decade," he told the hearing.President Barack Oba

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