Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission of China (CECC), sent a letter to communist dictator Xi Jinping on Monday, formally requesting a visa to visit occupied East Turkistan.
East Turkistan, officially the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” under Communist Party authority, is home to the vast majority of the world’s ethnic Uyghur population and several other communities of Muslim-majority Turkic ethnicities. Extensive evidence documented by free governments, journalists, and human rights advocates for years has revealed that Xi began implementing a genocidal policy to exterminate the indigenous population and replace it with ethnic Han people since at least 2017.
Xi’s regime is believed to have built over 1,000 concentration camps for Turkic peoples and imprisoned upwards of 3 million people there in the past five years. Survivors say they experienced or witnessed extreme torture and abuse, including gang rape and other sexual violence, in addition to communist indoctrination, slavery, and medical testing, apparently in preparation for live organ harvesting.
Rep. Smith recently introduced a bill, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, meant to combat China’s illicit organ trade, believed to kill as many as 100,000 people a year. The bill would create executive powers to sanction individuals confirmed to be tied to the live organ harvesting industry and require government reports on the illicit organ trade regularly. While the bill does not explicitly target China, most experts on the subject believe China to have no peer in the scale of its organ harvesting from political prisoners.
In response to that bill, Rep. Smith’s office received a screed from Zhou Zheng, the minister-counselor for congressional affairs at the Chinese embassy in Washington, declaring all accusations of human rights abuses against China to be lies and condemning Rep. Smith’s “absurd bill.” The Congressman responded with his letter to Xi Jinping on Monday, requesting a visa to the Xinjiang region to see the situation himself.
“I write in my capacity as the Chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) to request a visa in order to visit the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of the People’s Republic of China,” Rep. Smith wrote to Xi, noting that the Chinese Foreign Ministry had extended an open invitation to the world to visit the region this year. Chinese officials have also repeatedly stated in the past that they welcomed “people from all fields around the world, including officials from the new US administration, to visit Xinjiang to learn what is really happening there.”
The invitation, Rep. Smith’s letter continued, “is a welcomed opportunity for the CECC, and others, to personally assess Mr. Zhou’s comments against the veracity of reports of mass internment and forced labor in the XUAR.”
“Having found those multiple reports to be credible, I would like to visit sites where mass detention and forced labor are generally believed to occur,” Smith continued, concluding with a request to visit imprisoned Americans in China.
Rep. Smith’s office told Breitbart News on Tuesday that it had received confirmation from the Chinese embassy that the government had received the letter but had not received any reply at press time.
Rep. Smith is currently believed to be under Chinese sanctions. The Communist Party listed him—alongside Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback—as being sanctioned in 2020 in retaliation for the administration of President Donald Trump sanctioning the then-head of the Communist Party in East Turkistan, Chen Quanguo, and several other Chinese officials for human rights abuses.
At the time, Rep. Smith told NPR that he believed the sanctions meant the government would deny him a visa to enter China if he requested it; the Congressman’s office confirmed to Breitbart News on Tuesday that it has no indication that China ever rescinded the sanctions.
Despite the repeated overtures to the international community to visit East Turkistan, the Chinese government heavily monitors travel into and out of the region and has only allowed visits by friendly parties. In January, for example, Beijing allowed a delegation representing the “World Muslim Communities Council (WMCC)” to visit the Uyghur region. The delegation issued a statement “congratulating” China for its ongoing genocide, referring to it—as Beijing does—as a “counterterrorism” operation.
“The level of attention that we found in Xinjiang embodies the determination of the Chinese leadership to serve all components of the people in the region,” Ali Al Nuaimi, the chairman of the WMCC, wrote after the visit. “The relationship between Islamic civilization and China is historical and characterized by friendship, cooperation, and alliance. Reasonable people all over the world need a safe, stable, and prosperous China.”
Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet visited East Turkistan in 2022 and similarly left marveling at the “tremendous achievements” China had allegedly made in human rights, failing to address the ongoing genocide. Bachelet claimed, citing Chinese officials, that the Communist Party had “dismantled” its concentration camps, using China’s preferred euphemism for them, “vocational education training centers.”
Rep. Smith’s request follows the receipt of a bizarre missive from Zhou, the Chinese embassy employee, in early April. Zhou condemned Rep. Smith for introducing the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act and demonizing the Falun Gong spiritual movement, whose adherents have, for decades, been prime targets of the Chinese organ harvesting scheme.
“Falun Gong is a completely anti-human, anti-science, and antisocial cul organization. I wonder why Congressman Smith believes in any words from such an insane cult,” the letter read in part.
“The so-called ‘genocide’ and ‘forced organ harvesting’ are lies that will eventually shatter into pieces in front of facts and truth,’” Zhou concluded, referring to the human rights atrocities against the Uyghur people.
The House of Representatives passed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act in late March nearly unanimously; only Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-NC) voted against it.