Committee News
February 8, 2010
Due to inclement weather the February 10 hearing on cyberspace policy has been postponed. When it is rescheduled we will announce a new date and time.February 7, 2010
Tehran’s Uranium Enrichment Announcement Underscores Need for U.N. Action on Strong Sanctions, Berman SaysFebruary 5, 2010
Chairman Berman Announces Intention to Mark Up Armenian Genocide Resolution on March 4February 3, 2010
Ugandan Anti-Gay Legislation Threatens Human Rights, Reverses Gains in HIV/AIDS Fight, Berman SaysJanuary 26, 2010
Venezuelan Government’s Media Censorship Damages Venezuela’s Standing and Hurts Its People, Berman SaysJanuary 24, 2010
Remarks to Americans for Peace Now
Committee News
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
June 12, 2007
Lantos Dedicates New Memorial to Communism’s Victims, Notes that Lessons of Cold War Remain Instructive Today
Washington, DC – At the dedication today of a memorial to people who lost their lives fighting communist oppression worldwide, Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the lessons of the Cold War are and should remain a part of present-day American life.“We are an ahistorical society,” Lantos observed in the keynote speech to dedicate the Victims of Communism memorial near the U.S. Capitol grounds. “That is why this monument is so significant to the upcoming generations. … The wave of the future is not godless communism, it is not distorted Islamic fascism, but it is free and open and democratic societies.”
The memorial project has been under way for more than a decade. Its most striking feature is a statue modeled on the “Goddess of Democracy” plaster figure that protesters erected in Beijing’s Tienanmen Square in 1989 during an uprising that galvanized world attention and was violently quashed by Chinese authorities.
Lantos, who survived the Holocaust, worked in the anti-Nazi underground and saw the dawn of Soviet rule over his native Hungary before coming to the United States as a university student, is the founding co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. He was one of the key figures in Congress who supported the memorial’s creation.
“Communism was not the only monstrous phenomenon determined to destroy free and open societies,” he noted. “It was my privilege to fight against Nazism and it was my privilege to fight against Communism. And it is now my privilege to fight against Islamist terrorism determined to take us back 13 centuries.”
Lantos added, “Everyone who has tasted communism, from Albania to Estonia, knows that without the United States, this existential struggle would have been lost.”
Press Contact
Lynne Weil at (202) 225-5021
Lynne Weil at (202) 225-5021