Congressman Slams American Company For Selling DNA Collection Kits To China

From The Desk Of Congressman Chris Smith

WASHINGTON, D.C. - At a congressional hearing, Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th), Chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), called on the United States and international community to immediately step up efforts to combat the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide against the people of Tibet and hold its enablers to account, including and especially American company Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Chaired by Smith, the March 28th hearing included compelling testimony from Richard Gere - the renowned actor and Golden Globe winner who serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the International Campaign for Tibet - as well as the Sikyong, or head, of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.

“All of us need to do a better job exposing and reversing - or at least mitigating - the ugly, hate-filled campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to erase an entire people - the people of Tibet,” said Smith, who has chaired over 85 congressional hearings and markups on China’s egregious human rights abuses.

“Biometric data - DNA and iris scans - of over a million Tibetans have been harvested and stored by the CCP,” said Smith. “Blood samples were drawn even from children in kindergarten.”

“And you know what is even more shocking?” continued Smith.

“It is the role of an American company, Thermo Fisher Scientific in this genetic data collection and genetic surveillance program,” said Smith, who sent a bipartisan letter with his fellow CECC Co-Chairs to the company’s President and CEO Marc Casper in December 2022 asking him why DNA kits and DNA sequencer replacement parts were still being sold directly by his company to police in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) for use and abuse in collecting biometric data.

According to the Wall Street Journal , Thermo Fisher announced it would stop selling or servicing genetic sequencers in February 2019 “as consistent with Thermo Fisher’s values, ethics code and policies,” but a 2021 New York Times investigation revealed police were still purchasing their equipment.

In his testimony, Gere pointed to reports that found China’s police may have gathered between 920,000 to 1,200,000 DNA samples in the TAR over the past six years, including by taking blood from children as young as five without their parents’ consent.

“China’s surveillance no longer halts at the Tibetan border,” said Gere. “The CCPs techno-authoritarianism and fear tactics extend to Tibetan communities abroad. This oppression is being perpetrated behind a digital iron curtain to hide reality on the ground. The development of these systems of repression, reaching all the way around the world, reflects the lengths the CCP will go to dismantle the Tibetan civilization.”

The Sikyong testified that “to speed up assimilation, large-scale forced relocation of Tibetans from their traditional homeland to Chinese territories and within Tibet, mass transfer of Tibetan youths to China for labor and incentivized migration of Han Chinese into Tibet are being carried out. Moreover, Tibetan children across Tibet are not only being coerced into colonial boarding schools but transferred to areas across China on a massive scale.”

According to a 2021 report by Tibet Action International, 80 percent of children in the TAR are educated in a massive system of colonial boarding schools, separated from their families and culture as part of the CCP’s forced assimilation of ethnic and religious minority groups.

And a 2022 State Department report found the CCP also effectively placed Tibetan Buddhism under central government control and subjected Tibetan women to “coerced abortion or forced sterilization.”

Smith’s hearing - entitled “Preserving Tibet: Combating Cultural Erasure, Forced Assimilation and Transnational Repression” - also included expert testimony from Lhadon Tethong, Director of the Tibet Action Institute, and Tenzin Dorjee, Senior Research and Strategist at the Tibet Action Group.

“China is committing genocide in Tibet,” said Tethong, “and has been working for decades to change history, to distort and obscure the present situation on the ground so as to erase Tibet from the world stage, both in the past and in the present.”

“The US, and the West in general, has conceded so much ground to China in the last three decades and moved the equilibrium so far toward Beijing’s baseline,” said Dorjee. “It is time to liberate ourselves from the tragically misguided notion that sweeping human rights under the rug would somehow make China more likely to cooperate on issues of geopolitical interest.”

JCP&L: Continued From Page 1 in investments to modernize and strengthen its electric grid. Improvements were made to sense outages and automatically transfer customers to an adjacent circuit. There were also upgrades to company substations in Monmouth, Ocean and Morris counties that provide for additional capacity and redundancy and expansion of a substation to accommodate significant growth in electric demand in Ocean County.

The proposed rate adjustment supports an approximately $185 million investment that strengthens the energy grid, enhances the customer experience and funds new low-income and senior citizen customer assistance programs.

The increased rate would provide a cushion for two new customer assistance initiatives. A Senior Citizens Discount Program would provide income-eligible seniors with a discount on JCP&L’s distribution charges averaging $15 monthly, applied as a credit on the monthly bill for their primary residence. In addition, an Energy Assistance Outreach Team will be created to increase awareness, education and participation in energy assistance programs available to eligible customers.

Other costs include $10 million per year to trim and remove trees that could fall on power lines. There’s a plan to replace outdated streetlights with more energy efficient ones with optional smart features. It would also include smart electric meters and an electric vehicle charging program. The filing would also help recover costs from major storms such as Tropical Storm Isaias, the remnants of Hurricane Ida, 2021’s bow echo, Winter Storms Zeta and Elliott and other weather-related events.

JCP&L has taken steps to reduce this balance, such as applying proceeds from its sale of the Yards Creek Pumped-Storage Generating Facility.

Dance Team Selected For Festival

─Photo courtesy Central Regional Visual and Performing Arts

BERKELEY – Congratulations to the dance team which was selected to represent Ocean County at the NJ State Teen Arts Festival!

Haiden Cortez, Brianna McNamee, Braydon Little, Lindsey Camburn, Crystal Saar, Matthew Kovar, Alyssa Ely, AJ Ostapovich

(MATES) Brooke Norton, Kayla Matthews, Zack Dean, Ann DelPrete, Lucas Haug, Kailyn Sinnett, Maci McNeil (PAA), Carly Straccia, Gianna Holly, Shania Crump, Megan Gallas, Kylie VanDiver, Luca Canzonari, Aly Martyn, and Abigail Poggioli. Great job everyone!

Students Visit Cattus Island

BERKELEY – Ms. Bale and Mrs. Rasmussen’s first graders at H & M Potter went to Cattus Island for a field trip. They learned about different animals and their adaptations. What a great way to celebrate our learning and connect our animal and plant science unit to real life.

2023 Summer Camp

BERKELEY – Summer Camp will be returning for 2023.

Camp begins: July 5; Camp ends: August 11. Camp hours are 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Camp will be for grades 1st to 6th. Camp will be held at Veterans Park. Before care is 7:30 to 9 a.m. and aftercare is available 4 to 7 p.m. Registration will be in person only and held at the following times: April 18 and April 21 from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. For your convenience, they will have Evening Registration on April 19 from 4 to 7 p.m. Registration will be held at the Berkeley Recreation Center 630 Atlantic City Boulevard (Route 9), Bayville.

Camp fees: $215 for the first child, $200 for each additional child in household. Before Care: $200; Aftercare: $300 or $450 for both.

Bring in proof of residency and birth certificate at the time of registration. Must be a Berkeley Township resident.