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“FOREIGN POLICY” mentioning Mitch McConnell was published in the Senate section on pages S909-S911 on March 1.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
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The publication is reproduced in full below:
FOREIGN POLICY
Mr. McCONNELL. Now, on one final matter, last weekend brought disconcerting headlines for the supporters of freedom and democracy in Asia. In Burma the military junta's month-long coup turned bloody. Eighteen protesters have been murdered and at least a thousand civilian officials have been imprisoned on farcical grounds.
In Hong Kong, China's puppet regime arrested 47 democracy advocates, including some who helped draw millions to the streets in peaceful protests in 2019, and are now holding them without bail.
Unfortunately, in both places, this sort of repression has become a familiar part of life, and it could be a dark preview of developments elsewhere if the free world does not act.
Even as Burma's civilian government made history in 2015, the military made clear it would keep using cronyism and constitutional manipulation to obstruct real popular control. In last year's election, the people overwhelmingly demanded true democracy and economic transparency, but that also raised the risk for those working publicly to make permanent reforms.
The military's detention spree has hit Burma's civilian leaders, including people like Mya Aye, a longtime Muslim pro-democracy leader. It has also swept up some of the brightest economic reformers working to fight corruption and grow prosperity--brave men like Bo Bo Nge, who spent years locked away in Burma's Insein prison in the 1980s and 1990s, built a successful life abroad, and returned to help the civilian government craft economic reforms.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that this Washington Post article detailing Bo Bo Nge's story be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
An American Success Story Is Lost in Myanmar's Coup
(By Shibani Mahtani)
Hong Kong.--Bo Bo Nge's path typified that of his generation's brightest and bravest: Jailed as a student for protesting Myanmar's military regime in 1988, he spent years learning English from dictionary pages smuggled into his Yangon cell. After his release and continued persecution, he fled to the United States.
He made a new life, rising from dishwasher to an economist with a six-figure salary. But his heart never left Myanmar, and armed with a Ph.D., he returned home as a democratic transition took hold, leading to his appointment in 2017 as deputy governor of the central bank--where he served alongside others who fought for democracy three decades earlier.
Just after dawn on Feb. 1, five soldiers appeared at Bo Bo Nge's home in Myanmar's capital, Naypyidaw, and demanded he come with them, according to his wife. She and his friends have not heard from him since.
Bo Bo Nge's fate, along with that of other intellectuals, lawyers and young leaders detained in the military coup that deposed Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government, once again epitomizes dashed hopes for a better future in Myanmar. These reformers and technocrats, whose skills and experience helped salvage the country's antiquated financial system in recent years, are now silenced and subject to the whims of isolationist generals.
In Myanmar coup, grievance and ambition drove military chiefs power grab.
At the same time, Myanmar's security forces are cracking down on protesters, killing 18 on Sunday. More than 1,130 people, including Bo Bo Nge, have been arrested since the coup.
His predicament is made more urgent by his health issues and the fragile state of Myanmar's economy, already battered by the coronavirus pandemic. Banks have closed their doors as hundreds of thousands of people, including tellers, resist the coup by refusing to go to work, pushing the economic system closer to collapse. The few military-linked banks that remain open have restricted customer numbers, while the central bank is limiting withdrawals across financial institutions, raising fears of a cash shortage.
``When someone like Bo Bo arrived back in Myanmar, it was like a bottle of water to a person in the desert,'' said Ba Win, a former provost of Bard College at Simon's Rock, who helped Bo Bo Nge move to the United States. Bo Bo Nge, he added, ``had the intellectual training and discipline to look at economic issues in a way that transcended parochial political interests.''
In an interview with Frontier magazine, Win Thaw, the military's chosen replacement for Bo Bo Nge, accused protesters and those participating in the civil disobedience movement of ``destroying their own country's economy.''
``Policies differ from one government to another, but they should have a common goal, which is to develop the country and not trouble the people,'' he said. The military government, he added, is ``doing their best.''
Bo Bo Nge's first stint in detention was at Yangon's lnsein prison, where he served more than four years for participating in the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, which the military regime brutally crushed. The sprawling complex is one of the city's most visible landmarks, where behind towering metal gates prisoners were subjected to torture and other inhumane treatment. There, Bo Bo Nge's health began to deteriorate, and his teeth rotted from neglect, friends and family say.
Locked up alongside academics and intellectuals, he was exposed to lofty conversations about history, economics and philosophy. He and his fellow prisoners would bury smuggled English dictionary pages under the muddy floors of their cells, studying them furiously when guards were not around. By the time he was released in 1993, Bo Bo Nge was fluent, and after a stint exporting taro stems harvested from Myanmar's lnle Lake to South Korea, he moved to America's lush, mountainous Berkshires, where he attended community college.
``He was immediately helpful, kind and so good-natured,'' said Marion Lathrop, 84, who hosted Bo Bo Nge with her husband, Don, then a professor at Berkshire Community College. ``It was kind of hard to grasp the fact that someone with that nature could have gone through that kind of ordeal.''
Immediately, friends said, Bo Bo Nge got down to business, acquiring a driver's license and a car to drive between his odd jobs and college. In 2001, two years after his arrival, he won a scholarship to Bard College, and after graduation, he pursued a master's degree in economics at Johns Hopkins University.
Through those years, he maintained a long-distance love with his future wife, Hnin Wai Lwin, better known by her nickname Me Kyi, whom he met on lnle Lake at her shop where she sold trinkets under a famed pagoda. Their international calls were a source of entertainment for her village--where residents could listen in on a central broadcast as phones were scarce--before she joined him in Massachusetts seven years after his departure, according to several friends.
His first job was at a subsidiary of the American Institute of Economic Research, where he eventually earned six figures--epitomizing the American immigrant success story. Colleagues were ``immediately struck by his brilliance,'' said Seth Hoffman, now vice president of that subsidiary, American Investment Services.
``Given his particular skill set, Bo Bo could have gone on, if he was reoriented in a different direction, to be on a bond desk in a major investment bank,'' Hoffman said. ``He could have had a more comfortable life.''
But Bo Bo Nge, heartened by a hopeful yet uncertain military-led transition to democracy that began in 2010, wanted to do ``something more than make money,'' according to Ba Win. Inspired by a conversation the two had about a lack of skilled leaders in Myanmar--the military shuttered its best universities after the 1988 uprising and reopened them only in 2014--Bo Bo Nge pursued a doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where Suu Kyi was a research student in the 1980s.
When he went back to join the government as deputy central bank governor in 2017, the military had ceded some control to a civilian leadership and the economy was making great strides. Poverty had been halved from a decade prior, growth was picking up, and reformists were driving policy changes, keeping down inflation and modernizing the central bank. In the recent coup, several of Suu Kyi's leading economic advisers were detained, including Australian economist Sean Turnell, and Min Ye Paing Hein, a former World Bank economist who was the deputy industry minister. None have been heard from since they were taken by authorities.
As the military tightens its hold on power and the prospect of reconciliation grows dim, the European Union and other Western countries are readying sanctions against Myanmar's generals and their economic interests, following moves by the United States.
A general strike on Feb. 22, meanwhile, added momentum to Myanmar's civil disobedience movement. Many taking part in the resistance say sacrificing the economy is their only way to bring down the junta and achieve democracy.
Zaw Zaw, a 41-year-old garment factory owner in Yangon, said he sold an apartment and his car to support those who are forgoing a paycheck to participate in acts of disobedience against military rule. Soon he will run out of things to sell, he admits, but says he will do anything to keep the resistance afloat.
``The country's economy was already in danger'' before the coup, he said. ``Whether or not the generals hold an election in a year as promised, the economy will collapse anyway. So it is worthwhile to sacrifice everything to bring them down.''
Since her husband was taken on Feb. 1, Hnin Wai Lwin has had trouble sleeping and has lost her appetite. Memories of basic facts--when they arrived in the United States, her husband's age--are fading or have become confused. She has moved back to Shan state up north, away from the military-run capital, Naypyidaw, for her safety and that of their 5-year old son, who she said is always asking for his father, unable to comprehend what has happened.
She cannot stop thinking about the health of her husband, who is in his 50s, and whether he has run out of the limited supply of medicines she packed in a bag before he left with the soldiers. In an interview, she said Bo Bo Nge was suffering from gastrointestinal disease and hypertension, for which he needs medical treatment.
``I am also not in good health, and we are not together,'' she said. ``I am very sorry. We should be together, whatever the circumstance.''
Kyaw Ye Lynn in Yangon contributed to this report.
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, even foreign nationals have been subjected to unjustified detention. The world is closely watching the case of Sean Turnell, an Australian scholar who has spent years helping Burma's civilian leaders unlock its economic potential.
The administration has been right to condemn the junta and to consult with Congress on an appropriate response. But as Burma's protesters begin to pay the ultimate price for speaking out, the United States must make it clear that military and police officials will face crippling costs of their own. This should include the military-owned holding companies, which have deep roots in Burma's economy. It is time to lead an international effort to support the people of Burma.
It is also time to strengthen our calls for an international response to China's shameless human rights abuses, beginning with Hong Kong. Another round of arrests in the last several days has sent a new wave of student activists to prison with no due process. They join veteran pro-democracy performers like my friends Martin Lee and Jimmy Lai, who were already rounded up.
The United States cannot outsource our moral authority in championing democracy around the world. When we stay silent, the voice of the international community is channeled through forums where the most notorious human rights abusers preside over their own trials.
The ironically named U.N. Human Rights Council boasts a membership including such paragons of virtue as the Russian Federation, which has begun sending residents to prison for non-state-sanctioned religious beliefs; and Venezuela, whose rap sheet the State Department spells out as ``arbitrary detention,'' ``forced disappearances,'' and ``extrajudicial killings''; and Cuba, whose government exports repressive tools to countries like Venezuela; and, of course, the People's Republic of China itself, where the hypocrisy stretches from repression in Hong Kong to internment and torture of the Uighur people in Xinjiang.
The Biden administration has advertised a foreign policy focused on human rights and democracy and quite publicly announced its intention to rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council. Fine, let Burma and Hong Kong and Xinjiang and Belarus be tests of this administration's approach to the council. But the White House must not put much trust into this corrupted institution. We should be uniting like-minded democracies around actions that the United Nations panels are either unwilling or unable to take. With respect to Hong Kong, the prior administration took several concrete steps, from closing PRC investment loopholes in Hong Kong to opposing targeted sanctions.
Now is the time for the Biden administration to show its resolve as it confronts serious tests of its own.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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