Since 1959, Congress has designated the third week of July as Captive Nations Week. This commemoration, marked annually by a presidential proclamation, is a remembrance that too few Americans are aware of. Indeed, at first hearing, the expression “captive nations” may seem melodramatic. But, when one considers the tens of millions of human beings who are literally in captivity under brutal governments – Cubans, Chinese Uyghurs, Venezuelans, Belarussians, and others – the term captive is clear and apt.
Captive Nations Week calls us to take action on behalf of the rights of citizens around the world. When Congress originated the idea in 1953, Communism was marching forward to enslave more people, from the deaths of four million people due to North Korea’s invasion of South Korea (1950-1953), to Soviet gulags and Chinese concentration camps, to the vicious crackdown on East Germans in June 1953. A joint action of Congress (Public Law 86-90, July 17, 1959) asserted the natural sympathy that freedom-loving Americans had for those enslaved by Communist imperialism:
Whereas the greatness of the United States is in large part attributable to its having been able, through the democratic process, to achieve a harmonious national unity of its people…
Whereas this harmonious unification of the diverse elements of our free society has led the people of the United States to possess a warm understanding and sympathy for the aspirations of peoples everywhere and to recognize the natural interdependency of the peoples and nations of the world;
Whereas the enslavement of a substantial part of the world’s population by Communist imperialism makes a mockery of the idea of peaceful coexistence between nations and constitutes a detriment to the natural bonds of understanding between the people of the United States and other peoples…
The Act called upon the president to issue an annual proclamation championing the rights of the oppressed. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and each of his successors have obliged. The first such proclamation in 1959 rightly asserted that Soviet communism was “imperialistic and aggressive,” depriving many of their “national independence and their civil liberties.” Eisenhower went on to declare solidarity with the captives:
Whereas the citizens of the United States are linked by bonds of family and principle to those who love freedom and justice on every continent; and
Whereas it is appropriate and proper to manifest to the peoples of the captive nations the support of the Government and the people of the United States of America for their just aspirations for freedom and national independence…
President Biden’s 2023 proclamation recognized that despite the fall of the Soviet Union a generation ago, we still live in an era of captive nations.
But the battle against oppression did not end with the Cold War. The forces of autocracy continue to reassert themselves. In Iran, Belarus, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and elsewhere, we are seeing an all too familiar contempt for the rule of law, for democracy, for human rights, and even for the truth itself. This is all too evident in Russia’s brutal aggression against its neighbor Ukraine and in the Ukrainian people’s courageous defense of their sovereignty, freedom, land, and lives.
In 2024, the annual Captive Nations Summit in Washington, DC followed on the heels of the NATO Summit, both of which are focused on Russia’s brutal aggression in Ukraine.
What is to be done? Although it is easy to feel powerless when considering those suffering in China’s Uyghur detention camps, the plight of religious people in Nicaragua, Vietnam, and Cuba, the women abused by their captors in Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea, and other captive peoples, nonetheless, there are reasons for vigilance and for hope.
First, we have many more tools at our disposal today. The international community, and especially the United States, have developed creative tools for careful reporting of human rights abuses and punching back at authoritarians. The U.S. has developed broad international reporting mechanisms such as the International Religious Freedom Act and Trafficking Victims Protection Act as well as single-country tools such as the North Korea Human Rights Act. Congress routinely holds public hearings on these issues and has a number of long-standing committees and bipartisan caucuses, such as the Victims of Communism Congressional Caucus, that focus attention on the issues.
Moreover, the U.S. uses a variety of sanctions, penalties, and other restrictions to punish human rights abusers. One of the most creative is the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Act, named for Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison due to beatings, maltreatment, and lack of medical attention. The Magnitsky Act targets the wealth of specific individuals, such as corrupt business people and government officials complicit in human rights violations.
Despite the truly horrific news emanating from prisons in Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and elsewhere, we know what it looks like for captive nations to achieve liberty. We witnessed a revolution in 1989: The dismantling of the Berlin Wall. The fall of Ceaușescu and the liberation of thousands of precious children locked in Romanian cages. The return of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to the community of independent states. We watched Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Slovaks, and others tear off the shackles of Communism. They are captive nations no more.
In 2024 we must resolve to protect free societies from the aggression of their neighbors, whether it is outright violence (i.e. Ukraine) or the aggressive bullying by China in its region. Moreover, the U.S. must continue to be a leader in solidarity with captive peoples, using every tool at our disposal as we, in President Eisenhower’s words, “recommit [ourselves] to the support of the just aspirations of the peoples of those captive nations…until such time as freedom and independence shall have been achieved for all the captive nations of the world.”