[Congressional Bills 106th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 606 Introduced in House (IH)]







106th CONGRESS
  2d Session
H. RES. 606

 Calling upon the President to provide for the appropriate training of 
 Foreign Service officers and other executive branch personnel in the 
   primacy of democratic values and internationally recognized human 
                                rights.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                            October 3, 2000

     Mr. Rohrabacher (for himself, Mr. Lantos, Mr. Burton, and Mr. 
Faleomavaega) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to 
                the Committee on International Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
 Calling upon the President to provide for the appropriate training of 
 Foreign Service officers and other executive branch personnel in the 
   primacy of democratic values and internationally recognized human 
                                rights.

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This resolution may be cited as the ``United States Training on and 
Recognition of Man's Inhumanity to Man or Twentieth Century Atrocities 
Resolution''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    The Congress finds the following:
            (1) Evidence of man's inhumanity to man has been present 
        since the beginnings of recorded history.
            (2) The impact of man's inhumanity to man on history and 
        the development of human civilization has been so tragic and 
        devastating as to have called forth numerous responses at 
        different times and in many different cultures to restrain the 
        human appetite for violence, domination, and intolerance.
            (3) The history of the modern age since the rise of the 
        democratic spirit during the eighteenth century provides 
        evidence that the solution to the dilemma of man's inhumanity 
        to man lies, at least in part, with the establishment of 
        democratic political and social systems that are based on the 
        equality of all citizens before the law, the public 
        accountability of the governors to the governed, and on mutual 
        tolerance.
            (4) Despite the best efforts of democratic nations and the 
        ameliorating influence of the universal religious and humanist 
        traditions, the twentieth century was the bloodiest in history, 
        with an estimated 175,000,000 people worldwide having lost 
        their lives because of politically motivated violence, 
        genocide, ethnic cleaning, planned starvation, and other forms 
        of exploitation and basic cruelty.
            (5) These atrocities have included injustices perpetrated 
        against, inter alia, the Jewish, Slavic, and Roma populations 
        of Nazi-controlled territories in Europe; the victims of the 
        Gulag, state-imposed famine and brutal relocation policies 
        followed by the government of the Soviet Union; the victims of 
        the land reform program, the Great Leap Forward program, and 
        the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China; the 
        Tibetan population in Chinese-controlled Tibet; the victims of 
        the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia; the Hutu population of Rwanda; 
        the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire; the Kurdish 
        population of northern Iraq and the Shi'a population of 
        southern Iraq; the Moslem and Croat populations of the former 
        Yugoslavia; the victims caused by the apartheid system in South 
        Africa, and of slavery everywhere; the victims of religious 
        fundamentalism, particularly in Iran; the victims of the 
        Sudanese and Libyan governments; the Albanian population of 
        Kosova; the decimated tribes of Amazon rain forest; and others.
            (6) The spread of democratic values and institutional 
        practices, particularly since the recent downfall in numerous 
        countries of ruling regimes based on fascism, communism, and 
        other forms of racial, religious, and national exclusivity 
        offers hope at the dawn of this twenty-first century that 
        humankind may finally find the means effectively to restrain 
        the sinister motivations of which human natures is capable at 
        an organized or institutional level.
            (7) The United States of America, by virtue of its 
        experience in the ongoing struggle to redeem the promises of 
        its own founding documents and ideals, is well qualified to 
        provide assistance, as appropriate, to other nations and 
        societies in their struggle to achieve similarly lofty goals.

SEC. 3. DECLARATION OF POLICY.

    The House of Representatives calls upon the President to provide 
for the appropriate training of Foreign Service officers and other 
executive branch personnel who have occasion to respond to issues 
related to man's inhumanity to man, with such training to include an 
emphasis on the primacy of democratic values and internationally 
recognized human rights and the means available to the United States, 
acting singly or in concert with other nations, to promote and enforce 
those values and rights.
                                 <all>