[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 51 (Tuesday, May 3, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       RESOLUTION ON THE CRISIS IN RWANDA--SENATE RESOLUTION 207

 Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I rise today to join Senators 
Simon, Kassebaum, Kennedy, and others to submit a resolution regarding 
the current political and humantarian crisis in Rwanda.
  Rwanda is a Central African nation which has long been wracked by 
violent ethnic unrest. In August of last year there seemed to be a 
glimmer of hope that the forces of reason would overcome the burden of 
history, as a historic agreement signed in Arusha, Tanzania, set forth 
the framework for peace between the Hutu-dominated government and the 
largely Tutsi rebels of the Patriotic Front.
  Those aspirations were dealt a severe blow on April 6 when a plane 
transporting Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian 
President Cyprien Ntaryamira to Kigali from Tanzania was blasted from 
the sky, apparently by an antiaircraft missile. While the actual facts 
of this incident are not yet known, it is clear that a crisis situation 
has developed.
  News of the death of the President sparked violent attacks by Rwandan 
Government forces and militias sympathetic to those forces on members 
of the political opposition, principally on those from the minority 
Tutsi ethnic group, The situation can only be described as a massacre. 
In the early hours of the violence, troops of the elite Presidential 
Guard systematically hunted down and murdered opposition members of the 
government, human rights activists and slaughtered tens of thousands of 
innocent civilians. Meanwhile, rebels from the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan 
Patriotic Front continue their advance on the capital, Kigali. The 
fighting continues unabated.
  The situation is extremely grave. Some credible estimates put the 
death toll at more than 100,000. Media reports describe the streets of 
Kigali as littered with rotting corpses. Western embassy staff have 
been evacuated. Western relief agencies have withdrawn their personnel, 
and humanitarian aid shipments have ceased. Food shortages and lack of 
medicines have put millions of lives at risk.
  This crisis demands our immediate attention. Thousands of civilians 
are currently huddled in a sports stadium in Kigali, protection by a 
small--and shrinking--United Nations protection force. Hundreds of 
thousands more are in hiding from the ruthless security forces and 
militias.
  We must not stand by silently. We must denounce these abhorrent acts. 
Please join my colleagues and me in support of this resolution which 
calls for an end to the violence, an end to the killing, an end to the 
suffering of innocent civilians, and a return to the principles of the 
Arusha Peace Accords.

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