[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 72 (Friday, June 10, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      STOP THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to address a matter of the 
utmost gravity, namely the genocide being committed even as we speak in 
Rwanda. This weekend, Roger Winter, director of the U.S. Committee for 
Refugees, published a chilling account of the slaughter in the 
Washington Post entitled ``Journey Into Genocide: A Rwanda Diary.'' He 
writes:

       Go deep inside Rwanda today and you will not find gas 
     chambers or massive crematoria. But you will find genocide. 
     And if you linger amid the bodies and stench at Rwanda's 
     human slaughter sites long enough, you will gain--as I did--a 
     horrified sense that in some ways this frenzied attempt to 
     annihilate an entire population contains scenes eerily 
     reminiscent of the ``Final Solution'' attempted 50 years ago.
       This is not a comparison I make for cheap shock value. 
     After 15 years of reporting on the violence that produces 
     refugees around the world, I am familiar with the carnage of 
     war, the smell of dead bodies and the butchery of innocent 
     civilians. What I saw in Rwanda two weeks ago was different 
     from anything I have ever seen before.
       This was not a conventional bloodletting. What happened in 
     Rwanda--and still is happening--is qualitatively different.

  I am not aware of anyone who actually disputes the conclusion that 
this is, in fact, genocide. Not just horrible violence to which some 
have attached the label ``genocide'' without any real understanding of 
the meaning of the term. But genocide in fact. The calculated, 
methodical effort to destroy a people in whole or in part.
  There being no reasonable grounds to debate whether this is genocide, 
there is no need to debate the appropriate response. The Senate had 
that debate several years ago. It had that debate when it chose to 
ratify the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the 
Crime of Genocide. Not the tragedy of genocide; the crime of genocide. 
The United States--with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate--
voluntarily accepted the obligation under article I of the convention 
to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.
  The slaughter in Rwanda is continuing because the murderers have no 
fear of international retribution. So far, their contempt for world 
opinion has been most sadly justified. The distinguished journalist and 
commentator Roger Rosenblatt has written a gripping article entitled 
``Rwanda Therapy'' in the New Republic. In that article he recounts a 
conversation among journalists concerning the gross atrocities they 
have witnessed during their careers. He recounts this story told by Els 
Detemmuman, a television journalist from Belgium:

       She told of something she had seen only a few days before 
     in northern Rwanda. She was traveling with her TV crew when 
     their truck was stopped by Hutu militia. Ahead of them, in 
     the middle of the road, some twenty-five Tutsi men, women and 
     children had been herded into a circle. Then the militia 
     waded in with machetes, hacking at the people until they all 
     were dead and many lay in pieces * * *.
       ``Why didn't the militia kill you and your crew?''
       ``They were entirely indifferent to what the world would 
     think,'' she said. ``When they finished, they signaled us to 
     move ahead and we drove on through the blood.''

  To repeat: ``They were entirely indifferent to what the world would 
think.''
   Mr. President, we must act with great vigor to support the efforts 
of the United Nations and Rwanda's neighbors to halt this slaughter. 
And to prevent the further disaster awaiting the hundreds of thousands 
who have fled. There is a definite mission in Rwanda. It is set forth 
in the Convention on Genocide: To prevent and punish those who are even 
now committing this crime.
  I cannot close without adding two comments. First, the world has 
known far too much of genocide in this century. And we cannot afford to 
continue to shrink from the obligation we have undertaken to stop it. 
When the controlling factor of the cold war was removed, there was 
waiting, in the superb phrase of the eminent scientist Edwin O. Wilson, 
``a coiled and ready ethnicity . . .'' We must act so that those who 
would undertake genocide in Rwanda, to commit ethnic cleansing in 
Bosnia, to use systematic rape as a weapon of war anywhere do have a 
concern for the opinion of the world. How the world responds to 
genocide in Rwanda will perforce be a precedent, for good or for ill. 
To date, the precedent is deeply discouraging.
  Finally, let me say that the Congress must be prepared to provide the 
funds that are required to participate effectively. I have served as 
the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. I have been 
the President of the Security Council. No one knows better than I of 
the need to bring fiscal discipline to the United Nations. And we 
should pursue reform with tenacity. But we have chosen to attempt to 
enforce fiscal discipline at the United Nations by undermining our own 
moral authority there. That is the ironic result of flaunting our 
voluntarily assumed legal obligation to pay our dues to the United 
Nations. For some years now we have been the leading deadbeat at the 
United Nations, in the company of some of the worst pariah states in 
the world. How we can be a leader at the United Nations and 
simultaneously the leading deadbeat is a mystery. When our 
representatives at the United Nations urge the Security Council to 
create a war crimes tribunal for Bosnia or to intervene in Rwanda they 
must be able to do so with clean hands, with the confidence that the 
United States will live up to its commitments. Yes, the United Nations 
must learn to live within its budget and its mandate. But there are 
areas where it should--indeed, must--act, and it needs the resources to 
do so.
   Mr. President, action taken today will be too late for hundreds of 
thousands. The mind can hardly comprehend the scope of this crime. But 
vigorous, multilateral action taken today with strong U.S. support will 
not be too late for many hundreds of thousands more. They await our 
action.

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