[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 114 (Friday, July 14, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S9979]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 BOSNIA

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I want to take a few moments to take 
the floor. I do not know quite how to do this. I may not do it very 
well. I do not know whether my words will accomplish anything. But 
sometimes, you know, you just feel like you should speak on the floor 
of the Senate. That is what comes with the honor of being a U.S. 
Senator.
  Mr. President, on the front page of the Washington Post today--this 
just needs to be recognized on the floor of the Senate--there is a 
headline, ``For Ousted Bosnians, a Trail of Tears.''
  Under that headline, ``Serbs Force Thousands of Muslims in Harrowing 
Journey.''
  Then there is a picture of older men, women, and children, a Bosnian 
woman wheeling what I gather would be, Mr. President, her elderly 
father in a wheelbarrow. And the first paragraph reads, ``Bedraggled, 
hungry and scared, thousands of Bosnian Muslims flooded into a swelling 
makeshift refugee camp with little food, water or medicine today after 
a harrowing journey into Muslim-held territory from the fallen town of 
Srebrenica, now occupied by Bosnian Serbs reveling in their victory.''
  Mr. President, another article in the Washington Post is headlined, 
``Serbs Start Expelling Muslim Civilians From Seized U.N. Conclave,'' 
with pictures of women and children herded into refugee camps.
  Mr. President, these pictures send chills down my spine. I am the son 
of a Jewish immigrant born in Odessa in the Ukraine who lived in 
Siberia in Russia. I am an American Jew, and these pictures send chills 
down my spine, along with the reports that the Serbs are taking all 
young men, boys 16 years of age, away from their families. I do not 
know where they are taking them to. But they are taking them away to 
find out whether they are guilty of ``war crimes.''
  Mr. President, I do not know exactly what it is the international 
community should do. But I am convinced the international community has 
to do something.
  Mr. President, it is as if the world has not learned anything in the 
last half a century. We really are talking about genocide of people.
  I will not talk about the position a number of Senators took several 
years ago in calling for action. I took such a position. Normally, I do 
not talk about intervention, international military intervention, but 
several years ago several of us came to the floor and said it had to 
happen. That is beside the point.
  Mr. President, I was thinking about this this morning, and I was 
talking to my wife, Sheila. We have been debating the regulatory reform 
bill, and it is extremely important. I have been involved in the debate 
about the rescissions bill. All of us care about our work, and all of 
us give everything we have, whether we agree or disagree. The Presiding 
Officer and I, who are good friends, are good examples; we do not agree 
on all issues. But I am trying to figure out, for God sake, what in the 
world is the world going to do? What is the civilized international 
community going to do? We see people just expelled, expunged, young men 
taken away from families to see whether they are ``guilty of war 
crimes.'' Elderly and children, 1-year-olds put on trains--to go where? 
What is going to happen to these people?
  Sometimes, in the history of humankind, silence is betrayal. I do not 
think we can be silent about it. I wish to God I knew exactly what the 
international community could do. The fact that there are no good 
choices does not mean we still should not choose some course of action. 
I do not mean any easy fix, Mr. President. I do not mean something 
where we essentially turn our gaze away from the rape and torture and 
murder of innocent people.
  So, Mr. President, I just wanted to take a few minutes to speak to 
these pictures. If my father, Leon, was alive--he is no longer alive--
he would say that there exists on the part of humankind an enormous 
capacity for good but also, unfortunately, an enormous capacity for 
evil. It is that parallelism that makes it all so complicated.
  I assume that next week in this Chamber we will be talking about what 
is now happening in the former Yugoslavia. I do not know what the focus 
of the debate will be. I know there are several resolutions, but I 
think it has to be more than resolutions and amendments. The 
international community cannot turn its gaze away from this. This is 
genocide. We should have learned some lessons over the last half a 
century. I do not think we can go about our normal business just 
because it is long distance, somewhere away. These are all of God's 
children.
  I yield the floor.

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