[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 54 (Thursday, May 4, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E633-E634]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         REBELS IN SIERRA LEONE

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. TONY P. HALL

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 4, 2000

  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, today I am outraged at the news that 
rebels in Sierra Leone murdered seven United Nations peacekeepers on 
May 3, and that more than 40 others remain hostages.
  By coincidence, on that same date this House approved the thoughtful 
legislation proposed by our colleague, Mr. Gejdenson. His bill, which I 
was honored to co-sponsor, is an investment in Sierra Leone's peace 
process that is overdue and one which, I hope, will help end the 
violence there. It funds the effort other nations have joined to disarm 
and rehabilitate the soldiers--many of them young children--who battled 
each other for eight long years until the July 1999 peace agreement. It 
funds a truth and reconciliation commission that aims to heal the 
wounds of civilians who have been caught up in the war but have no hope 
for justice under the peace agreement. And it takes other needed steps.
  Mr. Speaker, I visited Sierra Leone last year with Congressman Frank 
Wolf. We were both horrified by the butchery of innocent people who had 
lost their hands, legs, ears and noses to machete-wielding rebels. 
Neither of us will ever forget what we saw in the capital's amputation 
camp; I am particularly haunted by one charming toddler who will 
struggle all her life because one of the rebels chopped off her hand. 
``Give us a hand,'' the country's president had said in his election 
campaign. Rebels, driven by greed for the nation's tremendous diamond 
wealth and for power, twisted President Kabbah's campaign slogan 
around, telling their victims as they dismembered them, ``go and ask 
Kabbah for your hand.''
  We also were dismayed to learn of the United States' role in pressing 
Sierra Leone's elected government to sign a peace agreement that 
indemnified the rebels who had committed these atrocities. Not only 
would no one be prosecuted for war crimes, the leader of the rebels 
would be put in charge of the nation's considerable wealth--wealth he 
had diverted into the coffers of his rebel forces.
  No one, save a regional coalition led nobly by Nigeria, had come to 
Sierra Leone's aid in any significant way during this war. We sent 
bandages and food, of course, but our country failed to expend the 
effort needed to stop this war. We had lots of excuses--``we were busy 
in Kosovo,'' a country no less middle-class than Sierra Leone. Or, ``it 
was Africa, and we still feel the loss of our men and our prestige in 
Somalia.'' It may have been clever political calculus for our 
government to figure this peace agreement was the best Sierra Leone's 
people could get, but the day we made that decision was a dark one for 
America's honor.
  Most observers have been awed by Sierra Leoneans' willingness to 
accept peace without justice. I too was persuaded by the people I heard 
there and in this country. Perhaps Sierra Leoneans knew best that this 
was their best hope for peace if they could live with this shameful 
agreement, our country should not stand in their way.
  But now Sierra Leoneans have neither justice nor peace. Atrocities 
against civilians continue, with well-documented instances of girls 
being kidnaped to serve as sex slaves and domestic servants; of 
villages being attacked and looted; of random murders. U.N. 
peacekeeping troops have not been immune from the on-going violence: 
they have been stripped of their weapons--of armored personnel 
carriers, helicopters, and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as rifles 
and ammunition. In fact, the Kenyans who died yesterday were trying to 
resist rebels' attempt to grab still more weapons.
  It is clear to me, Mr. Speaker, that as long as rebles can continue 
stealing Sierra Leone's natural resources--its diamonds--they will 
continue their attacks. Diamonds transformed

[[Page E634]]

this band of 400 ruffians into a well-equipped fighting force 25,000 
strong, a force that one retired Green Beret told me was one of the 
best in the world. Diamonds still drive rebel troops and commanders and 
despite the 10-month-old peace agreement that bans continue mining, 
diamonds are still being mined today. And, despite all they know about 
how rebels are using their profits, diamond traders still look the 
other way and buy the rebels' stones--and they still transform them 
into symbols of love and commitment for unsuspecting Americans to 
treasure.
  When we returned in December, Mr. Wolf and I called for the United 
Nations to sanction these bloody diamonds--as it did when rebels in 
Angola broke the peace agreement they had signed. This step is needed 
not only to punish the rebels; it is also essential to protecting the 
U.N. peacekeepers who are the victims of this diamond wealth.
  While the United States contributes no troops to this U.N. effort, we 
are paying tens of millions of dollars for it and we have an obligation 
to insist that it be well equipped, adequately manned, and protected to 
the full extent of the United Nations' ability. However, although we 
got kind words from the Secretary General and Ambassador Holbrooke and 
don't doubt their efforts to bring lasting peace to Sierra Leone, the 
United Nations has not yet seriously considered this step.
  Next week, in honor of the peacekeepers who have died in Sierra 
Leone, and in hope of protecting more from meeting that fate, I plan to 
introduce a Sense of the Congress resolution:
  It will condemn rebels for murdering the Kenyan troops serving as 
U.N. peacekeepers, and the countless Sierra Leonean civilians who 
continue to suffer death and gross human rights violations at rebels' 
hands.
  It will call on our country's diplomats to remind the rebels' leaders 
that last year's peace agreement does not provide them amnesty for war 
crimes committed since it was signed.
  And it will call the United States to bring before the United Nations 
Security Council a resolution sanctioning the sale of diamonds by 
Sierra Leone's rebels.
  Sierra Leone is a country blessed by its natural resources, by its 
fertile land, and by its hard-working people. Until there is real 
peace, though, its diamonds will be a curse--and Sierra Leone will be a 
ward of the international community, dependent on the charity of 
Americans and others. In a country as rich as Sierra Leone, there 
should be no need for the charity of outsiders.
  In the past decade, more than $10 billion in diamond wealth has 
fallen into the hands of rebel forces in Sierra Leone and three other 
African nations. At the same time, these same forces were using their 
money to inflict suffering that our country spent $2 billion to ease. 
Clearly, we cannot stop Sierrra Leone's suffering with food and 
medicine alone. We have to end the deadly trade in conflict diamonds if 
we don't want to see this ``genocide'' continue. As the consumer of 65 
percent of the world's diamonds, we owe it to Africans to help them 
break this terrible link. As stewards of our own government's funds, we 
owe it to Amrican taxpayers to cut off the funding for the weapons that 
have inflicted Sierra Leoneans' wounds--and the death blows to seven 
U.N. peacekeepers.
  I urge our colleagues to join me today in my outrage, and to join me 
next week in supporting this Sense of the Congress resolution.

                          ____________________