[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 119 (Thursday, September 19, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1619]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 THE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN SUDAN

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                           HON. CLIFF STEARNS

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 19, 2002

  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, Saturday night, college students from 
around the country will be spending all night at the Lincoln Memorial. 
They will be praying for the people of Sudan, and reminding us all of 
the human tragedy that is occurring there, and that we must do 
something about it. They will march to the United States Holocaust 
Memorial Museum in the morning, reminding us that we must never again 
let happen the kind of evil, the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. And 
so, we must do something about Sudan.
  The Sudanese government, the National Islamic Front, is killing its 
own people in many horrible ways in its attempt to assert total control 
over their lives, to impose its version of Islamic law on the 
Christians and animists of southern Sudan. Government forces drop 
homemade bombs on villages and crops; they attack people in line for 
food aid with helicopter gunships; and they bum villages and crops to 
the ground. A particularly horrible weapon the government uses is 
hunger--it intentionally denies food to hundreds of thousands of 
people, to force them to starve or become refugees.
  According to the United Nations World Food Program, the Sudanese 
government intentionally put as many as 1.7 million people at risk this 
spring by denying them food and medical relief. The government agreed 
in 1989, along with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (the rebel 
group) and the United Nations to allow relief through Operation 
Lifeline Sudan. Shortly after this agreement, however, there was a coup 
and the current strongmen came to power. They immediately began to 
manipulate the relief system to prevent relief from coming in. 
Operation Lifeline Sudan flights are not always allowed in, and the 
government refuses to protect non-Operation Lifeline Sudan flights. In 
short, the government is trying nearly everything short of outright 
banning all relief to keep the people of the south starving.
  This is nothing less than genocide. The government is trying to kill 
or drive out hundreds of thousands of people because they are not 
Arabic Muslims. The government wants to impose its version of Islamic 
law over these people, who refuse to follow, and it wants free access 
to the oil fields that lie under these people's homes. So, it tries to 
starve them.
  We in America cannot tolerate this any longer. We have stood by too 
long while the people of southern Sudan suffer at the hands of the 
government. We must act. We must listen to the call of the college 
students at the Lincoln Memorial Saturday night and the Holocaust 
Museum Sunday morning. We must stand firm with Sudan.

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