[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 57 (Thursday, April 29, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S4678]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                                ON SUDAN

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I commend the Foreign Relations Committee 
for its action today in reporting a resolution urging action by the 
United States and the international community to respond to the ongoing 
ethnic violence in Sudan. The Senate should act on this resolution as 
soon as possible.
  It has been 10 years since the Rwanda genocide. A decade ago, 8,000 
Rwandans were being killed every day, yet the international community 
was silent. We did not stop the deaths of 800,000 Tutsis and 
politically moderate Hutu, in spite of our commitment that genocide 
must never again darken the annals of human history.
  Sadly, we may now be repeating the same mistake in Sudan.
  In 1998, President Clinton made a special visit to Kigali, Rwanda's 
capital, ``partly,'' he said, ``in recognition of the fact that we in 
the United States and the world community did not do as much as we 
could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred'' in 
Rwanda. His visit and strong words remind us that we must not hesitate 
to act, when the horror is clear and when so many lives may be lost.
  Over the past few weeks, reports of severe ethnic violence have come 
from Darfur, a region of western Sudan. We have heard accounts of 
thousands or even tens of thousands of people murdered, of widespread 
rape, and of people's homes burned to the ground.
  The Sudanese Government has refused to allow full access to western 
Sudan. International monitors and humanitarian workers have been 
prevented from reaching the area. We need immediate access to gather 
more information on what is happening and to provide urgent 
humanitarian relief to the one million people the United Nations 
reports have been displaced internally in Sudan or across the border to 
Chad.
  Many of us hoped that the humanitarian ceasefire and agreement 
earlier this month between the Sudanese government and rebel forces in 
western Sudan would end the many months of violence against entire 
communities. It has not. The bombing of villages by the Sudanese Air 
Force continues, and so does the mayhem by the paramilitary forces 
unleashed by the Government of Sudan.

  The burning of homes and crops of desperately poor villagers has left 
in its ashes a humanitarian disaster. Without immediate relief, experts 
predict deaths in the hundreds of thousands. The cruelty of the 
Government of Sudan and its paramilitary allies against other ethnic 
groups raises the very real specter of genocide.
  The United States and the international community need to act now, to 
stop this brutality, to save lives.
  President Bush should make a strong public statement alerting the 
world to the violence in Darfur. He should call the international 
community to action, and increase pressure on the Sudanese Government. 
Doing so would send a strong signal that the international community 
will not accept these continuing atrocities. Sudan has been seeking 
better relations with the United States. It must be told that our 
nation will have no relations with a genocidal government.
  The United States should propose a resolution in the United Nations 
Security Council to condemn the violations of international law being 
committed in Darfur, particularly the indiscriminate targeting of 
civilians and the obstruction of humanitarian aid by the government. 
The U.N. should demand immediate international access to the region to 
assess the full scale of the need for assistance. The U.N. should also 
insist on adequate support for international human rights monitors and 
for monitors of the ceasefire agreement reached last week.
  The international community must demand that Sudan stop the violence 
now, and give full humanitarian access to Darfur without question or 
qualification.
  To minimize the suffering of those affected by the violence, we 
should immediately identify funds and food aid to meet at least the 
traditional U.S. share of the $110 million appeal from the U.N. Office 
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to support urgently needed 
assistance for internally displaced persons and refugees. These 
internally displaced persons and refugees must also be allowed by the 
Sudanese Government and militias to return safely to their homes, to 
rebuild their lives and communities, as soon as possible.

  The European Community, African countries and the rest of the 
international community should use their considerable influence to 
pressure Sudan to end the violence in Darfur, and end it now.
  If the international community fails to act--and to act now--the 
consequences will be dire.
  United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was eloquent in his 
statement at the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda 
genocide. He said that he would not permit Darfur to become the first 
genocide of the 21st century.
  There will be discussion in Washington and around the world about 
whether the ethnic violence in Darfur is, in fact, genocide, but we 
cannot allow the debate over definitions obstruct our ability to act as 
soon as possible.
  It is a matter of the highest moral responsibility for each of us 
individually, for Congress, for the United States, and for the global 
community to do all we can to stop the violence against innocents in 
Darfur. We must act, because thousands of people's lives will be lost 
if we don't.

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