[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 4, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H2498-H2499]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         STOP GENOCIDE IN SUDAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, everyone should read Mark Lacey's piece in 
today's New York Times titled, ``In Sudan, Militiamen on Horses Uproot 
a Million.'' The article says, ``The men on horses killed my parents,'' 
referring to the militia who have been armed by the Government of 
Sudan. ``Then the planes came,'' referring to aerial bombardment by the 
Government of Sudan. Marc Lacey writes, ``Human rights groups and 
international officials charge that the militia has been used as a tool 
of the government to pursue a radical policy resembling ethnic 
cleansing.''
  The militia knows no rules of war. ``They ride camels and horses and 
use automatic weapons against those they come across. They ride into 
the villages en masse and shoot anyone in sight. As the militiamen 
torch and loot, the villagers grab what they can and run.''
  One young woman did not have time to get away. She was in bed when 
the Janjaweed moved in. Two men entered her hut, and raped her in front 
of her family. Raping, then branding the survivors is common practice 
in this forgotten land. Refugee after refugee tells the same story. Men 
on horseback, air raids, soldiers sweep into villages. As this crisis 
rages on, 1 million people are now internally displaced, and 100,000 
refugees were forced into Chad. Unknown numbers have been murdered, and 
the world does little.
  With the rainy season just weeks away, the window for getting 
humanitarian assistance is closing. The international community has 6 
weeks left. USAID has warned that by fall, the mortality rate will be 5 
times the threshold for a major catastrophic event.
  Why is the aid not getting there? The Government of Sudan continues 
to stall in the issuing visas for aid workers and is preventing full 
humanitarian access to the region. The international community has just 
6 weeks to act on their behalf.
  Where are the voices of outrage? Remember Rwanda 10 years ago? 
Remember all of the celebrations with regard to remember Rwanda and 
never let it happen again. Where are the voices? Is the international 
community going to fail the people of Darfur, Sudan? What will the 
world tell those who survive? Why is the United Nations and the 
international community not doing more?
  Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the Bush administration and the United 
States for taking the lead on this issue. Ambassador Richard Williamson 
gave a moving presentation in Geneva at the 60th session of the United 
Nations Commission on Human Rights 2 weeks ago. He laid out the facts 
that show that ethnic cleansing is occurring in Sudan, and what did the 
United Nations Commission on Human Rights do, the lone body 
responsible? Zero, zip. Other than the United States, very few people 
would even speak out on this issue.
  The world must do more. We must speak out. I call on this Congress to 
speak out. Members who care about human rights should do all they can 
to help the people of Darfur in Sudan. This week the House Committee on 
International Relations will mark up H. Con. Res. 403, condemning the 
Government of Sudan for their complicity for what is happening in 
Darfur, and calling the international community to do the same, and 
urging immediate humanitarian access to the region.
  In closing, Mr. Speaker, The New York Times writes about rape, 
pillaging, and murder on its front page. We cannot say we did not know 
it is happening. If we fail to act, in another 10 years Darfur will be 
today's Rwanda and some Member of Congress will be standing here on the 
floor asking those in the body at that time to remember the genocide 
that took place in Darfur. Is that what this world wants?

            In Sudan, Militiamen on Horses Uproot a Million

                            (By Marc Lacey)

       Nyala, Sudan, May 2.--Hawa Muhammad, 15, lost just about 
     everything when the men on horseback came. They took her 
     family's horses, donkeys and small herd of goats and sheep. 
     They took her cooking pots and her clothing. They took her 
     mother and her father, too.
       ``The men on horses killed my parents,'' she said, 
     referring to the Janjaweed, loose bands of Arab fighters. 
     ``Then the planes came.''
       Now it is she to whom her six younger sisters turn when 
     their bellies rumble. She recounted her tale as if in a 
     trance.
       Hawa left her village on the run and settled with thousands 
     of others at the camp in Kalma, outside Nyala, part of a tide 
     of a million people that the United Nations and others say 
     has been displaced in this vast region of western Sudan. The 
     government in Khartoum has closed the region to outsiders for 
     much of the last year.
       Hawa's account of how the attack unfolded is the same as 
     those heard in camp after camp across Darfur, as well as the 
     settlements across the border in the desert of eastern Chad, 
     where the United Nations estimates another 100,000 villagers 
     have streamed.
       Many were driven away by the Janjaweed, a few thousand 
     uniformed militia men who have worked with government 
     soldiers and aerial bombardments to purge villages of their 
     darker-skinned black African inhabitants.
       The government denies any relationship to the Janjaweed, 
     but ousted villagers say the links are strong, and their 
     accounts are backed by numerous aid workers and outside 
     experts.
       Human rights groups and international officials charge that 
     the Janjaweed have been used as a tool of the government to 
     pursue a radical policy resembling ethnic cleansing.
       The conflict has pitted Arab nomads and herders against 
     settled black African farmers. The tensions have been 
     worsened by droughts in the north and the slow creep of the 
     desert southward.
       For 20 years rebels in southern Sudan have sought to topple 
     the Arab-dominated government in the north. Two million 
     people died in that larger conflict, and a peace agreement is 
     considered near.
       But since early 2003 two rebel groups in Darfur, the Sudan 
     Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, 
     initiated a separate rebellion, complaining that the region's 
     people, especially the black Africans, were being 
     marginalized.
       Sudan's decades-old civil war was much about religion--the 
     north is mostly Muslim, the south animist and Christian. 
     Darfur's conflict is over ethnicity and resources; it pits 
     Muslim against Muslim.
       The rebels here scored some early victories, and the 
     government responded with a fury, angering countries that 
     thought it was finally taking the country toward peace after 
     decades of civil war.
       The army has used helicopter gunships and old Russian-made 
     Antonov plane, loaded with bombs. But the Arab-African 
     rivalry has long festered here, and the most ruthless weapon 
     has been the mounted Janjaweed fighters, who know no rules of 
     war.
       The Janjaweed ride camels and horses and use automatic 
     weapons against those they come across. They ride into 
     villages en masse and shoot anyone in sight. As the 
     militiamen torch and loot, the villagers grab what they can 
     and run.
       An empty village is an eerie place. There are no babies 
     crying, no goats bleating, no women pounding grain into mush. 
     The only sound comes from the wind as it whips over the huts 
     that used to house families but now lie toppled and torched.
       Today there are many such villages in the vast Darfur 
     region. Eleven ghost villages line the main road just 
     northwest of here. Each stands frozen, just as it was when it 
     was overrun.
       Some were cleared months ago. Others were attacked as 
     recently as last week. In each it is clear that life came to 
     a sudden halt. Beds are overturned, and pots lie on their 
     sides. In front of one hut is a child's sandal, but no child 
     anywhere.
       Fatima Ishag Sulieman, 25, did not have time to get away. 
     She was in bed when the Janjaweed moved in. Two men entered 
     her hut. They hit her, then they raped her in front of her 
     family.
       ``I screamed, and they ran away,'' she said in Arabic.
       Ms. Sulieman and others uprooted from their homes end up in 
     camps, some of them organized settlements and others squalid 
     outposts. She now lives under a tree at a secondary school 
     in Kas, in southern Darfur. All

[[Page H2499]]

     around the schoolyard are other villagers, most of them 
     women and children. Many of them, she says, experienced 
     what she did.
       Others suffer in different ways.
       Adam Hassan, a weathered man in an equally weathered robe, 
     described a dual attack. First it was Arab men on horseback, 
     he said, who swooped down on his village, outside Kaliek. 
     Then, he said, soldiers moved in.
       In Mr. Hassan's case it was his two sons, ages 7 and 10, 
     who were killed.
       Mr. Hassan now stays with his wife and two surviving 
     daughters at the Kas schoolyard. He wants desperately to 
     return to his land and pick up again where he left off.
       Like so many of the uprooted villagers, Mr. Hassan is a 
     farmer. He relies on the heavy rains that come in June and 
     add some life to the dusty earth. His sorghum and ground nuts 
     keep his family alive.
       But he and hundreds of thousands of other farmers in Darfur 
     will miss this year's planning season. It is too unsafe for 
     them to farm. That reality has aid agencies gearing up for 
     what will be more and more hunger in the days ahead.
       ``I may have to stay here forever,'' he said at his 
     campsite, looking glum. ``There are too many Janjaweed.''
       The United Nations, which conducted its own tour of Darfur 
     last week, said the crisis in western Sudan would last 
     another 18 months--if the government managed to disarm the 
     men on horseback soon.
       But it remains to be seen whether the lawlessness will be 
     tamed. On one recent day, men on camelback still lurked on 
     the outskirts of an empty village outside Kas. They took off 
     when visitors arrived.
       Farther down a dirt track, a man on the back of a donkey 
     approached another destroyed village, an assault weapon 
     balanced on his lap.
       His name was Ismael Abbakar, and he said he knew how the 
     village had been emptied--he took, part, in fact--although he 
     claimed to be protecting the villagers, not driving them 
     away.
       Last year, when the chaos in Drafur began spinning out of 
     control, he was raising cattle for a living. Now, though, he 
     is a government soldier who patrols alone with his 
     government-issued weapon. He pulled out an identification to 
     prove his affiliation.
       In Darfur the distinction between soldier and outlaw has 
     grown murky.
       Ahmed Angabo Ahmed, the commissioner of the Kas region, 
     acknowledged enlisting some armed robbers in the police and 
     army to hunt down the rebels. He said his new recruits were 
     on the side of the law now and were not Janjaweed.
       ``The Janjaweed are outlaws,'' he said.

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