[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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