[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 22 (Wednesday, March 2, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E342-E343]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ARTICLE ON ATROCITIES IN DARFUR, SUDAN

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 2, 2005

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to your attention an 
excellent op-ed article written in today's New York Times by Nicolas D. 
Kristof titled ``The American Witness.'' I ask that this article be 
inserted into the record. The op-ed article highlights the atrocities 
that are now occurring in Darfur, Sudan and the continuing level of 
indifference that the West has towards the people of Africa. In light 
of all of the rhetoric we hear from the United States regarding its 
strong commitment to liberate people from tyrant dictators, spread 
democracy around the world, and fight terrorism, I am left to wonder if 
these same principles do not apply to the people of Africa.
  Without a doubt, genocide is occurring in Darfur, Sudan, and its 
government bears responsibility for the mass killings. Last summer, 
Congress declared the atrocities occurring in Darfur to be genocide, 
and the Bush Administration reached the same conclusion in September 
2004. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration has done little, beyond 
acknowledging the crime, to engage the international community in 
stopping the slaughters of tens of thousands of innocent people. While 
there are no reliable estimates on the number of people killed as a 
result of the humanitarian crisis, observers estimate that 300,000 
people have been killed since the beginning of the recent conflict in 
2003. Meanwhile, an estimated 1.6 million people have been displaced 
from their homes and more than 213,000 people have been forced to seek 
refuge in neighboring Chad.
  Last month, the United Nations released the Report of the 
International Commission on Inquiry on Darfur which stated that, 
``[g]overnment forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, 
including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, 
destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, 
pillaging and forced displacement throughout Darfur'' and that such 
acts ``were conducted on a widespread and systematic basis, and 
therefore may amount to crimes against humanity.''
  Now that the United Nations have substantiated what many of us have 
known for awhile, it is time that the West to take deliberative action 
to force the perpetrators of the genocide in Darfur to end the 
slaughter of innocent civilians. At the behest of the United States, 
the United Nations Security Council must pass a resolution condemning 
the crimes against humanity that are occurring in Darfur and impose 
sanctions against the Government of Sudan if they do not stop the 
killings. The Security Council should also act to freeze the assets of 
and deny entry visas to perpetrators of genocide, and extend the arms 
embargo to the Government of Sudan.
  In addition to these actions, the Bush Administration should work 
with its NATO allies to provide the African Union forces with concrete 
assistance and peace keeping troops on the ground in Darfur. I 
encourage the Bush Administration to continue to provide critical 
logistical and equipment support to the African Union forces. Finally, 
I also encourage that Administration to reappoint a Special Envoy to 
Sudan as quickly as possible to ensure that the United States has a 
visible role in resolving this horrific crisis.
  The plight of the people of Darfur should garner great sympathy from 
the Bush Administration. Now that we know Iraq had no Weapons of Mass 
Destruction and no connection to the 9-11 attacks, the President claims 
a mandate to engage in war to liberate oppressed people from tyrannical 
governments. Should not his so-called God-given mandate compel him to 
take the lead in getting our friends on the United Nation's Security 
Council to impose sanctions on the government of Sudan and, if 
necessary, institute other deliberative measures to stop the killing? 
After all, if the Bush Administration can send young men and women from 
poor communities and National Guard and reservists into Iraq to 
liberate its people from the tyrant forces of Saddam Hussein, then 
surely we can take steps to get the international community to stop the 
killing in Sudan and bring the perpetrators to justice.
  If we can learn any lessons from history, we should commit ourselves 
to ensuring that we do not fail the people of Sudan in the manner in 
which we failed the people of Rwanda where an estimated one million 
people who were slaughtered in the early 1990's while the world 
community sat on the sidelines. Only now are Americans learning through 
the movie Hotel Rwanda how we as a Nation failed a people. The crisis 
that is occurring in Darfur presents the Bush Administration with an 
opportunity to resuscitate its reputation in the international 
community.

               [From the New York Times, March 2, 2005.]

                          The American Witness

                        (By Nicholas D. Kristof)

       American soldiers are trained to shoot at the enemy. 
     They're prepared to be shot at. But what young men like Brian 
     Steidle are

[[Page E343]]

     not equipped for is witnessing a genocide but being unable to 
     protect the civilians pleading for help.
       If President Bush wants to figure out whether the U.S. 
     should stand more firmly against the genocide in Darfur, I 
     suggest that he invite Mr. Steidle to the White House to give 
     a briefing. Mr. Steidle, a 28-year-old former Marine captain, 
     was one of just three American military advisers for the 
     African Union monitoring team in Darfur--and he is bursting 
     with frustration.
       ``Every single day you go out to see another burned 
     village, and more dead bodies,'' he said. ``And the 
     children--you see 6-month-old babies that have been shot, and 
     3-year-old kids with their faces smashed in with rifle butts. 
     And you just have to stand there and write your reports.''
       While journalists and aid workers are sharply limited in 
     their movements in Darfur, Mr. Steidle and the monitors 
     traveled around by truck and helicopter to investigate 
     massacres by the Sudanese government and the janjaweed 
     militia it sponsors. They have sometimes been shot at, and 
     once his group was held hostage, but they have persisted and 
     become witnesses to systematic crimes against humanity.
       So is it really genocide?
       ``I have no doubt about that,'' Mr. Steidle said. ``It's a 
     systematic cleansing of peoples by the Arab chiefs there. And 
     when you talk to them, that's what they tell you. They're 
     very blunt about it. One day we met a janjaweed leader and he 
     said, `Unless you get back four camels that were stolen in 
     2003, then we're going to go to these four villages and burn 
     the villages, rape the women, kill everyone.' And they did.''
       The African Union doesn't have the troops, firepower or 
     mandate to actually stop the slaughter, just to monitor it. 
     Mr. Steidle said his single most frustrating moment came in 
     December when the Sudanese government and the janjaweed 
     attacked the village of Labado, which had 25,000 inhabitants. 
     Mr. Steidle and his unit flew to the area in helicopters, but 
     a Sudanese general refused to let them enter the village--and 
     also refused to stop the attack.
       ``It was extremely frustrating--seeing the village burn, 
     hearing gunshots, not being able to do anything,'' Mr. 
     Steidle said. ``The entire village is now gone. It's a big 
     black spot on the earth.''
       When Sudan's government is preparing to send bombers or 
     helicopter gunships to attack an African village, it shuts 
     down the cellphone system so no one can send out warnings. 
     Thus the international monitors know when a massacre is about 
     to unfold. But there's usually nothing they can do.
       The West, led by the Bush administration, is providing food 
     and medical care that is keeping hundreds of thousands of 
     people alive. But we're managing the genocide, not halting 
     it.
       ``The world is failing Darfur,'' said Jan Egeland, the U.N. 
     under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. ``We're 
     only playing the humanitarian card, and we're just witnessing 
     the massacres.''
       President Bush is pushing for sanctions, but European 
     countries like France are disgracefully cool to the idea--and 
     China is downright hostile, playing the same supportive role 
     for the Darfur genocide that it did for the Khmer Rouge 
     genocide.
       Mr. Steidle has just quit his job with the African Union, 
     but he plans to continue working in Darfur to do his part to 
     stand up to the killers. Most of us don't have to go to that 
     extreme of risking our lives in Darfur--we just need to get 
     off the fence and push our government off, too.
       At one level, I blame President Bush--and, even more, the 
     leaders of European, Arab and African nations--for their 
     passivity. But if our leaders are acquiescing in genocide, 
     that's because we citizens are passive, too. If American 
     voters cared about Darfur's genocide as much as about, say, 
     the Michael Jackson trial, then our political system would 
     respond. One useful step would be the passage of the Darfur 
     Accountability Act, to be introduced today by Senators Jon 
     Corzine and Sam Brownback. The legislation calls for such 
     desperately needed actions as expanding the African Union 
     force and establishing a military no-fly zone to stop Sudan 
     from bombing civilians.
       As Martin Luther King Jr. put it: ``Man's inhumanity to man 
     is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who 
     are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of 
     those who are good.''

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