[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 118 (Wednesday, September 20, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H6815]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ADDRESSING THE CRISIS IN DARFUR

  Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of 
the gentleman from New Jersey.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from North 
Carolina is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, 
I want to start by thanking my colleagues in the Congressional Black 
Caucus, Representative Danny Davis, who has already spoken, and the 
other members of the Congressional Black Caucus who are here this 
evening to shed more light on what is going on in the Sudan and to 
challenge our other Members of Congress and our administration to take 
action in this dire situation.
  Many people, when they saw the movie Hotel Rwanda, believed that it 
was a fictional movie. Unfortunately, the actions, the things that were 
depicted in that movie, were not fictional at all. It is true that 
actors and actresses played the roles, but it depicted something that 
had actually transpired in our world, which has been described by 
Representative Danny Davis as over 850,000 people killed through acts 
of genocide.

                              {time}  1915

  Unfortunately, that occurred with our United States Government and 
people around the world knowing that genocide was taking place in 
Rwanda and not taking any action to do anything about it.
  Well, we are now facing a similar situation in the Sudan. We are up 
now to what is estimated to be 450,000 people having been killed by 
official governmental actions, genocide. We have declared it to be 
genocide. Our government has declared it to be genocide. And in 
addition to the 450,000 people who have been killed, over 2 million 
people have been displaced from their home communities, their villages, 
because they are fearful of staying in their communities lest they be 
killed by genocide also. And the beat goes on daily.
  Mr. Speaker, this is something that must stop. It is inhumane and it 
is something that our country and people around the world should not 
continue to tolerate.
  We visited, a number of us, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus 
and others, visited the Sudan and actually went into the displaced 
persons camps where we found conditions were horrible, where we found 
disproportionately women and children, because the men had stayed 
behind to fight, and most of them had been the victims of the killings 
and genocide. So we are going to have a situation where more and more 
and more children are going to be without parents if we do not act, and 
that is unacceptable.
  The African Union troops have gone in to try to stabilize the 
situation, but we met with the African Union troops and their resources 
are depleted and they are not mobile enough. Even when they know 
another act of genocide is about to occur, they cannot move fast enough 
to the location where they know it is going to happen to prevent it 
from happening.
  And so we have made it clear that the only way this can be resolved 
is for United Nations troops to be put into that area to stop the 
genocide that is going on.
  Now, let me tell you what happened. The U.N. met and a resolution was 
passed, and still the United Nations troops are not in Sudan. The U.N. 
met and a resolution was passed authorizing troops to go into Lebanon, 
and the U.N. troops are already in Lebanon.
  So there is something going on here, Mr. Speaker, that we need to 
expose to the world. We cannot distinguish between folks just because 
they are in Africa as opposed to the Middle East. We have got to take 
action. We call on our Congress and our administration and people 
around the world to do so this evening.

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