[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 135 (Wednesday, September 12, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11496-S11498]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             EASTERN CONGO

  Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, I rise to speak on a situation now 
developing to which I hope my colleagues will pay some attention. If we 
get involved at an early phase, it may be something we can head off 
rather than have it develop full scale. And I will

[[Page S11497]]

have some pictures. I am talking about the situation in the Democratic 
Republic of Congo.
  We have seen a situation there where thousands of people have been 
dying on a monthly basis. It had been stabilizing some with the U.N. 
policing force that was in the area, the largest in the world. Now it 
is escalating again. It had stabilized. It is something we have to get 
after right now and, if we can, it might be such that we can stop it 
from spreading. But we have to pay some attention to it and look at it 
now.
  Not even 12 months after their first free elections in 40 years, the 
fragile stability of the entire country is at stake. Senator Durbin and 
I visited there about a year and a half ago. It was starting to achieve 
some stability. They hadn't voted yet for the election. Now we are 
seeing the present situation in eastern Congo, specifically in an area 
called North Kivu, gravely deteriorating. According to the U.N. relief 
agencies, we have seen nearly 40,000 people displaced this month. We 
saw another 100,000 displaced in June, in addition to the 100,000 
displaced in January, all from this year. So nearly a quarter million 
people have been displaced in this one region.
  These displacements come from rising tensions between the renegade 
General Nkunda and those loyal to the Congolese Government. Nkunda says 
he is protecting the Tutsi-Congolese minority from the Congolese 
Government and from the Hutu militias. These are militias that fled 
Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994. So this has a 
connection to Rwanda. That is what is so deadly about it. We have seen 
it activated before, and it is deadly.
  Neither General Nkunda nor the Hutu militias have ever been disarmed, 
raging havoc on the civilian population for years. The fighting between 
Nkunda's rebels and Congolese forces has spilled into the Virunga 
Mountains where the mountain gorillas reside, the sole place where this 
endangered species lives, a species so close to extinction already, yet 
nine were killed this year in fighting.
  President Kagame of Rwanda said Monday that Nkunda has legitimate 
political grievances against the Congolese Government. We have to call 
him on that. President Kagame stated Nkunda was simply protecting a 
section of the Congolese from extermination, but there are no reported 
actions against the Tutsi-Congolese.
  This can be kind of convoluted on names, but this is how it started 
the first time around, a rebel general saying: I am protecting the 
people in the minority. Then they started attacking the people. People 
fled into refugee camps, and more died. When you flee for your life in 
these areas of the Congo, there is not always another town or village 
to go into. One area where there was fighting over the weekend took 
place in a settlement village--a refugee camp from a conflict 10 years 
earlier. It burned the village simply because the people could not 
return to their previous homes. Now, due to fighting, they are homeless 
and fleeing once again.
  I want to show a few pictures because it always seems we talk about 
numbers when we talk about distant places. People say: Well, I am sure 
that goes on all the time. It doesn't. It doesn't need to go on at all. 
It helps people to see that there are real people who suffer.
  Here is a picture of a mother who brought her child into a 
therapeutic feeding camp because the child was dying of starvation due 
to constant movement of the family from village to village. The child 
became sick when they had no other place to go but the jungle to seek 
refuge. That happens when there is no stabilized place; children die in 
particular. Others do too.
  Here is a 2-year-old who caught malaria due to the family hiding for 
so long in the bush after having fled their home. Malnourishment was 
quick to follow, as the family could find no food in the bush. So we 
have a 2-year-old with malaria, malnourished, on the verge of death.
  This room is where about 75 to 90 women and children stay when they 
are receiving medical treatment and food supplements from a village 
clinic in the village of Kitchanga in North Kivu Province of Congo. 
This shows the crowded conditions into which people are forced.
  Here is a 3-year-old who was diagnosed with malaria, tuberculosis, 
and malnourishment from hiding in the jungle with his family. Every 
breath he took was preceded by a raspy cough due to the stage of 
tuberculosis. His mother wanted to get him to a health clinic earlier 
but had to hide the family in the bush for several weeks because the 
road into town had been blocked by a militia.
  These are real people suffering, dying because of this situation.
  This is a 3-year-old diagnosed with malaria. They began treatment for 
the malaria, and his body rejected the treatment. They found that while 
he had been eating about once a day, he was anemic due to lack of 
nutrition in the food his family had been able to find in the jungle as 
they hid from militia groups that had burned their village and home to 
the ground. His body began to shut down. He rejected the oral and IV 
treatments. This 3-year-old passed away within 6 hours of rejecting the 
IV treatments, 15 minutes after this photo was taken.
  These are real lives and real people. I have shown a few of them from 
this raging war that goes on while we have a blind eye to it.
  Sexual violence and rape is also on the rise in Congo. The Washington 
Post reported the intensity and frequency of the rape is worse in the 
DRC than anywhere else in the world. The U.N. emergency relief agencies 
report that 4,500 cases of sexual violence have been reported since 
January of 2007 in this one province alone. We are looking at, in less 
than 9 months, 4,500 cases of sexual violence in one province. Women 
are brutally raped in front of crowds, families, husbands, resulting in 
serious physical and emotional trauma. I visited a hospital with 
Senator Durbin in the eastern city of Goma where women could be treated 
for ailments due to brutal rapes. Because of their condition, many 
women are outcasts from their community and families, and the pain goes 
on.
  I have made a number of trips to Africa, most recently to Ethiopia in 
January. We must be engaged in this continent. It is a humanitarian 
cause. It is a growing strategic cause. As China tries to integrate 
more into Africa and militant Islamists engage more as well, we need to 
be engaged--if not for a strategic reason, look at the faces of the 
people who are dying--in helping them out.
  I urge my colleagues to examine this troubling situation. Today, 
there will be a letter circulating to Secretary Rice urging the State 
Department to take more action against these atrocities in a forgotten 
area of the world and find ways to be an increasing force for good in 
this part of the world. We can help with the malnourishment situation. 
Ultimately, we also have to speak to the Rwandan Government and to the 
Congolese Government and to the U.S. forces in that area to take care 
of the people and to knock it off and for us to step up our engagement.
  Ultimately, I speak for the people of Congo because I think we should 
care about them. It is our goodness that leads to our greatness as a 
country. It is something we should be interested in. We said about 
Rwanda: Never again. Now we are seeing even sections of that fight 
continue 15 years later and infecting Congo. We said never again; we 
should mean never again. We should be engaged. We need to become the 
kind of people who are strong to protect the weak.
  This week, we had an excellent report from General Petraeus on 
military action in a key part of the world. I am delighted that press 
was delivered and that we can now discuss the political solution. I 
don't think we are on an effective political track. We need to do that. 
I just came from a consumer product safety hearing on Chinese products, 
the failure of those products. We need to address that. But we also 
should not ignore places that are less obvious to us in the world, 
where there is carnage and deprivation and humanitarian need. We can be 
more involved.
  I urge my colleagues to sign on to this letter. I urge them to get 
interested. Let us mean ``never again'' and do something about it.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

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  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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