[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14206-14207]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       ACT NOW TO STOP HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE IN DARFUR, SUDAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pearce). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago, as bloated corpses floated 
down Rwanda's rivers, the international community debated whether the 
atrocities being committed in Rwanda fit the legal definition of 
``genocide.'' By the time the world stopped debating, it was too late. 
Over 800,000 men, women, and children had been killed. The failure of 
the world to act in Rwanda remains a stain on our collective 
conscience.
  We must learn from the tragic mistakes of the past. Today, just 1,000 
miles north of Rwanda in the Darfur region of Sudan, more than 30,000 
people have already been killed by the Sudanese military's aerial 
bombardments and the atrocities being committed by their ruthless 
proxies, the Jangaweed militia. Gang rapes, the branding of raped 
women, amputations, and summary killings are widespread as we speak.
  More than a million people have been driven from their homes as 
villages have been burned and crops destroyed. The Sudanese government 
has deliberately blocked the delivery of food, medicine, and other 
humanitarian assistance. More than 160,000 Darfurians have become 
refugees in neighboring Chad. Conditions are ripe for the spread of 
fatal diseases such as measles, cholera, dysentery, meningitis and 
malaria. The United States Agency for International Development 
estimates that 350,000 people are likely to die in the coming months 
and that the death toll could reach more than a million unless the 
violence stops and the Sudanese government immediately grants 
international aid groups access to Darfur.
  Here in Washington and at the United Nations headquarters in New 
York, many officials are again debating whether this unfolding tragedy 
constitutes genocide, ethnic cleansing, or something else. This time 
let us not debate until it is too late to stop this human catastrophe. 
Let us not wait until thousands more children are killed before we 
summon the will to stop this horror. America and the international 
community have a moral duty to act. The United States and 130 other 
signatories to the Genocide Convention also have a legal obligation to, 
and I quote, ``undertake to prevent and punish'' the crime of genocide.
  The Convention defines genocide as actions undertaken ``with intent 
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or 
religious group, as such.'' The actions include ``deliberately 
inflicting on members of the group conditions of life calculated to 
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.'' By all 
accounts, including reports of U.N. fact finders and the USAID, it is 
the African peoples in the Darfur region who have been targeted for 
destruction by the Khartoum-backed Arab Jangaweed death squads.
  In the middle of an unfolding crisis like that in Darfur today, there 
will always be debate over whether what is happening constitutes 
genocide. But it

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is important to remember that the Genocide Convention does not require 
absolute proof of genocidal intentions before the international 
community is empowered to intervene. The Convention would, after all, 
offer no protection to innocent victims if we had to wait until there 
were tens of thousands or more corpses before we act. A key part of the 
Genocide Convention is prevention, not just punishment after the fact.
  The United States has already done more than any other nation to call 
attention to and respond to this tragedy. But our efforts to date have 
not brought an end to the growing crisis. We must take additional 
measures, and we must take them now.
  The May 25 Security Council statements expressing grave concern about 
the situation in Darfur does not provide any authority for 
international action. The United States should immediately call for an 
emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council and introduce 
and call for a vote on a resolution that demands the government of 
Sudan take the following steps:
  First, allow international relief groups and human rights monitors 
free and secure access to the Darfur region; second, the government of 
Sudan must immediately terminate its support for the Jangaweed and 
dispatch its forces to disarm them; third, the Sudanese government must 
allow the more than one million displaced persons to return to their 
homes.
  This resolution must include stiff sanctions if the Sudanese 
government refuses to meet these conditions, and it must authorize the 
deployment of peacekeeping forces to Darfur to protect civilians and 
individuals from CARE and other humanitarian organizations seeking to 
provide assistance.
  It is also critical that United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan 
exhibit strong leadership on Darfur. I was pleased to join with the 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) in urging him to go to Sudan to 
address the crisis there, and I am pleased that Mr. Annan will finally 
be going next week. However, this visit must be more than just an 
expression of concern. Secretary General Annan must make it clear that 
if the Sudanese government does not cooperate fully in stopping the 
killings and the destruction, he will push for immediate international 
sanctions.
  And he must let the Sudanese government know that the welcome 
progress in reaching accommodation with the south in Sudan will not 
prevent the world from taking action to stop the horror in Darfur. The 
U.N. ignored warnings of mass murder a decade ago in Rwanda. It must 
not stand idly by again.
  We should not allow other members of the U.N. Security Council to 
engage in endless negotiations and delay a vote on a strong resolution. 
Every day that goes by without action means more lives lost. Let's vote 
on a resolution. If the rest of the world refuses to authorize 
collective action, shame on them. Failure to pass such a resolution 
would not represent a failure of American leadership; it would be a 
terrible blot on the world's conscience.
  Whether or not the United Nations acts, the United States should take 
steps on its own. We should make it clear that if the Sudanese 
government does not meet the demands in the proposed resolution, the 
United States will impose travel restrictions on Sudanese officials and 
move to freeze their assets. Even apart from U.N. action, we can 
immediately urge other nations to join us in taking these and other 
measures.
  I commend Secretary of State Colin Powell for his decision to travel 
to Sudan next week and visit the Darfur region. It is critical that the 
Secretary's visit do more than simply call attention to the tragedy 
unfolding there. He must make it clear that the failure of Khartoum to 
fully cooperate in ending the destruction and killings will result in a 
concerted American effort to punish the Sudanese government and harness 
international support to intervene in Darfur.
  Mr. Speaker, we must not look back on Darfur 10 years from now and 
decry the fact that the world failed to stop the crime of genocide. 
Rwanda and other genocides should have taught us that those who 
knowingly fail to confront such evil are themselves complicit through 
inaction. We are all God's children. These are crimes against humanity. 
Let us respond to this unfolding human disaster with the urgency it 
demands.

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