[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15155-15158]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 SUDAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Harris). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Madam Speaker, I have one issue that brings me to the 
floor tonight and that I hope to get to in a moment. As I listened, 
however, to my colleagues, it does come to mind that there would 
undoubtedly be a new vision for America if the ticket that they were 
extolling the virtues of actually becomes the leadership of the country 
as President and Vice President. It is true that there would be a 
difference in the way we look at life, the way we look at government in 
particular. It is certainly true that for those people who believe that 
the government is the primary focus of all of our activity and strength 
as a Nation, those people who believe that taxation can be 
euphemistically described as investment; those people who believe that 
the Constitution is really nothing more than a document that deserves 
to be interpreted, restructured, and changed by courts and judges; 
those people who believe that America's best days are behind us, those 
folks will indeed be happy if, in fact, the Kerry-Edwards ticket 
prevails.
  Good men, I think, all good men are running for the office of 
President and Vice President of the United States. Certainly good 
things can be said about all. But it is undeniably true that we can 
also talk about the fact that incredible differences exist between the 
ways in which these people view their responsibilities as chief 
executive, as Commander in Chief; the way they look at the role of the 
United States in the world. One sees the United States as being 
subservient in many ways to international bodies, world courts, United 
Nations, other international organizations that I believe Senator Kerry 
and Senator Edwards think should have priority in terms of deciding how 
America actually goes about its business and determines its own 
policies.
  Or President Bush, Vice President Cheney, who recognize that although 
interaction with the world community is important, America must be 
strong enough and resilient enough to actually establish its own set of 
goals and purposes, and then act to achieve them, hopefully with the 
agreement of a large part of the world community; but even if that 
agreement were not to be reached, to understand that our goals may be 
unique to us, and that, therefore, we may have the responsibility of 
trying to achieve them, even by ourselves.
  So there are certainly differences, undeniably true. That is the one 
thing with which I can totally agree with what our colleagues on the 
other side were talking about for the last hour, the differences that 
exist. But I believe that when the final tally is made, that most 
Americans will decide that the person who will decide who, for 
instance, is on the Supreme Court of the United States and will be 
making laws, interpreting laws for the next generation or two, because 
that is really how much of an effect it will eventually have if two or 
three members of that Supreme Court have to be, or actually end up 
being, changed.
  And when people think about the fact that we are in a war that does 
threaten our very existence, even if it is not described on the front 
pages every day as a war between armies and one moving and advancing, 
but one retreating, but nevertheless an understanding that we are in a 
clash of civilizations; when one

[[Page 15156]]

thinks about these things, one will come to the conclusion that it is 
better to have people in charge who think about the Constitution as 
strict constructionists do, that it is a document to be adhered to 
because it was divinely inspired. They will think about the fact that 
those folks who they want making a decision about their national 
security are people who are desirous of having the support of the 
international community, but not willing to be subservient to it; and, 
I think, of course, they will come to the conclusion that they will 
keep the President, the present President and Vice President on for the 
next 4 years.
  But that really was not the main purpose of my coming down to the 
floor tonight. When I came to this Congress in 1998, I determined that 
there were a number of issues that I wanted to focus on. One of them 
dealt with a situation that was developing in a land far, far away, a 
land that very few people really knew much about. I had become 
acquainted with it mostly through discussions at my church about the 
persecuted Christians throughout the world.
  This land is known as Sudan. It is one of the largest countries in 
Africa. It is the poorest country in Africa. It has suffered through an 
enormous amount of pain. It has sustained itself after 27 years of 
internal strife. Two million, at least 2 million, are dead; four 
million, at least, displaced in this civil war that has been ongoing, 
as I say, for over 25 years. Little is known about it. Certainly, in 
1998, very few people thought much about Sudan or, frankly, almost any 
other country on the African continent. But certainly, Sudan was not on 
the top of anyone's list as a nation that we should be concerned about, 
a nation that had any relevance for us in the United States or really 
anywhere else in the world. Yes, it was just another one of those 
countries that was involved with internal strife.
  Many people died, but that is just the way it is over there, and that 
was the thought. That was, to the extent that anybody gave it any 
thought, to the extent that Sudan mattered to anyone, it was just 
another place on the African continent where people were dying and were 
dying because of the internal conflicts that we thought we had nothing 
to say about.
  Well, in fact, several Members, including myself, Senator Brownback, 
the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) talked about this issue at 
great length every time we had the opportunity. Anyone who would 
listen, we would talk about what was happening in Sudan. We would talk 
about this incredible tragedy that was evolving in front of our eyes. 
And we would ask people to be concerned, because it was a human tragedy 
of enormous proportion. And we found ourselves, frankly, in this 
strange sort of situation where the focus of the world was always taken 
away to a different place, to a different set of circumstances. 
Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia.
  Mr. Milosevic, a name that most people in this body and certainly 
many Americans will recognize, Mr. Milosevic was the head of a country 
that was, as we determined, as this body determined, conducting 
genocide, that it was involved with ethnic cleansing, where thousands, 
perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people were being killed. And we 
spent a great deal of time and we debated in this body at great length 
exactly what actions should be taken by the West, by the United States 
in particular, and by NATO, if the United Nations would not get 
involved. And the United Nations chose not to get involved, but the 
United States led the way with NATO to go in to Yugoslavia and to, in 
fact, change the situation there. And we did so at the cost of a 
significant amount of our treasure and, certainly, many lives were lost 
in the process.
  But there was a general agreement that that was the right thing to do 
because something terrible was going on in the country at the time in 
Serbia. And so there was a debate on the floor and the permission was 
given and we went to war, essentially, with the United Nations and 
eventually overturned the regime, and the United Nations is now 
involved with trying to do some sort of rebuilding effort of the 
country.

                              {time}  2300

  By the way, it was not very successful. The economy is disastrous. 
There are now signs of ethnic controversy and conflict starting all 
over again. This time it is the Albanian Muslims against the Christian 
Serbians, but the United Nations seems helpless to try and do anything 
about it. And so we did that, and that was where all of our attention 
and resources were focused, at a time when, as I say, another part of 
the world was suffering far more, under any criteria you want to 
establish as to why anybody else should be concerned.
  If you look at the Sudan, you will see a nation tormented, and you 
will see a level of human sacrifice, a level of human rights violations 
that is unprecedented since the Second World War. And yet no focus. 
Nobody cared.
  And we talked and we talked about it, and finally I remember I got a 
call from Senator Brownback's office, and I had only been in Congress 
for a couple of months. His staff person called our staff person and 
said, ``I understand your boss is interested in Sudan. Well, so is 
mine, and we are going over there in May, and does he want to come?'' 
And I said, ``Gee whiz, the Sudan? I have only been in Congress a 
couple of months, and I am really not sure. I always thought that our 
first trips were, like, Paris or Rome or someplace like that.'' That is 
what everybody always told me, that we were going to head out on these 
really exciting and cosmopolitan places, but in fact I said, okay, and 
I went with Senator Brownback and with Congressman Payne to Sudan. And 
what I saw was, with my own eyes, the pictures of what many have seen 
of strife and horror and degradation of the human spirit, but I saw it 
with my own eyes, and it was a very moving experience, of course. It 
was one of those life-altering experiences.
  I will never forget. There was a town called Yei, and it was a town 
that had been bombed often. And I remember there were a lot of chickens 
that the people would be watching, and people would talk about the fact 
that if the chickens started to run, because they could hear the engine 
of planes coming before the people, that the chickens ran, then the 
children ran, and then the adults ran, because they knew that was their 
early warning system, was the chickens who heard the actual planes 
coming.
  And all these kids came around me and Senator Brownback and others, 
and they gathered so close, you could hardly move. And they were 
shouting and they were looking up and they were pointing at the sky, 
and I asked the interpreter who was with us, I said, ``What are they 
saying?'' He said they are saying that they are going to stay as close 
to you as possible, because they do not think that they will be bombed. 
They do not think they will bomb an American Congressman. So they stand 
as close as they possibly can so they will not be hurt.''
  I said, ``Well, you know, I hope they are right, but I don't think 
that anybody knows that I am here, but I hope they are right, of 
course.'' And I could see in their eyes the terror that they live 
through every single day. Most of them had lost parents, brothers and 
sisters. Many, many thousands and thousands were homeless, thousands 
were orphaned, and what they looked for was some degree of hope.
  Now that was the situation in 1998, and we came back here and worked 
very hard, and we passed something. I introduced a bill, and it passed, 
and it is called the Sudan Peace Act. And it established certain 
criteria that had to be met by both the north and the south in terms of 
good-faith bargaining to come to some sort of peace agreement. And if 
they did not have that kind of good-faith bargaining, then there would 
be certain sanctions that we would apply.
  Eventually, and just a few months ago, really, peace did come to that 
part of the Sudan that was afflicted by the civil war, and we are, of 
course, happy. A peace agreement was reached. The details now have to 
be worked out, but

[[Page 15157]]

the fighting between the north and the south stopped.
  Now I have explained that part of this, well, that the world was told 
that the civil war in Sudan started because you have an Arabic Muslim 
north and a black Christian south, and really the cultures were in 
conflict. Certainly true. And that the north where the government 
exists in Khartoum was always oppressive, acted oppressively against 
the south, and that is certainly true. In fact, the north sponsored 
raids, actual slave raids.
  Sudan is one of the countries left in this world that actually has 
institutionalized slavery, and slave raids were encouraged by the 
government of the north in Khartoum. The Arab Muslims would come down, 
raid villages, take people away, back into both sexual slavery and just 
slavery for the labor that could be obtained.
  But this was the conflict, Arabic Muslim, black Christian. Well, 
because of the enormous amount of international pressure that 
eventually developed after years, literally years of pressing every 
government we could think of, including our own, to force some sort of 
peace in this war-torn area of the world, peace finally occurred of a 
sort. But then, almost I guess because it was too good to believe, 
there was too much hope that in fact some degree of tranquility could 
overtake this troubled land, another problem, another conflict began to 
develop, and this is in the Darfur region, western region of Sudan, 
mostly in the north, where again Arabs were confronting black Africans.
  This time, however, there was no difference of religion. This is the 
very interesting aspect of this particular conflict, because it really 
does go to the heart of the entire conflict that has been there for 27 
years, yet really is not Muslim against Christian. It is Arab against 
black. It is genocide. Yes, the word is genocide.
  They have talked about this for a long time, the north, about how 
they wanted to essentially cleanse the south, but they certainly wanted 
to move everyone out of the north that was in fact black African. They 
have now embarked upon a genocidal war in this province of Darfur. So 
far, around 50,000 dead, 200,000 displaced, and the numbers are growing 
every single day.
  The government of Sudan in Khartoum is aiding and abetting the 
Janjaweed. The Janjaweed, they are Arabs, traders, Arab militiamen, 
essentially, who raid, kill and rape, and they are given the arms and 
the go-ahead by the government of Khartoum to pursue this.
  Of course, the Khartoum government tells us and the rest of the world 
they have nothing to do with it, they will try their best to stop this, 
but the only thing that they have stopped so far is the transportation 
of any resources, the transportation through Sudan into this particular 
area of any of the foodstuffs that USAID or other NGOs, nongovernment 
organizations, are trying to deliver. They have done everything 
possible to halt any humanitarian effort to the region. They have done 
everything possible to aid the activities of the Janjaweed and to 
encourage them in this bloodbath.
  Rape has become a tactic to advance the strategy of genocide. The 
women are told at the time of rape that they are impregnating them with 
lighter-skinned children and that they should leave once the child is 
born of that rape, that they could leave and leave the child, because 
the child would be of lighter skin.
  The camps that have been established in and around the interior in 
Darfur, camps because, of course, people have been driven out of their 
villages and into these camps, the camps are surrounded by the 
Janjaweed. They patrol it, and they wait for people to walk outside. 
And the women come out in the morning, and they try to get out earlier 
and earlier to avoid attack, but the women are raped. The men are 
killed the minute they get outside of this camp. So there is no 
sustenance, there is no food, and now the rains are starting in Sudan 
in this part.

                              {time}  2310

  We have camps now with, as I say, a couple of hundred thousand people 
and more arriving every single day. There is no sanitation. There is 
very little food. All of them have been walking for some times hundreds 
of miles to get there. They are weak. They are starving. The rains are 
coming. Disease will spread and hundreds of thousands will die and it 
is planned. This is not just an accident. It is not just what is going 
to happen simply because of the forces of nature. It is going to happen 
because the government of Khartoum, the government of Sudan in Khartoum 
has designed this plan, to kill or move out the black people who 
inhabit this part of their country.
  This is amazing. This is incredible that this could be happening in 
the world today, and again, relatively few people care.
  Now, to the government's credit, Secretary Powell has gone to this 
area, just returned I think last week. He said that something like, 
well, I do not think we should argue about what it is called, whether 
it is genocide or something else. We have to do something. But the 
reality is we have to argue about what it is called because what it is 
called matters. If you say it is genocide, then there is a course of 
action that must be taken.
  There is a 1948 agreement. It was signed by many nations of the 
world, including the United States. It is called The Genocide Treaty, 
and it sets up some criteria. And it says if this criteria are met, 
then in fact genocide is what is happening and you have to do certain 
things, including eventually maybe even military intervention. And that 
is what scares everybody off, and it certainly scares us because, God 
knows, we are spread thin, it is true.
  But I nonetheless believe that we must go to the United Nations, and 
we must ask them for a declaration of genocide, because everything that 
is happening in Darfur, in the Sudan meets those criteria. It is 
purposeful. It is designed to actually eliminate a certain specific 
group of people. They are black. That is their crime. They are Muslims. 
But they are being killed by Muslims who are Arabic. It is racism. It 
is the most virulent form of racism we can possibly imagine.
  The world has to focus on this even though there are things that pull 
us away, I know.
  It is interesting, there is an article in the Guardian Review, 
``Human Rights on Trial'' by Nick Cohen, May 16, 2004. It says, we 
choose to ignore atrocities committed in the third world when it is 
politically expedient as in Sudan. It goes on to say that ``there is a 
bell curve in the international appreciation of atrocity. Safe 
countries receive no coverage for the obvious reason that there is no 
atrocities to cover in, say, Denmark or Belgium. The curve begins to 
climb from these dull lowlands and hits its peak in countries which are 
dangerous but not too dangerous to make reporting to them impossible, 
today's Iraq and the former Yugoslavia in the age of Milosevic.
  ``From here the curve slithers down again until it reaches countries 
at the furthest extreme from civilized life which are either too 
dangerous or too tyrannical for free investigation to be an option for 
anyone but the recklessly brave, the Congo and North Korea today or 
Iraq before the war. The lesson for tyrants is they risk becoming the 
objects of global outrage when they are not tyrannical enough.''
  Is that not just great? Is that not an absolutely perfect description 
of what is happening in the world? There is this range or atrocity that 
we will cover because it is safe enough to do it, but then once it gets 
beyond that, no coverage, nobody pays attention to the worst of all.
  ``The rulers of Sudan know this well,'' Mr. Cohen goes on to say. 
``Foreign journalists are not murdered there but pretty much everyone 
else is. An extraordinary Islamists regime filled with apocalyptic 
fervor of the fundamentalist revival has enslaved Christians and 
animist tribes in the black African south, as it prosecuted a civil war 
which has claimed the lives of 2 million since the early 1980s. Two 
million is the provisional estimate of the number killed by the Khymer 
Rouge in Cambodia. But while every politically sentient person has 
heard of Pol Pot

[[Page 15158]]

and the killing fields, I doubt if many know of President Omar al-
Bashir of Sudan and Hassan al-Turabi, a cleric who provided the 
ideological justification for the terror until he fell out with his 
murderous patron.
  ``If the names ring a bell, my guess is that you are active in one of 
the Christian or human rights campaigns which has doggedly monitored 
the extermination campaigns. The killings have subsided,'' the peace 
act is in force, ``and there is now a faint hope of peace agreement but 
this seemingly happy prospect has only made the randomness of global 
compassion more unhinged and unprincipled.
  ``This year is the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. It 
has seen Kofi Annan apologize for ignoring warnings that a mass 
slaughter was about to begin. And every Western government except those 
that were guilty of sins of omission, except, inevitably, the French, 
whose despicable role in Rwanda came close to the sin of commission. As 
the air was filled with the drumming of chests being beaten and the 
cries of 'never again' being bellowed in languages except French, 
another African disaster was being ignored. Since the autumn of last 
year, Arab militias have driven 1 million people from their homes of 
the Darfur province of Sudan. Government forces have overseen and 
participated in massacres, the summary execution of civilians, and the 
burning of towns and villages. Those who escape now face the risk of 
famine.''
  Atrocities must be allowed to flourish so other atrocities can be 
prevented. That is one of the strange sorts of anomalies of foreign 
policy that we are dealing with. I think this article was fascinating 
for its insight into how we handle issues of this nature and how 
difficulty it is to get the world to go act in situations like this.
  Is it does seem odd, does it not, that we are willing to do so much 
more in other places of far less significance in terms of human rights 
tragedies? But we are all God's children. We are all made in his 
imagine and likeness, be we black, or brown or white or yellow. And for 
that reason we have to show compassion to those who are being 
persecuted. And we should act as vigorously in Sudan as we have in 
other parts of the world.
  The Secretary of State should go to the United Nations tomorrow and 
demand a genocide statement be accepted and that the world, therefore, 
take action in Sudan. The government, every single time they have been 
pushed to the end, have retreated. They need to be pushed to the end 
again here. I hope and pray that we will do what is the right thing to 
do, what is expected of us as those occupying the moral high ground in 
the world, which we are. But in order to maintain that position, in 
order to keep the moral high ground, it is imperative that we pay 
attention to places like Sudan, even though I know our attention is 
being pulled in so many other places. And it is difficult because I do 
not know that there were any votes that anybody can count on if they 
champion this issue. I certainly cannot say that is true.

                              {time}  2320

  There are things that we should do here simply because they are the 
right thing to do, not because there are any votes connected to it, not 
because there are any lobbying groups that are pressuring us, not 
because anybody's giving us money in order to champion a cause, but 
simply because it is the right thing to do. It is what we are asked to 
do as human beings of conscience, which is what I want to believe the 
United States still is, and I do believe it. It just needs to have its 
attention drawn to the areas of the world that command it.
  So I do hope, Madam Speaker, that we will encourage our government to 
take every action possible, as I say, including any action that is 
designed to influence a decision by the United Nations that would lead 
to a declaration stating that genocide is actually what is happening.
  Yes, the word matters. It is not the seeds of genocide. It is not a 
potential genocide. It is, in fact, genocide. Say it, let the chips 
fall where they may, and we can all rest easier because we have done 
what we can do, and that is all really God expects of any of us.

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