[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 15379]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       DARFUR HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

 Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to address the 
ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur. The facts in this case are, in 
my view, clear. Sudanese refugees have been flooding into Chad as a 
result of the coordinated policies of local militias and the Government 
of Sudan. The conditions that have forced the refugees to flee their 
home and their country are beyond horrific, including systematic 
murder, rape, torture, and abduction. Although it is impossible to know 
the exact figures, up to 30,000 individuals have been killed and over a 
million have been displaced. The United States, the United Nations, and 
many international organizations are predicting that over a million 
will die with the change of seasons in the region, the lack of food and 
water, and the onset of disease.
  At a minimum, these atrocities amount to ethnic cleansing on the part 
of the local militias and the Sudanese Government. At worst, they 
constitute genocide. In either case, the atrocities should have been 
stopped much earlier. Furthermore, they can and should be stopped now.
  Within the last few weeks, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and 
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have visited the region. I consider 
this an extremely belated effort on the part of the United States and 
the United Nations to address a series of problems that were both 
predictable and preventable. Unfortunately, the administration's 
attention and resources are so focused elsewhere that it lost sight of 
a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions. Sadly, Sudan is 
where it is today because no one at a high level felt the region and 
its people mattered enough to pay attention and do something. Sadly, 
the administration only paid attention when Congress wrote letters in 
June--letters that I signed--requesting that they do so.
  These letters--one to President Bush and one to Secretary-General 
Annan--requested that very specific steps be undertaken to stop the 
current crisis, in particular committing additional human and financial 
resources to the region, identifying the individuals and governments 
responsible for the actions, requiring a U.N. Security Council 
resolution that condemns the atrocities that have occurred, and 
delineating a viable multilateral effort to bring them to an end.
  Let me emphasize that at present there are 260 individuals in Sudan 
attempting to monitor the crisis, this in a region the size of the 
State of Texas. The brutality continues unabated because the collective 
will to stop it has been nonexistent. It is time for President Bush to 
say clearly what his intentions are. It is time to offer a clear 
strategy. It is time for him to make this a priority. It is time to 
organize international action to bring the crisis to an end.

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