[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16185-16186]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           VIOLENCE IN CONGO

  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I want to call attention to and condemn 
the recent deplorable violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 
Last Saturday, almost 50 people, mostly women and children, were quite 
literally burned alive in eastern Congo because of their support for 
the U.N. peacekeeping mission there. While many of the men in the 
village fled, the victims--again, the vast majority women and 
children--were herded into huts and locked inside while the huts were 
then set on fire.
  The perpetrators of this heinous act were Rwandan rebels who, after 
the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, fled to the eastern Congo to avoid 
prosecution for their genocidal actions. Since then, they have roamed 
the eastern Congo with impunity, spreading death and misery in their 
wake.
  During Saturday's brutal massacre, the rebels taunted their victims, 
telling them to call on their U.N. saviors to rescue them. ``Call on 
your U.N. saviors if you want to be rescued,'' they said. But the 
problem was that the U.N. peacekeepers were not there. They were not 
there when those women and children needed them the most.
  We have to condemn the rebels. What they did was indescribably 
brutal. But we, also, in the international community have a 
responsibility to protect the victims, and the international community 
failed. We have sent the world's largest U.N. peacekeeping mission into 
the Congo. Yet the violence and instability continues. Sexual scandals 
in the Congo and elsewhere show that peacekeepers cannot be trusted 
with the very people they are designed to protect. In addition, 
peacekeepers often avoid danger, abdicating the responsibility to 
protect at the very moment they are most needed. I don't want my 
colleagues in the Senate to think this is an isolated critique of the 
U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Congo which, in its defense, has been 
more active in the past few months. This is really an endemic problem, 
as shown by the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 men and boys in Bosnia by 
the Bosnian Serb army. The U.N. peacekeeping force was simply unable to 
protect them. Because of the U.N. peacekeeping mission's failure, 8,000 
innocent people lost their lives.
  Mr. President, I can also speak at length about the current failures 
of U.N. peacekeeping in Haiti.
  In Haiti, despite a robust U.N. peacekeeping mission that is twice as 
large as the successful multinational force that includes United States 
troops that kept the peace immediately following President Aristide's 
departure, today violence and chaos reign in Haiti. U.N. peacekeepers 
in Haiti are called turistas because they are found more often on the 
beaches or in local restaurants and bars than actively protecting the 
people of Haiti.
  The U.N. originally argued the problem was more troops were needed. 
But the quantity is not the problem in Haiti, nor in the Congo. As I 
mentioned before, Congo hosts the world's largest U.N. peacekeeping 
force, and the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti is twice as large as 
the contingent of United States, French, and Canadian soldiers who were 
very effectively able to keep the peace immediately after Aristide 
left. The problem then is quality. The problem is what they are doing. 
The problem is what they are not doing.
  I certainly do not want to imply all peacekeepers are doing a bad or 
inadequate job. There are many brave individuals who make up the 
peacekeeping forces. Some countries certainly have an exemplary 
reputation for sending competent peacekeepers, but there are far too 
few quality peacekeepers. It is inconsistent.
  The bottom line is the United Nations needs to take a long, hard 
look, and that all countries in the international community need to 
take a long, hard look at the peacekeeping missions to ensure that 
every peacekeeper in every peacekeeping mission is willing to protect 
and engage.
  ``Protect and engage'' should be the motto of the U.N. because no 
international mandate is more important than the responsibility to 
protect innocent civilians.
  We know, of course, the United States cannot afford to send U.S. 
troops--certainly the best in the

[[Page 16186]]

world--to every single conflict in every single region. That is why we 
have U.N. peacekeepers, for which we pay a significant amount of money. 
We pay a significant percentage of the cost of U.N. peacekeepers.
  We have peacekeepers so the international community can collectively 
respond to threats to international peace and security. But simply 
sending peacekeepers is not enough if they are not going to protect the 
innocent and engage the wicked. We must demand more from the 
peacekeepers or we will face the consequences of failed states.
  Mr. President, I will come to the floor in the near future and talk 
at greater length about Haiti and the crisis that is occurring in 
Haiti. Today I simply want to spend another moment to talk about the 
peacekeepers.
  I had the opportunity to be in Haiti--I have visited Haiti many 
times--when our U.S. troops were down there shortly after President 
Aristide left. In my career in the Senate, I don't know anything that 
has made me prouder to be an American than to see our United States 
troops in Haiti, to walk the slums of Port-au-Prince with our troops, 
to see young children come up--run up--these poor children who have 
absolutely nothing in the world, to run up to our troops and see the 
relationship between those troops and those children.
  When our troops went to Haiti, they did it the right way. They 
engaged in civil work. They helped clear the sewers. They helped clear 
the open sewers we find in City Soleil, the worst slum in Port-au-
Prince. They would go out and set up clinics to help children and 
adults with their medical needs. They brought medical care to people 
who had not seen medical care. At the same time, they brought order and 
stability. They made City Soleil an example. In a slum in Port-au-
Prince of 300,000 to 400,000 people, they brought order and peace, 
something the people living there have never seen before. The 
humanitarian groups working in City Soleil tell me this was the first 
time they have really seen peace, when our troops were there.
  I talked with the U.S. commanders. Our troops were about to leave, 
and the U.N. peacekeeping mission was about to come in. Our U.S. 
commanders told me: Senator DeWine, we are telling the U.N. commanders 
when they come in, they better take charge immediately. They better let 
the gang leaders, the thugs, and the people who will cause the problems 
know who is in charge, and they better let them know immediately 
because if they do not, we are going to tell them there will be chaos, 
the violence will return, and death will return to Haiti.
  That is what they told the U.N. peacekeeping mission. Tragically, the 
U.N. peacekeepers apparently did not listen. They did not take charge 
and chaos has returned.
  Many of us have urged the U.N. and the peacekeepers there and the 
countries involved to be more aggressive with the thugs to help the 
people of Haiti, to help restore order. But it is not that simple. The 
U.N. engaged in a mission on July 7, I believe it was, in City Soleil 
where they tried to deal with one gang leader, a gang leader who had 
been causing a lot of problems. They did, in fact, deal with him. They 
killed him. But by the reports I have received from my sources in City 
Soleil, they also killed 50, 60, 70 civilians, a horrible botched 
operation, from everything I can tell, at least, and I am still trying 
to find out exactly what happened.
  So it is not just a question of getting tough, it is a question of 
doing it the right way. It is a question of going out, being among the 
people, working with the people, having good intelligence, knowing what 
is going on, and then acting against the people who would rain havoc on 
the community.
  There are a million things wrong with Haiti--a port that does not 
work, not enough food, electricity that is not on, a government that is 
struggling. But nothing will work in Haiti, nothing can be done in 
Haiti unless there is some order, unless there is some security. Haiti 
today is on the brink of chaos. The United States and the international 
community are going to have to do something about it.
  We are coming very close to the point where the United States, 
whether we like it or not, is going to have to send troops back to 
Haiti. No one wants to hear it now. No one wants to talk about that. 
But that is the situation that is fast approaching.
  I will be back on the Senate floor in the next few days to talk more 
about that, but what we see today is a failed U.N. mission and a very 
dangerous situation in Haiti. People may ask, Why do we worry about 
Haiti? Why do we care about what is going on? We care from a 
humanitarian point of view--8 million people in Haiti who starve every 
day, people who die from violence every day. We should care about the 
children who are down there. We should care about the innocent people.
  If we do not care about that, we should care because Haiti is on our 
doorstep. Haiti is not going to go away. It is there. We should be 
concerned about it. We should be concerned because Haiti is becoming a 
transshipment area for drugs into the United States. And we should be 
concerned because of the boat people who could begin to float back up 
to Miami where our Coast Guard will again have to turn them around.
  So Haiti is of significance to the United States. It always will be 
because of its geographical location. We will always have to be 
concerned. We have had U.S. troops down there twice in the last decade. 
In the last century, we have been involved numerous times. Unless the 
situation changes quickly in the next several weeks, we are going to 
have to be involved again.

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