[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 4431-4433]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 DARFUR

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to come to the floor, as I 
have done many times before, to speak on the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. I 
keep coming because at the very least, I want to do that, to keep 
speaking out. But this Senator, this Congress, this country, and the 
world must all do more. None of us have done enough.
  Last fall, U.S. Special Envoy to Darfur Andrew Natsios declared that 
on January 1, 2007, the United States would launch a forceful ``plan 
B,'' as he called it, if Sudan did not accept the joint United Nations-
African Union peacekeeping mission that is desperately needed in 
Darfur. As described in the Washington Post, plan B was to include 
aggressive economic measures against Sudan.
  Today is February 16. There are only a handful of U.N. peacekeepers 
in Darfur. Still no sign of plan B, other than four U.S. Army colonels 
who have been stationed along the Chad-Sudan border.
  Last week, according to a student publication at Georgetown 
University and other news sources, Ambassador Andrew Natsios told a 
student audience that genocide was no longer taking place in Darfur. He 
was quoted as saying:

       The term genocide is counter to the facts of what is really 
     occurring in Darfur.

  I understand it is possible to get entangled in words and semantics 
in the definition of ``genocide,'' but I was truly surprised to read 
this statement from Ambassador Natsios.
  On December 10, not that long ago, the White House released a 
statement headlined in part, ``President Bush Appalled by Genocide in 
Darfur.''
  The President's statement continued:

       Our Nation is appalled by the genocide in Darfur, which has 
     led to the spread of fighting and hostility in the Republic 
     of Chad and the Central African Republic.

  Nothing that I have seen or been told convinces me that conditions in 
Darfur are significantly better today than they were on December 10 
when President Bush reconfirmed the ongoing horror of genocide. I can 
only assume

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the President was troubled by the Special Envoy's statement as well.
  The State Department has since sought to clarify these remarks and 
stated that it remains the administration's position that the situation 
in Darfur is genocide. The State Department explained that the Special 
Envoy was referring to the fact that death rates are lower now, but the 
conditions could escalate.
  I would argue that they are already escalating. People continue to be 
murdered and villages have been attacked by air. Humanitarian aid 
workers have come under special assault recently. These brave men and 
women, unarmed, working for the poorest people on Earth, have been 
subjected to beatings, rape, and arrests.
  These concentrated attacks threaten the people of Darfur who depend 
on thin relief lines for survival. If the relief workers are forced to 
withdraw and these lines are severed, hundreds of thousands of lives 
will be in jeopardy.
  Recently, along with Senator Coburn, I held the first hearing of the 
Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law. The focus of the 
hearing was genocide and the rule of law. Before this hearing, we noted 
that the United States was a late signatory to the treaty on genocide. 
One of our predecessors in the Senate, Senator William Proxmire of 
Wisconsin, literally came to the floor of the Senate every day it was 
in session for years to convince the Senate to ratify this treaty. 
Finally, it happened. We focused on that treaty and the rule of law.
  Given the ongoing crisis in Darfur and our own ineffectual attempts 
to halt the killing, I felt that should be the first topic of this new 
subcommittee.
  The witnesses who came before us included the Canadian general, 
former U.N. general, and now Senator in Canada, Romeo Dallaire.
  In 1994, General Dallaire commanded a small U.N. force in Rwanda. 
When the first wave of murders began, General Dallaire called for 5,000 
troops--5,000 troops--to halt the killing.
  My predecessor, my mentor, Senator Paul Simon of Illinois, along with 
Senator Jim Jeffords from Vermont, of the opposite party, both came 
together and called on President Clinton to help. Sadly, the Clinton 
administration did not. In fairness, they have acknowledged it was the 
most serious foreign policy mistake of their years in Washington.
  General Dallaire did not receive the reinforcements. Instead, this 
tiny force of 2,500 was reduced. His country started withdrawing their 
soldiers from the U.N. force until there were only 450 left on the 
ground. They couldn't deal with the slaughter that followed. It is 
estimated that over 800,000 people were murdered in a very short period 
of time.
  In Darfur, the African Union has tried to stop the killing, but after 
4 years, U.N. peacekeeping forces have not even reached the level of 
450. In his statement for the subcommittee hearing on genocide, General 
Dallaire said this of Darfur:

       I have on occasion considered bringing a flak jacket I wore 
     during the Rwandan genocide--a jacket that was blood-soaked 
     from carrying a 12-year-old girl who had been mutilated and 
     repeatedly raped--into the [Canadian] Senate chamber and 
     throwing it in the middle of the room. Maybe this would 
     finally capture the attention of the political elite in a way 
     words fail to do. Maybe it would finally bring home the point 
     that human rights are not only for those who have the money 
     to buy and sustain [them]; they are the privilege and the 
     right of every human being.

  Mr. President, we must do more in Darfur. The United States must work 
through the United Nations and with other countries of influence to 
compel the Khartoum Government to accept a peacekeeping mission, and we 
must help provide the resources to make that possible.
  Here at home we can do more as well. I am a strong supporter of 
divestment. I served in the House of Representatives during apartheid 
in South Africa when we tried everything in our power to stop the 
racist government. We suggested divestment. Many said it would be 
worthless; it wouldn't have an impact. But I think it was a positive 
thing, and I am glad that we moved forward.
  We need to do the same in Sudan today. Millions of Americans are 
unknowingly investing in companies that do business in support of the 
Khartoum Government. I know because I was one of them. I discovered 
that fact when a reporter, who researched my publicly disclosed 
investments--not a massive portfolio, I might add--told me one of the 
mutual funds I owned included the stock of a company doing business in 
Sudan. I immediately sold it. But that reporter's question was a 
powerful wake-up call for me.
  A growing number of States, led by my home State of Illinois and 
State Senator Jacqueline Collins, a real leader on this issue, and a 
growing number of colleges and universities, including Northwestern 
University--and I particularly salute President Henry Bienen--have 
taken steps to address this issue of investing in Sudan. Some have 
sought to fully divest pension funds and endowments, others have 
adopted more targeted measures to restrict investments in the largest 
companies operating in Sudan.
  I salute these efforts, and I plan to introduce legislation to help 
provide Federal support for these efforts as well.
  Our subcommittee's genocide hearing also identified a serious 
loophole in Federal antigenocide law that Congress needs to close. 
Genocide is a Federal crime, but under the law, as currently written, 
only genocide that takes place in the United States or is committed by 
a U.S. national can be punished by our courts. Federal investigators 
have identified war criminals who were involved in the Rwandan genocide 
and the Srebrenica massacres who have found safe haven in our country. 
These are people perpetrating genocide in other places on Earth now 
safely ensconced in the United States. But because they are not U.S. 
nationals, because the genocide didn't occur within our borders, we 
cannot, under our current law, prosecute them.
  The Justice Department has been unable to prosecute these 
individuals, and we need to take another look at it. Let me give an 
example: Salah Abdallah Gosh is the head of security of the Sudanese 
government. He reportedly has played a key role in the government's 
genocidal campaign in Darfur. In the year 2005, Mr. Gosh came to 
Washington to meet with senior administration officials. Under current 
law, the Justice Department could not arrest him for the crime of 
genocide.
  I am developing legislation that closes this loophole, giving Federal 
prosecutors the tools they need to prosecute individuals who have 
committed genocide that are found in the United States. No one guilty 
of genocide should ever view the United States as a safe haven.
  This change in the law would simply bring the antigenocide statute 
into line with a lot of other Federal laws that cover crimes committed 
outside the United States, including torture, piracy, material support 
to terrorists, terrorism financing, and the taking of hostages. 
Genocide should be subject to the same basic penalties.
  I hope these initiatives will be bipartisan, as much of the 
Congresses work on Darfur has been. These steps I have mentioned will 
not stop the killing in Darfur, but they will add to our arsenal of 
weapons against genocide. We should do far more to deal with these 
dangerous situations, more to prevent mass atrocities from occurring, 
more to stop crimes against humanity once they begin, and more to help 
those who have been victimized, punishing the perpetrators.
  Eleanor Roosevelt once asked: ``Where do universal human rights 
begin?'' And she answered: ``They begin in small places, close to home. 
So close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the 
world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the 
neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the 
factory, the farm, or office where he works.''
  I believe the means to stopping genocide in Darfur begins with each 
of us, and so does the responsibility.
  I will close with one observation. As a student at Georgetown 
University many years ago, I had an outstanding

[[Page 4433]]

government professor named Jan Karski. Professor Karski had been 
involved in the Polish underground during World War II. He was a brave 
man who risked his life fighting the Nazis. He learned of the 
Holocaust, came to the United States, barely speaking English, trying 
to find people in Washington who would listen and who could understand 
that hundreds of thousands of innocent people were being killed. He 
couldn't find an audience with those who could make a difference.
  I thought about that course, and I thought about the course of 
history, how the Holocaust unfolded during World War II and at least 6 
million died, maybe many more, and nothing happened. And I wondered, 
despite all that time and all that notice, why couldn't they do 
something?
  Now I know.
  It has been 4 years since we declared a genocide in Darfur. People 
continue to be murdered on our watch. I hope my colleagues in the 
Senate on both sides of the aisle will join me not only in these 
efforts but efforts they believe will move us toward a day when there 
is peace in this region of the world. We have a responsibility to do 
that to these people and to the cause of humanity.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. 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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