[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5821-5824]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    REMEMBERING THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver) is 
recognized for 60

[[Page 5822]]

minutes as the designee of the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and 
include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Missouri?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Speaker, my Special Order deals with the very 
difficult and even painful subject of Rwanda.
  Mr. Speaker, there is an ancient story about Rwanda. It is one from 
which a number of meanings can be extracted.
  We are here today because we remember the victims of the horrific 
events in our world's history. We honor survivors and recognize the 
steps that have been taken to remedy the atrocities that have occurred.
  Over and over, you will hear people on this floor, Mr. Speaker, say 
that things that have happened in our history that were horrific and 
inhuman shall never happen again. Things like American slavery and the 
European extermination, mainly by Germany, of Jews throughout Europe 
should never happen again.

                              {time}  1745

  So we must continue to fight for justice as the international issues 
come to our consciousness. And we know that, as time moves on, there 
will be additional tragedies around the globe.
  Rwanda has certainly experienced its share, if not more than its 
share, of tragedy. This ancient parable in Rwandan is, God spends the 
day elsewhere, but he sleeps in Rwanda--Imana yirirwa ahandi igataha I 
Rwanda. For those of us who are familiar with the creation story, we 
know that God worked for 6 days and then rested. The Rwandan people 
believe that God, on the seventh day, came to Rwanda to rest from his 
work the previous 6 days.
  Rwanda is 1 mile above sea level, about what Denver, Colorado is. And 
because of its elevation, Rwanda is paradisiacal, in the sense that the 
climate is cooler in Rwanda than it is in many of the other parts of 
Africa, certainly sub-Saharan Africa, and the greenery is like that of 
no other place in Africa, and it will rival even some of the beautiful 
spots in the Caribbean.
  It is also a fabulous place, the Rwandans thought, for God to come to 
rest.
  Well, in a country of seven million, at least in 1994--who knows what 
the population is today, after many of the atrocities, but the people 
believed that God could rest there in this beautiful, this lush, very, 
very receiving and welcoming land, without being interrupted.
  Now, all cultures, all religions choose to elevate its land or its 
people. For example, the Jewish people, understandably, refer to the 
Sea of Galilee as a sea. For those who know geography, you know that 
the Sea of Galilee is actually a lake.
  The Jordan River--before I went there for the first time, back in 
1994, I envisioned the Jordan River as something comparable to the 
Mississippi River or something comparable to the Missouri River, which 
is about 2,000 miles across the country.
  The truth of the matter is, there were certain points of the Jordan 
River that I actually jumped over. And it flows down into the Dead Sea, 
which is, again, not a sea, but another lake.
  So it is understandable that people will declare something to be a 
little more than it really is. So the Rwandan people, believing that 
God came to their country, this paradise, 1 mile above sea level, was 
something that, I think, many of us would have done had we been 
Rwandans.
  I also know that there were people who would question how could God 
sleep in a place with all of the genocide that has taken place there, 
with all of the violence against the men and women and children, and 
even violence based on tribal ethnicity. But the Rwandan people still 
believe that God sleeps in their country.
  I believe that God sleeps in Rwanda, but I also believe that He is 
awakened because of what has happened. God can neither sleep nor 
slumber where there is injustice, where there is wrong, where there is 
murder, and so God has had an unrestful amount of time, unrestful 
nights in Rwanda since the beginning of the great genocide.
  800,000 people, Mr. Speaker, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, 
died at the hand of Hutu extremists during a 100-day period; a 100-day 
period.
  That would be killing all the people of my hometown of Kansas City, 
Missouri, the largest city in our State, and all the people 221 miles 
away in St. Louis. Both cities would be completely exterminated if they 
lost 800,000 people.
  But the Rwandan people lost 800,000 people in 100 days. That is seven 
individuals, seven human beings created by God, murdered every 7 
minutes.
  Ten thousand victims were killed each day. Just think about it: 
10,000 human beings created with the hands of the alms-giving God. And 
then someone stole their lives for something as petty as ethnicity, 
something as petty as a different language.
  So when you think about hundreds of thousands of victims who were 
murdered, there are hundreds of other thousands of victims who were 
infected with HIV, as the Hutu extremists raped, as a tool of violence, 
women and young girls.
  The killing ended once Tutsi rebel forces attacked and retook the 
country.
  When I think about what we have done and what we have spent in lands 
around the world, to tragedies no less repulsive, I have to raise the 
question, why has the United States been asleep, lo, these many years?
  I think that our children and our children's children will look back 
on the nineties, in particular, and wonder, where were the Americans?
  Where was the United States while this happened?
  Now, 20 years after all of the genocide, Rwanda has moved stunningly 
in a new and positive direction. I am very pleased that they have, and 
all Americans should be pleased. But there still is much work to be 
done.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).
  Mr. WELCH. Mr. Cleaver, I appreciate you doing this.
  You know, it is just staggering to think about what happened and all 
of those people going about their daily lives 20 years ago, on April 7, 
and knowing they are going to die, knowing their loved ones are going 
to die.
  It is so unspeakable that we can't, I can't really imagine what it 
would be like to live in that country, to live in a neighborhood where 
you know your moment is coming, where you have a child who is going to 
die before your very eyes, where your daughter is going to be raped and 
then killed.
  To have this sense of the horror of what is taking place, it is 
unspeakable. But the realization that the world is going to ignore it, 
and that happened, day in and day out. Most of us didn't even know 
about it. There would be reports, but it would be in a distant place. 
It wasn't anything that you could do anything about.
  It was only as the stories fully came out and the horror was fully 
revealed that the collective gaze of the world that was not acting--
there were all kinds of reasons why I suppose we couldn't or we didn't.
  But just try to put yourself in the place of the family, up and down 
that country, where the word is going from one village to another, from 
one community to another, from one family to another, that you have got 
to do everything you can to get out.
  And where you live in a community where the majority is going to kill 
you if they find you, where, as you hide and try to conceal yourself or 
your kids, you can't figure out how to feed them, and you have got to 
come out into the light of day and put yourself at the mercy of your 
luck, where do you find or meet somebody who might give you a meal so 
that you can carry on another day.
  It is not anything that I can imagine, just the wholesale use of 
murder in ethnic cleansing, in order to achieve a political goal.
  What is an amazing thing is what Mr. Cleaver just told us, about the 
recovery of Rwanda. These people go on.

[[Page 5823]]

  Imagine living with the heartache that will never leave you, that you 
lost a son or daughter, a parent or grandparent. How do you get 
yourself up and start all over again?
  How do you deal with the hatred that you have to fight because it 
will consume you and prevent you from carrying on yourself?
  How do you do that?
  The people in Rwanda are doing that and rebuilding that country, 
rebuilding their economy, and facing life on a day-in-and-day-out 
basis.
  But having a moment to pause and remember is, I think, humbling for 
all of us. The capacity that we have, as people, to go awry and do 
things that never, in a million years, do we think was possible, 
reminds me of just how fragile life is and how really, in a lot of 
ways, fragile good governance is. You can't take it for granted.
  I think all of us here know that there are forces that can get 
unleashed which, once they are, have an enormously powerful and 
destructive tendency. The challenge for all of us is to create ways 
where we can resolve conflict in peaceful and civil ways. The work of 
that is the work of this Congress and the work of this democracy.
  It is fragile. It isn't anything we can ever take for granted. It has 
to be with that purpose of allowing people to find ways to resolve 
differences peacefully.
  So this is an amazing moment, 20 years after the beginning of the 
slaughter of 800,000 innocent people, and a slaughter by very cruel and 
very painful and very relentless efforts.
  So thank you so much, Mr. Cleaver, for allowing us to have this 
moment of reflection.
  Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you to Mr. Welch, who is a very conscientious 
Member of this body. We appreciate his sensitivity, as well as that of 
many others who probably will not be here on the floor.
  I will state again, because Congressman Welch has mentioned it, that 
is 800,000 people, 800,000 people killed, murdered in 100 days. 10,000 
human beings killed every 24 hours in this world during our lifetime.
  So the Rwandans' ancient parable about God sleeping at night in 
Rwanda is only partially true. God could not sleep nor slumber with 
this kind of tragedy taking place anywhere in a world that He created 
for freedom and justice and peace and harmony.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman 
from the Fifth District of Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the whip of the 
Democratic Caucus.

                              {time}  1800

  Mr. HOYER. Never again. We intone those words, ``never again.'' We 
intone those words because we have seen horror and felt guilt that it 
happens on our watch, and so we say ``never again.''
  Mr. Speaker, I had the honor of chairing the Commission on Security 
and Cooperation in Europe. That commission was formed as a result of 
the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 by Gerald Ford and 
leaders of 34 other European nations, including the Soviet Union, 
including West Germany, including East Germany. Never again.
  The extraordinary Holocaust that cost the lives of millions and 
millions and millions and millions more; not only in the Holocaust, 
where 6 million Jews were taken from us, taken from their families, 
taken from their countries, taken from life, but millions more in 
Russia, Ukraine, and literally in scores of other venues murdered.
  They were murdered not because of their engagement in war, not 
because of their engagement in crime, but because of who they were, 
what religion they had, what ethnic background they claimed--murdered--
murdered because of what they were, and the murderers did not like what 
they were--not their character, not their intellect, not their conduct, 
but who they were.
  So here we are, 20 years later, having watched as genocide was, 
again, perpetrated in Rwanda. The genocide in Rwanda, the 20th 
anniversary of which we mark this week, provided Americans with one of 
our most painful examples of a failure to act, but not Americans alone, 
Mr. Speaker. The entire civilized world waited, watched, lamented, but 
did not stop the genocide.
  America and much of the world waited far too long to become involved 
in Rwanda, and even then, international peacekeepers were not given a 
mandate for the resources to stop the killing.
  I am sure many of us, Mr. Speaker, saw the movie ``Hotel Rwanda.'' 
Nick Nolte played the blue-helmeted colonel who was in charge of the 
U.N. unit. When carnage was occurring and the colonel that Nolte was 
playing was watching, someone asked: Why aren't you doing something? 
And his response was: because that is not our mandate, it is to report.
  I will say, in a minute, that thousands of lives were saved by the 
blue helmets and by others, but the U.N. mandate was not to stop it, 
but to report it.
  President Clinton has expressed regret that the United States did not 
act in time to save lives, saying last year, ``If we'd gone in sooner, 
I believe we could have saved at least a third of the lives that were 
lost.''
  Now, the figure of 800,000 is being used, but that is an estimate. It 
could be as little, perhaps, as 500,000 and as many as 1 million-plus. 
It is estimated that more than 1 million men, women, and children were 
killed in a span of--as my friend from Missouri, Reverend Cleaver--
Congressman Emanuel Cleaver has said. 1 million in 100 days, 10,000 
victims every day, 7 people shot or hacked to death with machetes every 
minute, every minute, and the world watched and wrung its hands and 
said how wrong that was, and the machetes kept hacking.
  More than just killing, the Rwandan genocide left hundreds of 
thousands of people infected with HIV as a result of another implement 
of war that those who perpetrate genocide have used, rape, a crime not 
of sexual desire, but of violence, of injury, of hate.
  Widows of murdered men were infected and, in many cases, left to bear 
the children of their rapist. The children, of course, were infected, 
too.
  The violence left 400,000 orphans, small children who then had to 
learn at a young age how to care for their younger siblings on their 
own.
  Mr. Speaker, the Rwandan genocide provided the world with yet another 
lesson in our shared responsibility not just to say the words ``never 
again,'' but to mean them. Mr. Speaker, we are our brother's keeper, 
and our brother needs our vigilance and our help, as we need his; and 
we are our sister's keeper, just as well.
  Just as the genocide displayed humanity's darkest side, it also 
provided us with proof of human courage and defiance in the face of 
evil. From the outnumbered U.N. peacekeepers who saved lives wherever 
they could--and that ability was far too limited--to the individual 
Rwandans who risked death and rape to protect their neighbors, we 
acknowledge those few moments of moral clarity in the midst of great 
evil.
  I said that I was the chairman of the Commission on Security and 
Cooperation in Europe. Mr. Speaker, 250,000 Bosniaks lost their lives 
in a genocide perpetrated by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
  We finally acted in that case and saved literally hundreds of 
thousands of more, deposed Milosevic, and put him in the dock for war 
crimes in the Hague, but not before 8,000 souls in Bosnia were gunned 
down and murdered in Trebenista. The U.N. troops failed to stop that--
again, insufficient resources.
  So, Mr. Speaker, as we mark this 20th anniversary of the genocide in 
Rwanda, I join my colleagues in mourning those who were killed and in 
recognizing the many changes Rwanda has undergone over the past two 
decades. We all wish Rwanda continued success in its efforts to take 
from the ashes a successful society and to protect the safety and 
freedom of its people.
  I hope Americans across the country will take some time this week to 
reflect not only on the Rwandan genocide, but on all genocides, to 
remember its horrors and to promise never to let our Nation sit idly by 
as a genocide takes place. Mr. Speaker, it is a complicated conclusion, 
too long, too often delayed.

[[Page 5824]]

  I want to thank my colleagues for joining me to recognize this solemn 
anniversary. I want to thank, in particular, my dear friend from 
Missouri, Emanuel Cleaver, who preaches to his flock, who preaches to 
his constituents and, yes, who preaches to all of us to look to the 
better nature of our souls, to reach out, to lift up, to protect, to 
give solace, to give sympathy, to give empathy, to give understanding, 
and to be our brother's keeper.
  Mr. CLEAVER. I thank the distinguished whip for his comments and for, 
frankly, requesting that we have the opportunity this evening to 
remember those horrific events in world history.
  As the whip said, we must declare ``never again,'' and it must be 
real and serious; and, if necessary, we must redouble our efforts 
against evil anywhere it presents its ugly head.
  The pain that I am still feeling here tonight is because, since 1995, 
the international tribunal has indicted 95 individuals. Let me go back 
and remind you, 800,000--it could be many more--died, 95 individuals 
have been indicted, and there have been 49 convictions.
  Now, if there is a person with a heart anywhere on the planet, that 
heart should be broken right now, knowing what happened to the Rwandan 
people, what happened to women, little girls, children. The world shall 
not tolerate this again.
  I would like to now yield to the distinguished Congressman from the 
Ninth District of Memphis, Tennessee, Mr. Steve Cohen.
  Mr. COHEN. I thank the gentleman from Missouri for yielding, and I 
appreciate the whip for bringing this hour to the attention of Members 
of Congress and the opportunity to speak on this historic 20th 
anniversary of this slaughter.
  I had the opportunity to visit Rwanda in the company of one of the 
great men who served in this House, Congressman Donald Payne of New 
Jersey. Congressman Payne had made several trips to Rwanda and several 
trips to Africa.
  We visited the memorial there to the victims, which is a very special 
place in the world, burial spots and flowers and plaques and the museum 
company there, too. It made a great impression on me, and it would make 
a great impression on anybody.
  One thing that came out of the trip was my realization that today, in 
Rwanda, the Hutus and the Tutsis get along and that what was horrific 
20 years ago, in one of the most horrific ethnic cleansings--or 
attempted ethnic cleansings and hate, atrocities, murders, over time, 
the Rwandan people have overcome them.
  The distinctions are no longer present, and the people do get along. 
Obviously, because of the horrific situation, there is an imbalance in 
the populations, and I am sure there are still some memories; but we do 
need to learn, as I am sure has been said, about when we turn to 
thinking of other people as different because we are all the same.
  There was a time a little after this, I think it was about 1999, when 
I was at Union Station. President Clinton was there, and we had some 
time to talk, and he related how the Human Genome Project that Dr. 
Francis Collins--now the head of the NIH--was heading up and how that 
we are all 99.96 percent the same, and we are.
  He mentioned the Hutus and the Tutsis and how they were just so, so, 
so, so, so alike, but the minor differences that were visible caused 
them to have this awful, awful, horrific genocide.
  It pained President Clinton. Whip Hoyer mentioned that this is 
something that he brought up before, that it was a mistake while he was 
President not to intervene. It was right after the difficulty that we 
had in Mogadishu with the helicopter and the way the American soldiers 
were killed and horrifically treated in the streets of Mogadishu by the 
Somali groups there.
  It was a reticence to get involved in another situation in Africa, 
and it is a tight line sometimes to determine when you go in and when 
you don't. Well, the President made a mistake there, as he has admitted 
over the years.
  If we look at other situations that might present themselves to us, 
as Members of Congress, we have to realize the United States of America 
has a special place in the world.
  We are the only country that has the ability to see that mankind 
doesn't engage in horrific genocides again, so when the opportunity for 
the United States to get involved and prevent a slaughter, prevent a 
genocide, the United States has a responsibility.
  Inasmuch as it is difficult after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to 
commit our troops to action when situations like Rwanda present 
themselves, it is incumbent upon us, I think, to support--whoever is 
the President--in taking the proper actions to preserve humanity.

                              {time}  1815

  So I thank Whip Hoyer for calling for this hour and Mr. Cleaver for 
leading it, and I just wanted to add my thoughts and my reflections 
after having visited Rwanda with a great Member of Congress, Donald 
Payne.
  Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Cohen.
  Mr. Speaker, may I inquire about the remaining time?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 28 minutes remaining.
  Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________