[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 514]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       TERRORISM AROUND THE WORLD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, the new year has come with many 
blessings, but it has also come with a major wake-up call. I rise again 
to express my deepest sympathy to the people of France, the loss of 
lives, including our Jewish brothers and sisters targeted simply 
because of their faith and other innocents.
  I stand as well to recognize my friends in the Muslim community who 
have all come together, to thank them for standing against violent and 
reckless terrorism. Their voices were loud and present and noted.
  I recognize the heads of state, the work of the United States in 
standing alongside France, our early and longstanding partner in 
democracy and liberty. Yesterday, some of us had the privilege, hosted 
by the Foreign Affairs Committee, to greet the French Ambassador and to 
offer to the people of France our personal regrets and sympathy.
  As we look to the incidents that are coming to our attention around 
the world, let me bring up again the girls in Nigeria, who were taken 
almost a year ago, 300 innocent school girls. The only thing that they 
wanted to do was to take their exams.
  In the spring of 2014, I led a delegation of Members of Congress to 
the northern state of Borno. I met the pleading and crying and broken 
families. I met some of the girls who gave a harrowing story of how 
they escaped, sliding through the wooded forests, escaping for their 
lives with just the clothes on their back. Only through a light from a 
house along the road were they able to get some refuge, and then three 
of them escaped on a motorcycle with a hero whose name probably will 
never be noted.
  But these girls have no more identity. We are saying bring the girls 
back, but maybe they are married and impregnated and indoctrinated in 
this instance with doctrines that were not their life. They were 
Christian.

                              {time}  1045

  The focus on Africa must be enhanced. I thank my good friend 
Congresswoman Karen Bass, who has been working tirelessly as the 
ranking member of the Africa Subcommittee and had a brilliant meeting 
this morning.
  I come now to announce that we cannot stand by as Boko Haram pillages 
violently, recklessly, with inhumanity, kills with reckless 
abandonment, with no one stopping them, 2,000 people along Lake Chad, 
bodies that people are tripping over and finding under bushes and 
trees. This is a cry for mercy; this is an outrage. The world cannot 
stand by idly and not look to this.
  Nigeria cannot fight this alone, and just as we have announced a 
concerted global effort against ISIL and al Qaeda, we must do this 
against Boko Haram. They are not simply a group of thugs. They have 
connected to this vile institution of terrorism, and they are going up 
against ill-prepared military forces.
  We could point the finger, and I am asking for the Government of 
Nigeria to stand and ask for help. There is no shame in asking for 
help. I am asking the United Nations to do more than it is doing. I am 
asking the African Union to collaborate with the forces that they have 
at their side with the collaboration of African countries to go to the 
rescue of the innocent persons in northern Nigeria.
  How can we stand by when a 10-year-old girl who needs to be playing 
with dolls and going to school and looking into the sunshine for an 
aspirational light of things that she can do in 2014, probably a 
brilliant little girl, unbeknownst to her, strapped with a horrible 
bomb and now in death, with her little body splintered by a bomb--a 
suicide bomber--how can she even understand what they had told her she 
was doing?
  Mr. Speaker, let me close by saying that I am calling upon the world 
to join in a global effort to fight the terrorist dastardly behavior of 
an uncaring Boko Haram, and I close by saying that we must reach out to 
young Muslim boys in northern Nigeria for an alternative to that life.
  May God rest in peace those who have died at the hands of terrorists, 
and we ask for a unified global response.

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