Darfur

DARFUR -- (Senate - February 16, 2007)

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 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 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.

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