Genocide
Floor Speech
GENOCIDE -- (Senate - July 31, 2007)
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today is a day which can be historic. Important items will be discussed on the floor of the Senate, including health insurance for literally millions of American kids. At the same time, there is a debate that has been started in New York at the United Nations Security Council. It is a debate about a genocide.
It is, thank goodness, rare that we have to address the issue of genocide in this world, but today we must. We are talking of a genocide today, in New York, at the Security Council, that has caused untold human misery, mass murder, dislocation, torture, rape, and the torching of entire villages. For 4 years the world has watched this tragedy. That's right, for 4 years.
Haven't we learned our lesson when it comes to letting genocide continue without taking action?
There is a great Senate story involving former Wisconsin Senator Bill Proxmire. In 1967, Senator Proxmire began a streak in the Senate that has never been broken. Mr. President, 18 years earlier, in 1949, President Truman had sent the United Nations Genocide Convention to the Senate for advice and consent. In 1967, it was still languishing, held up by a small band of Senators who opposed it. Many Senators just shook their head because of this opposition. Bill Proxmire rose to his feet.
Starting in 1967, Senator Proxmire made a speech every day the Senate was in session, for 19 years, imploring the Senate to adopt the Genocide Convention. All together, he gave 3,211 speeches--each one of them different. In 1986 the Senate gave its consent to the treaty.
Why did Senator Proxmire continue to give all those speeches, day after day, year after year? It wasn't just stubbornness. It was a moral obligation, and because he understood genocide was happening again. At that time it was happening in Cambodia.
Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge murdered 2 million people. The United States wisely and bravely led the international effort to hold the Nazi co-conspirators to account at Nuremberg. We and the rest of the world failed to act while Cambodia was being turned into killing fields.
In 1994 we failed to act again when between 800,000 and 1 million people were murdered in Rwanda in 1 month.
Sadly, we have failed to take the necessary action to stop the genocide in Darfur. More than 2 1/2 years have passed since the U.N. commission of inquiry concluded that:
Crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed in Darfur and may be no less serious and heinous than genocide.
Earlier this year, President Bush declared:
For too long, the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians. My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide. The world has a responsibility to put an end to it.
Yesterday, the new British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said in a joint press conference with President Bush that:
Darfur is the greatest humanitarian crisis the world faces today.
Yet it is not simply enough to acknowledge genocide. We need to follow Senator Proxmire's example in having the courage, in real time, to act against it.
The crisis in Darfur has been repeated over and over. Paul Salopek, a Chicago Tribune reporter, was captured and jailed by the Khartoum government for 34 days last year. He wrote a haunting description of what one sees when you fly over the villages of Darfur. This is what he wrote:
Their torched huts seen from the air, look like cigarette burns on a torture victim's skin.
Most recently, Refugees International released a report documenting that:
Rape on a mass scale is one of the hallmarks of the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. An estimated 300,000 people in Darfur have been killed during this genocide; 300,000 people in a country of 40 million. In the United States that would be the equivalent of over 2 million people killed.
Incredibly, the Sudanese Government claims the atrocities are part of their war on terror. At a press conference in Washington earlier this summer, Sudan's Ambassador to the United States compared the slaughter to a family quarrel, and he said:
Just you and your cousin fighting with you.
Just this last week, Sudanese President Bashir visited Darfur and said:
Most of Darfur is now secure and enjoying real peace.
People there are ``living normal lives.''
These are lies. This is genocide. It is calculated. It is happening on our watch, in our time.
This week, the global community has a chance to finally make a difference. I am going to join today with Senators Feingold and Menendez in calling for a decisive vote at the United Nations on an expanded peacekeeping force and renewed diplomatic effort in Darfur. The U.N. Security Council will vote this week, maybe even today, on a new United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force that can make a dramatic difference in stemming the violence in Darfur. It also provides an equally important opportunity for peace negotiations.
After years of duplicity in the genocide, Sudanese President Bashir agreed last month to the significant expanded joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force. Yet a series of his recent comments contradict that commitment, and a history of involvement in violence makes immediate action all the more important.
The need is simple--rapid deployment of the new peacekeeping force and a renewed diplomatic effort at a long-term political settlement.
I have tried in some small way to urge the members of the United Nations Security Council to act swiftly. I discussed urgency of these matters with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the Ambassadors of China, Ghana, Republic of Congo, Russia, and South Africa. All were current or permanent members of the Security Council. It is the first time I have ever picked up the phone to call Ambassadors from other countries about a vote in the United Nations Security Council, but I think it is that important. It is my hope that our U.N. Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, will work closely with these nations and Secretary General Ban to make these steps a reality.
I stressed to the Secretary General and to the Ambassadors that the Security Council should be firm in its mandate. We need a force with sufficient resources and numbers; a strong mandate to protect civilians, peacekeepers, and humanitarian workers; a clear U.N. command and control structure, and benchmarks with the threat of sanctions that hold the Sudanese Government accountable; no room for further stalling or delay by the Sudanese Government; a renewed diplomatic effort to bring about a long-term political settlement, including naming a Special Representative of the Secretary General to monitor implementation of a comprehensive peace agreement; and the force must be deployed as quickly as possible.
Congress, the administration, and the private sector--we all need to take action to end the genocide in Darfur. In Congress we have passed the Genocide Accountability Act, which allows the prosecution of genocide committed by anyone currently in the United States, regardless of where the genocide occurred. We have passed language in the Iraq supplemental bill that requires the Treasury Department to submit to Congress a report that lists the companies operating in the Sudanese natural resources industry, and requires the General Services Administration to report to Congress on whether the U.S. Government has an active contract with any of those companies.
Later today the House is expected to pass a bill that would support State and local divestment efforts, require companies to disclose Sudanese-related business activities, investigate whether the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board has invested funds in any of these companies operated in Sudan, and bar the U.S. Government from operating with any companies operating to benefit the Sudanese regime.
A few weeks ago, the Senate passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Enhancement Act, which increases civil and criminal penalties associated with violating American economic sanctions such as those against Sudan. I encourage our House counterparts to pass this bill as well.
I have introduced legislation similar to the bill the House is expected to pass today that would support State governments that decide to encourage public funds to divest from Sudan-related investments. That bill has strong bipartisan support, nearly a third of the Senate.
We tried to pass it, but someone in the Senate has put a hold on that bill.
They have decided we should not move quickly to try to divest and discourage genocide. I urge whatever Republican colleague on that side has put a hold on this bill to seriously stop and consider the impact of this political move. We need to make sure the House and the Senate are on record on a bipartisan basis, clearly, unequivocally.
I have also included in the Senate Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act language requiring the administration to report on the effectiveness of the current sanctions regime and recommended steps Congress can take.
Personally, some of us have decided to divest from Sudan-related investments in our own portfolios as a gesture of solidarity. The administration has taken some important steps. In April of this year, at the Holocaust Museum, President Bush declared rightly that the United States has a moral obligation to stop the genocide in Darfur. Recently the President took the first step toward meeting that obligation by ordering the U.S. sanctions against Sudan be tightened.
The Treasury Department is adding 30 companies that are owned or controlled by the Government of Sudan to a list of firms that are barred from U.S. financial assistance. The Office of Foreign Assets Control within the Treasury Department, working with other agencies, has worked hard to tighten economic and political sanctions.
Although these are important steps, I wish the U.S. Government, the Congress, and the President, had taken these steps sooner. Ultimately, we and the private sector must do all we can to ensure the genocide in Darfur once and for all is brought to an end.
I am going to end today with a quote from Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Eli Weisel:
Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
I see on the floor my colleagues from Wisconsin and New Jersey who join me today in this floor effort, this message to the United Nations. I wish to thank Senator Menendez for his continuing interest in this Darfur genocide. He has carried on in the Senate a tradition started when I first came here by his predecessor, Senator Corzine.
I also wish to thank Senator Feingold, who is chairman of the African Subcommittee of Foreign Relations. He has a special interest in that continent and a special dedication to ending the genocide in Darfur.
I yield the floor.
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