United States Capitol Police Administrative Technical Corrections Act Of 2009 - Continued

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Last week I joined my colleague Senator SHERROD BROWN of Ohio on a trip to East Africa. It was an important trip that took us to Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan. We went in to observe American development assistance, to look at programs that help the victims of HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, child and maternal mortality, victims of sexual violence, clean water, sanitation issues, democracy, governments, refugees.

In a matter of 6 days of traveling on the continent of Africa, Senator Brown and I did not have much time to ourselves, but we were not planning any. We spent a lot of time meeting with people, meeting with government officials, meeting with individuals who are part of the current political environment of Africa, but also many of their lives are touched by programs in which the United States is involved.

I could not help but notice as I traveled the extraordinarily dedicated Americans who are in our Foreign Service. Many of them are posted in places around the world that are not glamorous by any means. Their jobs are hard and sometimes dangerous, and they go to work every day without complaint. We need to tip our hats to them as Americans. Let me add in there Peace Corps volunteers, many who work for the nongovernment organizations, the NGOs. Many Americans serve our best interests around the world every day without fanfare or praise.

We went to Tanzania. In Mwanza in Tanzania, we encountered a group of young Baylor University doctors who are doing part of their residency at a regional hospital, one that serves a population of several million people. Can you imagine one hospital serving that many people? That is what the people are up against in Africa.

We met a representative from Abbot Labs from my home State of Illinois who was there helping to build a modern laboratory and train local staff for the hospital.

In a small rural village several hours down a dusty, bumpy road from the nearest city, we witnessed a program by the nongovernmental organization CARE that helped build a rudimentary but critically important health clinic.

It is hard to describe this to an American, what an African would call a health clinic. It is, in fact, a building without windows but with openings for air to flow through. It is a building that is so basic it does not have running water or electricity. But it is, in fact, a building where 168 babies were born last year.

When you see this and meet the people who are delivering the babies, you realize that in many parts of Africa health care is very basic. The man who runs this clinic has about a year or two of education beyond high school. The woman who serves him is one who is gifted with not only personal skills but a lot of human experience in delivering babies.

What happens if there is a complication in the middle of this village in the middle of nowhere with no means of communication? Well, they try to get the message to the man who runs the ambulance. The ambulance in Mwanza is a tricycle, a tricycle with a flat bed on the back. They take a woman who is needing a Caesarean section, for example, put her on the back of this tricycle and take her off for a 4-hour trip to the closest hospital. That is maternal and childcare in Africa, in Tanzania. We are trying to help through the organization CARE that I mentioned earlier.

With their help, they have not only brought them the money necessary for their ambulance, this tricycle, they have helped the local residents develop a savings and loan where their modest earnings they make by selling agricultural produce are banked away for a better day. They are allowed to borrow small units of money for buying sewing machines, which can dramatically change a life in these poor villages, or livestock or to help to pay for their kids to go to school.

In Tanzania as a whole, the PEPFAR program, which is the United States bilateral program for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and the Global Fund Program, a much larger undertaking from many other countries, have made real progress in HIV, TB, and malaria.

We also visited Ethiopia, a country I have been looking forward to seeing. It has the distinction in Africa of being the only country in Africa that was never colonized. There was a period, a short period of occupation by the Italians. But they have been a kingdom under their own control, except for that period of time since the early parts of the third and fourth century and maybe even before that. They are very proud of their own language, their own customs, their own history. They have tremendous international efforts underway to help the Ethiopian people, who are basically poor, struggling people. They are struggling against the economics of a poor nation, as well as HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis. They are resettling refugees from the war-torn neighboring state of Somalia. They are trying to build a health system.

One program, in particular, was provided by a nongovernmental organization called AMREF in the Kechene slum area of the capital of Addis Ababa. Senator Brown and I went to this area. It is a slum with 380 people living there, that has basically had to carry in water for years because there was no running water. But because of an AMREF project, they were able to build 22 water kiosks in the country and one in this slum area. It seems like something so simple, but it has changed their lives. They now have a source of safe drinking water. Very near the small little lean-tos they live in, they have two showers for 380 people that they share and can use where they had none before. They have basic sanitation and toilet facilities, which they did not have at all.

We were greeted by two beautiful little girls who gave us flowers and invited us to a coffee ceremony.

They couldn't help but beam with pride as we took a look at the source of water and sanitation that did not exist before. So many thousands of people in Africa spend hours every day carrying water back and forth. Young girls are often denied the opportunity to go to school because they have work to do. They have to carry water. Something as basic as water that we take for granted becomes a centerpiece in their lives every single day. Improvements are being made in Ethiopia and other places. I returned to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is in the eastern section of that country. The capital, Kinshasa, is far west and removed not only physically but politically from many of the things happening in eastern Congo.

I try to describe Goma to those who haven't been there. It is almost impossible. Imagine one of the poorest places on Earth, where people are literally starving, where they are facing the scourge of disease, where malaria is the biggest killer of children. Imagine HIV/AIDS and the problems they face with that. Then superimpose over that the misfortune of an ongoing war that has been taking place in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo for years. There is an ongoing debate about how many people have been killed in this war. The debate ranges from the low number of about 2 1/2 million to the high number of 6 million, and they debate very violently about whether it is 6 or 2 1/2 million. Regardless of which number, it is an outrage. It is a genocide which is occurring in this section of Africa with little or no attention from anyone.

What has caused this? Their neighbor is Rwanda. If you recall, in Rwanda, I believe the year was 1994, a terrible genocide killed 800,000 people in the span of a matter of days. Those who were accused of the genocidal acts, many of them escaped into the neighboring country of Congo and set up their armed militias. They continued their violence. Not only is Goma an area the surrounding towns and villages fought over, it also happens to be an area that is dominated by a volcano which erupted in 2002 and killed hundreds of people and destroyed thousands of basic shelters. It is also an area filled with minerals and timber, gold, diamonds, basic minerals needed for the cell phones we take for granted every single day. There is money to be made, even if you just take out your shovel and dig into the hillside and find some of these for sale. It is a rich area in mineral resources.

It is also rich in other resources. Dian Fossey has her operation there for the silverback gorillas, which many of us have seen on television. They are caught in the middle of the crossfire of the civil war. I came back to Goma. I had been there several years ago. I was surprised at how many people said they remembered I had been there and never thought I would return because few people do; it is such a hard, difficult place. We visited a hospital there called Heal Africa. We were greeted by a lady with a British accent. As I came in, she said: Welcome back. I thought she made a mistake. She thinks I am somebody else. It turns out that, in fact, I had visited her hospital 5 years ago. It had changed so much, I didn't recognize it, but she was still there.

Her name is Lynne Lucy. Her husband Joe is a Congolese surgeon and they married years ago and decided to start a hospital for the poorest people in that part of Congo. They focus on children with club feet and cleft palates. They focus on trauma victims, setting fractures, victims of fires, and other accidents that occur. Their major area of focus is on the women who are the victims of the civil war. One of the most horrible things about this war isn't only that people die, but they have now built in hideous torture techniques as part of this civil war. Women are raped and gang raped and children are mutilated in hideous, awful ways. They bring them into this hospital and try to rebuild their bodies and rebuild their lives. God bless them for doing it, Joe and Lynne Lucy.

When I was there last, I worried because they only had a handful of doctors. This time I walked into a classroom filled with doctors. Standing in front of them was a doctor from the University of Wisconsin, right smack-dab in a part of the Midwest of which I am proud to be a part, training these doctors on how to treat these poor people. There is evidence of the caring and compassionate people of the United States all around the world. In this sad situation in Goma, certainly it is needed.

We have a 20,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force known as MONUC that has been in the area for more than 10 years trying to bring peace. Unfortunately, rebel groups continue campaigns of brutal violence. Known war criminals such as Jean Bosco Ntaganda continue to play a role in the violence, despite being wanted for awful war crimes. The Congolese military has tried to root out several groups but has embraced others. It is hard to figure out the good and bad people in this conflict. But you can certainly figure out the victims because you see them everywhere.

We went to what is known as an internally displaced persons camp just south of Goma. I find it hard to imagine how people live there. There are 1,800 people living there. Imagine that they are living on volcanic rock. It is hard to walk on it even with shoes because it is jagged and hurts your feet. They live on it. They pitch tents on it. They walk their kids to school on it. We went to a little health clinic there and a baby was handed to me that was a heartbreaking situation, clearly malnourished, who had just been brought in for a few days. They were trying to rescue its life. Many of the children there struggle with basic health needs. They have a school which is better than most would find in their home villages and some security. But each of them told me: We don't have enough food. You look at their sources of water, they are limited. It is a tough situation. These people are there because they were caught in the crossfire of a war that continues. They didn't do anything wrong. Some of them are trying to rebuild their lives and stay safe in a very difficult situation.

Finally, we had a chance to visit Sudan. I wished to go there because I have stood on the floor so many times and given speeches about Darfur and the genocide that occurred there. In addition to that troubled part of Sudan, there has been an ongoing battle between north and south Sudan which appears to have resolved itself peacefully with an election that will be held in the near future for the national legislature and then early next year to decide if south Sudan will be a separate country. There are about 8 million people living in south Sudan. We traveled on the only road in south Sudan. We met with the man who is Vice President of Sudan now and would be President, I believe, of the new south Sudan, Mr. Salva Kiir. He is a former rebel who fought in the bush for years, surrounded by Governors in south Sudan who went through the same experience. In just a few months, they may need to build a nation. It is a daunting task.

I worry about it because when there is a power vacuum and a failed state in Africa, people move in on it and use it for exploitive and terrorist purposes.

We then went to Khartoum, which is a legendary city in Africa, and met with representatives of the government there, talking about many of the issues they face and the status of Darfur today which, thank God, is more peaceful than in years gone by. One of the more interesting conversations we had in Khartoum was with one of the Ministers. I brought up the issue of global warming, wondering if this man in the middle of Africa, near the Equator, felt there was a need for us to be concerned about global warming.

He said: I can take you 300 meters from where we are meeting now. I will show you the Nile River, and I will show you the impact of global warming. We could walk out into stretches of land that used to be islands in the middle of the river. You can walk there now because the river is so low. Many people in that part of Africa depend on the Nile for irrigation. We believe in global warming.

If you want to know one of the causes of the genocide in Darfur, it was because that area is becoming a desert, and people are fighting over what is left of land that can be cultivated. I think about debates we have had on the floor of the Senate. In fact, there are Senators who proudly say there is no such thing as global warming. I wish they could have been with me in Khartoum and spoken to this man about evidence he is seeing in that faraway place about changing climate and changes in lifestyle, genocide, and war that have followed global warming. It is not just an environmental issue. It is a security issue.

There are frequent debates about the value of U.S. foreign assistance. When Americans are asked, how much do we spend in foreign aid, the most common response is, about 25 percent of the Federal budget. The fact is, it is just over 1 percent in foreign aid around the world. We spend far less as a percentage of our gross domestic product than many nations. But the work we do is so absolutely essential for maintaining life, fighting disease, for making certain that young people have a fighting chance.

President Obama recognizes that. I hope we can have bipartisan support to continue our help with foreign aid, even in this difficult time.

The last issue I will discuss on this trip Senator Brown and I took is one I will save for a separate presentation. But without fail, in every African nation, I would ask them the same question: What is the presence of China in your nation? Without fail, they would say: It is interesting you would ask.

The Chinese are moving into Africa in a way we should not ignore. They are providing capital assistance and loans to countries all over Africa, which can provide them with minerals and resources for their economy and, ultimately, with markets for their products. Leaders in Africa, such as the President of Ethiopia, say to me: When the West walked away from Africa, China stepped in.

The Chinese have a strategy and a goal. If we don't become sensitive to it and what it will mean to the next generation of people living in each of those countries, we will pay a heavy price. We have to understand that these people now may be in underdeveloped countries and struggling, but tomorrow they will have a middle class, and they will be purchasing goods and services. They will remember that their highways and stadiums and schools were built with loans from the Chinese. Incidentally, those loans come with strings attached. When the Chinese loan money to a country such as Ethiopia, it is so a Chinese construction company can build the project using Chinese engineers, technicians, and workers. So they are providing work projects with the money they are loaning to each country and being repaid in local resources such as oil and minerals.

We can't ignore this reality. It is happening all over the world. The Chinese have a plan. I am not sure America has a plan. We should.

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