Declaring Genocide in Darfur, Sudan

DECLARING GENOCIDE IN DARFUR, SUDAN -- (House of Representatives - July 21, 2004)

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 467) declaring genocide in Darfur, Sudan, as amended.

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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend all of those who have shown leadership on this issue.

I have been told that the only way that evil can triumph is that good people do nothing. I believe it was Dante who suggested that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who declare neutrality and do nothing in times of great moral crisis.

We have all heard the atrocities that are continuously being heaped upon the people in the Sudan. It is time for us to act, and to act convincingly.

We have to ask ourselves the question, if not us, then who? If not now, then when?

I commend the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) and all of those who have demonstrated great leadership on this issue.

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We are here tonight to sound the alarm, once again, on genocide in Sudan. There is no room for neutrality in the face of the crimes being committed there each day.

Amnesty International has renewed its charge that the international community is not doing enough to protect women in the Darfur region and the refugee camps in Chad where mass rape is being used as a weapon.

Since 1983, more than two million Black civilians have died during the Civil War in the south of Sudan. That struggle was especially brutal for the civilian population: slave raids resulting in the enslavement of women and children, gang rape, ethnic cleansing, and the imposition of famine conditions for hundreds of thousands.

On October 21, 2002, the President signed the Sudan Peace Act which stated, in part:

"The acts of the Government of Sudan constitute genocide as defined by the [United Nations] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)."

That bill requires President Bush to certify, every six months, that the government in Khartoum is negotiating in good faith for an end to that Civil War. According to some sources, we may be close to a framework for peace in that region.

On May 12th The New York Times carried this report:

"A team of U.S. diplomats led by Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Charles Snyder is on its way to Kenya to help put the final touches on an agreement to end Sudan's 21-year civil war, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday."

However, at the same time, Khartoum has launched a massive ethnic cleansing of Black Africans in Darfur, in the western region of Sudan. The same article in the New York Times reported:

"He said Snyder also would discuss with Sudanese officials the situation in the western Darfur region where human rights groups charge the Khartoum government and allied Arab militia are carrying out a campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' against Black African tribes, forcing some

1 million people to flee their homes."

Human Rights Watch and investigators for the United Nations have documented widespread ethnic cleansing and have characterized the situation there as "crimes against humanity." More than 100,000 have fled the region and are now refugees in neighboring Chad.

As the seasonal rains begin to set in, it is becoming more and more difficult to move refugees to relative safety and to provide even minimal subsistence. Malnutrition is at acute levels in the camps especially among children.

So, while our diplomats expressed their "grave concern" to the UN Human Rights Commission response to the murder, rape and forced removals in western Sudan, the President gave his certification that Khartoum was negotiating in "good faith" to end the decades old struggle in the south.

If the President had chosen to withhold that certification, it would have instituted a program of significant economic sanction against Sudan.

How, one might ask, can the government of Sudan negotiate in "good faith" to end genocide in one region, and openly engage in genocide in another region?

And how, it is reasonable to ask, can our own government accept the notion of negotiating in "good faith" in one region of the Sudan, while conducting a ruthless genocide in another?

Mr. Speaker, only a short time ago we paused here to mark the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. More than 800,000 died while the world watched, and did nothing. Once again genocide is unfolding before us. Those who have taken note have expressed their horror at what they have seen. But where is the public outcry? Where are the front page pictures? Where is the response of our government on behalf of the American people?

The ominous sign is that our government is willing to turn its eyes away from genocide in the West of the Sudan in favor of resuming oil production in the oil rich Southern region.

The genocide in the South was characterized by both racial and religious differences. The genocide in the Western region pits Muslim against Muslim but retains the racial character of the genocide in the South.

Mr. Speaker. In the name of fighting terrorism we have begun a campaign under the rubric of the Global Peace Operations. Even though President Bush has not formally announced the initiative, U.S. troops are now active from Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden to the Atlantic including Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger.

The question we now confront is this: is the slaughter of hundreds of thousands, even millions of Africans, terrorism? If our struggle against terrorism is truly global, can we be truly engaged in a global war on terrorism, and not engage genocide in Africa?

Mr. Speaker, funding for State Department programs in Africa such as the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program and the Enhanced International Peacekeeping Capacities have languished for years.

If we are to engage in a new anti-terrorism initiative in Africa, I would hope the President would consult with the Congress and with the Congressional Black Caucus as to how the struggle against terrorism will be shaped so as to protect the people of Africa as well as the peoples of the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Mr. Speaker, on June 24 the U.S. Holocaust Museum here in Washington took the dramatic step of closing access to its main exhibitions to call attention to the horror underway in Darfur.

Around that same time U.N. Secretary General Koffi Annan and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell paid a visit to the western Sudan. Secretary Powell expressed his deep concern over what he saw with his own eyes as an humanitarian crisis. But he failed to place the events in the Sudan in their proper historical context: the world is once again facing the onslaught of genocide.

When asked, Secretary Powell, speaking on behalf of this administration, was asked if this was genocide responded, "Let's not put a label on things."

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that is exactly what we need to do. Our failure to acknowledge genocide in the Sudan led directly to the abdication of the G-8 leaders in their responsibilities to intervene to save the lives of tens of thousands of African men, women and children as called for by the International Genocide Convention.

Mr. Speaker, if America cannot remember the great lessons of history, cannot confront genocide, or if we do not count the deaths of tens of thousands of Africans as genocide then the days ahead are sure to be some of the saddest and most difficult we have ever confronted.

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