House of Representatives - January 26, 2004
Mr. Speaker, I rise to bring terrible news from Africa. Seventy thousand people are dead, and more are dying every hour. This would be tragic enough if the deaths were caused by some natural cataclysmic event like a tsunami. But the truth is the 70,000 in Africa have died because they were killed by a regime bent on genocide.
In a region of horrific tragedy, of violence and death, millions have lost their lives, but many have not lost their hope.
These are the notes handwritten by members of the Sudanese refugees in the camps. They gave them to us when we were there 2 days ago and asked us to read them; pages upon pages of handwritten requests to Members of Congress, to the American people. I accepted them directly from these people walking away, because we could not spend all day there. They said, would you please take them home and read them? Their words, their hopes, their calls for help are being translated at the moment, and I will share them with my colleagues when they are done.
But I want to share my thoughts about Africa with some of my colleagues in the House, and with the American people.
In the past week I was invited to join a congressional trip to the Sudan region by a Republican, the gentleman from California Mr. Royce. I say this because this House and the American people need to know the depth and the breadth of a man who serves his constituency with distinction and his country with honor.
Royce knows how to reach across the aisle, and I applaud him for his leadership and his humanity. He knows of my love and interest in Africa. That transcended any label of Republican or Democrat.
As chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, Mr. Royce put together a trip so that we could see firsthand what was happening. It was done in a 5-day period. The wheels never stopped rolling.
There were a handful of House Members on the trip and also someone that the gentleman from California brought along by the name of Don Cheadle, who was recently nominated for a Best Actor Award for his part in the movie "Hotel Rwanda." It is galvanizing when one sees that movie, because it is so reminiscent of what is going on today. It went on 10 years ago in Rwanda. But in that film one sees with their own eyes with chilling accuracy what we saw on the ground in Chad. It will become an instrument of good, and for that we should be grateful.
I have been to Africa many times. I have seen the pandemic of AIDS. I lived in Africa as a doctor and as a psychiatrist. I know about the suffering and the emotional trauma from a tragedy of global proportions.
What we saw there was an old story. Here are 18,000 people living in make-shift houses in an area. There are 250,000 of them in Chad, having come across the border from Sudan. They have no running water. They have no toilets; they have latrines. Water has to be brought in by truck. You see old people, you see young people with amputations from having been bombed by the Sudanese Government. You see people who are there sick, crying, having no schools for the kids and no health care, or very little health care, all created by a regime that refuses to deal with the issue.
Now, we sat, many of us, on the floor of this House during the whole Rwanda experience. We watched it happen, but we kind of closed our eyes. We would not see what we were seeing. It could have been prevented. Everyone in this body ought to have to see that movie and see what happens when the United States, rather than leading, sits on its hands. We say we are a leader in the world. Well, there is a situation out there today that requires us to act.
Now, unfortunately, Chad is almost the poorest country in Africa. Sudan is a little bit better because they have oil. But these people living in Darfur are not involved in the oil. They are hundreds of miles away from it. So they become sort of irrelevant to the strategic purposes of this country.
If we are going to be a humanitarian country, and we want people to understand that we care, we have to act when we see things like this in spite of the fact that it has no economic value to us.
In the days ahead I am sure others will talk about this. America has been a leader and will be again. It is the right thing to do. We should act now.
Revision date: August 27, 2007
