US Congress votes to declare genocide in Sudan
WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress passed a resolution declaring that genocide is occurring in Sudan, which backers hope will pressure the international community to take action to protect Africans in the Darfur region from marauding Arab militias.
In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, the House of Representatives passed the measure in a unanimous vote, and the Senate then approved it by a voice vote, in their last acts before Congress adjourned for a six-week summer recess.
“While the world debates, people die in Darfur,” said Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican. “We actually could save some lives instead of lamenting afterward that we should have done something.”
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, called the resolution “an important statement to make. The administration needs to hear it, the international community needs to hear it, and certainly the Sudanese government, which tolerates if not assists genocide, needs to hear it.”
The resolution says “the atrocities unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, are genocide.”
It urges President George W. Bush to seek a U.N. resolution to impose sanctions against those responsible for the atrocities, authorise a multinational force to protect displaced people and humanitarian workers, create a commission to investigate crimes and set up a process to resolve grievances between Darfurians and the Sudanese government.
The United Nations has declared the situation in Darfur the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, but has not called it a genocide, which would force it to take action.
The world body estimates that the 15-month conflict between Arab nomads and black Africans has killed at least 30,000 people and displaced more than 1 million.
The United States has circulated a U.N. resolution threatening sanctions against Sudan’s government if Khartoum did not prosecute leaders of the “Janjaweed” Arab militias blamed for raping and murdering black Africans and sacking their villages.
Khartoum, which warned the United States on Thursday not to interfere in its internal affairs, denies supporting the Janjaweed. But the United States says the Sudanese government has not met its pledge to protect displaced civilians, disarm militias, lift travel restrictions on aid workers and punish those responsible for atrocities.