U.S. and International Community Must Act Now to Stop the Killing in Sudan

Pelosi: 'U.S. and International Community Must Act Now to Stop the Killings in Sudan'

Washington, D.C.-House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Members of the Congressional Black Caucus held a news conference in the Capitol this afternoon to urge more action by the Bush Administration and the international community to stop the killing in Sudan. Below are Pelosi's remarks:

"Good afternoon. I commend the Congressional Black Caucus, under the leadership of Chairman Elijah Cummings, and Congressman Donald Payne, the Ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee on International Relations, for their leadership in calling to the world's attention the crisis in Sudan.

"As they have so eloquently said, a shocking but sadly familiar tragedy is unfolding in Africa, this time in the Darfur region of the western Sudan. The United States and the international community must act now before even more innocents are slaughtered.

"The Sudanese government has mobilized militias to carry out a scorched earth policy of indiscriminate attacks on African civilians. Khartoum and its surrogate militias have systematically tortured, raped, and killed thousands of innocent civilians based solely on their identity.

"As many as 30,000 civilians may have been murdered and more than 1 million driven off their land into unprotected camps in Sudan and neighboring Chad. The humanitarian crises caused by the fighting could produce an additional 350,000 deaths in the next nine months.

"Both USAID and the United Nations have described these atrocities as 'ethnic cleansing,' and the Committee on Conscience of our own Holocaust Memorial Museum has issued a genocide warning for Darfur.

"A genocide in the making demands the immediate attention of our government, the United Nations, and others in the international community. The President, Secretary of State, and Secretary General of the United Nations must exercise their leadership and stop this nightmare from continuing.

"I call upon the President to withhold any normalization of relations with Sudan. We must demand of Khartoum an immediate and verifiable cessation of violence against Darfur, and the disarming of the militias according to the cease-fire agreement they signed.

"The Bush Administration also needs to increase its efforts to generate an international response to the suffering in Darfur. Those responsible for the deaths and destruction need to be held accountable, the flow of relief supplies needs to be expanded, and security needs to be provided for relief workers and their equipment.

"President Bush must not hesitate to impose sanctions as necessary to encourage a much higher degree of cooperation by the Sudanese government.

"Our response to the daily misery in Darfur must not be half-measures and delay. We must act now while there is time to stop further slaughter, or our country will look back on the lives lost in Darfur with the regret and shame that we feel for events in other parts of Africa.

"How many times have we heard the public outcry: 'Why didn't we stop the killings?' This is a crisis. This is an emergency. We must act now to stop the slaughter of thousands of innocent people."