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Tenth District Congressman Donald M. Payne, the Ranking Member of the House International Relations Subcommittee on Africa, recently returned from a trip to Africa where he met in Chad with refugees who had fled from Darfur, Sudan.
Payne, who serves as a Congressional Delegate to the United Nations, visited refugee camps in Eastern Chad, which lies just 35 miles outside of the border with Sudan. Based on his conversations with Darfur refugees, Payne said that the Sudanese government’s campaign to “cleanse” Darfur of black people dates back to the early 1990’s and even before.
Payne said that the refugees shared many horrific stories with him, including a first-hand account by a Darfur woman who had seen a pregnant woman’s stomach being sliced open and had witnessed young boys being dragged out to be killed. The Congressman said he saw bruises on the woman’s chest where she had been hit repeatedly with a rifle.
“Over the last year or so, the extremist Islamist government of Sudan has intensified its targeting of black Muslims in Darfur in a systemic campaign of mass displacement, brutal killing, raping, and the burning and destruction of entire villages,” Payne said. “The three major groups being targeted are the Fur, the Massalit, and the Zaghawa peoples. So far, at least 200,000 refugees have fled to neighboring Chad and at least one million people have been displaced internally. Over 30,000 innocent people have been killed in one of the worst cases of genocide in recent history.”
Payne has called on the African Union to intensify their efforts to apply pressure on the Government of Sudan and to continue to find ways to help end the crisis. He has also called for increased troop strength, noting that 300 troops cannot realistically protect the millions of people whose lives are being threatened. Payne also urged the European to become more involved in resolving the crisis in Darfur, and suggested that if the current crisis continues, consideration should be given to deploying NATO troops.
During his trip to Africa, Congressman Payne also traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he met with high-level officials, including (FILL IN THE BLANKS)
Earlier this summer, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution to declare that the atrocities unfolding in Darfur constitute genocide. Payne’s resolution urged the international community to live up to their legal obligations and called on the U.S. Agency for International Development to establish a Darfur Resettlement, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Fund so that those driven from their land may return and begin to rebuild their communities.
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