Ed Royce: “I just want to indicate the sheer magnitude of the horror of what is unfolding in Sudan as we speak. Because what is…”

“I just want to indicate the sheer magnitude of the horror of what is unfolding in Sudan as we speak. Because what is occurring there is a scorched-earth policy that has killed in excess of 70,000 people, that has displaced more than a million of people within Sudan, and forced hundreds of thousands of people over the border into Chad. When we think of the magnitude of the several hundreds villages burnt to the ground, the irrigation systems that have been systematically destroyed, that the government-backed militias, referred to as Janjaweed, are committing wide-spread rapes and atrocities, that the very people in the NGO communities, the very charitable organizations that are attempting to get in on the ground and to assist in this region are prevented access to those starving, I think when we reflect on what we know we can only imagine as to the extent of the horror in those villages in which we have no access, and to have had the United States, to have this Congress and the administration explain that this is genocide is only a first step. The question has been how do we get the international community to take action, a concerted action, in order to effectively apply pressure on the government in Khartoum to reverse its actions in supporting the Janjaweed.”