Lynn C. Woolsey: “First, I'd like to thank Chairman Payne and Majority Leader Hoyer for reserving this valuable time tonight to bring…”

“First, I'd like to thank Chairman Payne and Majority Leader Hoyer for reserving this valuable time tonight to bring attention to Sudan. While it may have slipped from the front page of the newspapers and headlines of the nightly news, the crisis in Sudan is still in a very critical stage. In Darfur, rape is being used as a means of terror and warfare. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in refugee camps or are displaced from their homes. Militias with strong ties to the government in Khartoum brutalize Darfurians. So we have a long way to go before the people of Darfur can feel safe and return to a normal life. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement was supposed to lay out a framework for peace between the north and the south, but as we get closer to the date for the referendum, security and fairness seems to have become farther out of reach than it was earlier on. The south is forced to hope that President Bashir, a man indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, they are to hope he will support an honest and clean election, free from intimidation and free from corruption.”