John W. Olver: “But I rise today particularly to commend Chairwoman Lowey, Ranking Member Wolf, and the subcommittee for their efforts…”

“But I rise today particularly to commend Chairwoman Lowey, Ranking Member Wolf, and the subcommittee for their efforts to relieve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. By providing over $200 million for peacekeeping and humanitarian aid to Darfur, this bill will provide desperately needed support for the 2.5 million people driven from Darfur or displaced within Darfur by the Sudanese's deliberate actions. Yet even as I acknowledge the significant resources that have been included in this bill, I cannot contain my outrage and frustration that the genocide in Darfur continues. Hundreds of villages and small towns have been razed, burned to the ground, and obliterated, the men killed, the women systematically raped, children slaughtered as if they were vermin, survivors fleeing for their lives into the squalor of refugee camps. A common tactic of this horror has been to stuff the villages' water wells with the bodies of the dead so there will be no water for people who try to return to their ancestral homes.”