Tom Lantos: “I was profoundly disturbed by my colleague's remark who asked why do we deal with this issue? Well, we deal with this…”

“I was profoundly disturbed by my colleague's remark who asked why do we deal with this issue? Well, we deal with this issue because, as so many other issues in this century, it is a fundamental issue of human rights. I predict that the issue of human rights will be the dominant issue of the 21st century. Not long ago, we were dealing with hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians being pushed out of their ancestral homes in Kosovo, and there were people on the floor of this body who questioned the relevance of our involvement in trying to see to it that these people, little children, old women, young families, were just pushed out of their home, because of their ethnicity and because of their religion. In that case, it was Muslims who were persecuted by Milosevic and his thugs. In this instance, it is principally Christians who are being persecuted, harassed, raped, killed on a large scale by fundamental lifts Muslims. I cannot think of a more noble cause for the Congress of the United States than to debate these issues and perhaps to try to help in whatever way we can.”