Benjamin Gilman: “this measure, sponsored by Senator Frist, passed the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in November of last year.…”

“this measure, sponsored by Senator Frist, passed the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in November of last year. Sudan has been independent for some 44 years. For 34 of those years, it has been engaged in civil war. Entire generations of Sudanese, in both north and south, have grown up with war as a regular part of their lives. Several national governments, military and civilian, have come and gone. Some, like the current regime, have been militant Islamists. Others have been moderate, the historical norm for Islam in Sudan. All, however, attempted, without much success, to subdue the rebellious south with military force. The cost in human life has been enormous, approximately 2 million southern Sudanese dead in the past 17 years. There is no way to estimate the death toll of the first 17 years of that war, from 1956 to 1973. Sudan has been implicated in an American death toll, as well. In August 1998, two of our U.S. embassy buildings in Africa were attacked by terrorists with Sudanese support. The World Trade Center in New York was attacked in February 1993 with Sudanese support. Sudan is a Pandora's box of maladies: humanitarian suffering, civil war, human rights violations, religious persecution, modern-day slavery, and international terrorism. Most of it goes along largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. This measure attempts to focus the attention of our Nation on this tragedy and report to the Congress on a regular basis.”