Hoyer, Feingold Send Letter to President Bush on Darfur

For Immediate Release
May 08, 2007
Contact: Stacey Farnen Bernards, Hoyer, 202-225-3130
Zach Lowe, Feingold, 202-224-5323

Hoyer, Feingold Send Letter to President Bush on Darfur

Call on President to Send Clear Message to Sudan That They Must Ensure Continued Humanitarian Access

WASHINGTON, DC - House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) and Senator Russell D. Feingold (D-WI) sent a letter to President Bush yesterday, urging him to deliver a strong message to the Sudanese government that they are expected to follow through on all agreements regarding continued humanitarian access to the more than two million Darfurians who depend on international relief groups for survival. This letter follows a CODEL to Darfur that Majority Leader Hoyer recently led, during which the Leader experienced first-hand how internally displaced Darfurians rely on these groups for basic services such as medical care, food delivery, education, and water and sanitation. The Majority Leader has written to the Sudanese Foreign Ministry on this issue as well.

"By sending this letter to President Bush, we hope to increase pressure on the Sudanese government to abide by the agreements they have signed," Majority Leader Hoyer said. "After recently leading a CODEL to Darfur, I believe more than ever that humanitarian organizations are doing vital work that must not be impeded by the government of Sudan. The United States, and the international community, must do everything possible to ensure continued humanitarian access to the people of Darfur."

"While I am somewhat encouraged by the Sudanese government's agreement to support humanitarian efforts in Darfur, this pledge must be implemented completely and fully if it is to be at all useful to the millions of people who rely on humanitarian assistance for survival," said Feingold, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs. "The U.S. Administration must hold the Sudanese government accountable for their commitments and make it absolutely clear that obstruction of humanitarian aid will not be tolerated."

The letter was signed by 20 Senators in addition to Senator Feingold, and 37 Representatives in addition to Majority Leader Hoyer. All 11 Members on the Hoyer CODEL to Darfur - including seven Democrats and four Republicans -- signed the letter.

Even though the government of Sudan signed the Joint Communiqué with the UN on March 28, humanitarian organizations are still experiencing problems with delays in receiving and renewing travel visas and work permits. Creating further confusion, some Sudanese government agencies adhere to the Communiqué's requirements that all visas and work permits be extended, and applications for new visas and permits be approved within 15 days, while others do not. Additionally, the Sudanese Department of Labor has "attempted to interfere in humanitarian groups' hiring processes," by refusing work permits for aid workers.

In the letter, Members ask President Bush to use "all possible tools of leverage" at his disposal to compel the Sudanese government to ensure that humanitarian workers have access to Darfurians, and to comply with the Joint Communiqué and their other international agreements.

The entire text of the letter can be found on Majority Leader Hoyer's Sudan website: http://majorityleader.house.gov/docUploads/Letter%20to%20the%20President%20on%20Humanitarian%20Access.pdf

The Perils of Indifference
Elie Wiesel

~ excerpt ~

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.

Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps -- and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance -- but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.

And our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on behind those black gates and barbed wire; that they had no knowledge of the war against the Jews that Hitler's armies and their accomplices waged as part of the war against the Allies.

If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once.


The full speech (text & audio) is available @ http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/wiesel.htm