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United States Training on and Recognition of Man's Inhumanity to Man or Twentieth Century Atrocities Resolution (Introduced in the House)

HRES 606 IH

Calling upon the President to provide for the appropriate training of Foreign Service officers and other executive branch personnel in the primacy of democratic values and internationally recognized human rights.

October 3, 2000

Mr. ROHRABACHER (for himself, Mr. LANTOS, Mr. BURTON, and Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations

Calling upon the President to provide for the appropriate training of Foreign Service officers and other executive branch personnel in the primacy of democratic values and internationally recognized human rights.

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This resolution may be cited as the `United States Training on and Recognition of Man's Inhumanity to Man or Twentieth Century Atrocities Resolution'.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

The Congress finds the following:

(1) Evidence of man's inhumanity to man has been present since the beginnings of recorded history.

(2) The impact of man's inhumanity to man on history and the development of human civilization has been so tragic and devastating as to have called forth numerous responses at different times and in many different cultures to restrain the human appetite for violence, domination, and intolerance.

(3) The history of the modern age since the rise of the democratic spirit during the eighteenth century provides evidence that the solution to the dilemma of man's inhumanity to man lies, at least in part, with the establishment of democratic political and social systems that are based on the equality of all citizens before the law, the public accountability of the governors to the governed, and on mutual tolerance.

(4) Despite the best efforts of democratic nations and the ameliorating influence of the universal religious and humanist traditions, the twentieth century was the bloodiest in history, with an estimated 175,000,000 people worldwide having lost their lives because of politically motivated violence, genocide, ethnic cleaning, planned starvation, and other forms of exploitation and basic cruelty.

(5) These atrocities have included injustices perpetrated against, inter alia, the Jewish, Slavic, and Roma populations of Nazi-controlled territories in Europe; the victims of the Gulag, state-imposed famine and brutal relocation policies followed by the government of the Soviet Union; the victims of the land reform program, the Great Leap Forward program, and the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China; the Tibetan population in Chinese-controlled Tibet ; the victims of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia; the Hutu population of Rwanda; the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire; the Kurdish population of northern Iraq and the Shi'a population of southern Iraq; the Moslem and Croat populations of the former Yugoslavia; the victims caused by the apartheid system in South Africa, and of slavery everywhere; the victims of religious fundamentalism, particularly in Iran; the victims of the Sudanese and Libyan governments; the Albanian population of Kosova; the decimated tribes of Amazon rain forest; and others.

(6) The spread of democratic values and institutional practices, particularly since the recent downfall in numerous countries of ruling regimes based on fascism, communism, and other forms of racial, religious, and national exclusivity offers hope at the dawn of this twenty-first century that humankind may finally find the means effectively to restrain the sinister motivations of which human natures is capable at an organized or institutional level.

(7) The United States of America, by virtue of its experience in the ongoing struggle to redeem the promises of its own founding documents and ideals, is well qualified to provide assistance, as appropriate, to other nations and societies in their struggle to achieve similarly lofty goals.

SEC. 3. DECLARATION OF POLICY.

The House of Representatives calls upon the President to provide for the appropriate training of Foreign Service officers and other executive branch personnel who have occasion to respond to issues related to man's inhumanity to man, with such training to include an emphasis on the primacy of democratic values and internationally recognized human rights and the means available to the United States, acting singly or in concert with other nations, to promote and enforce those values and rights.