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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia: Mr. Speaker, the slaughtering of individuals simply because they are a member of a certain ethnic or racial group has occurred throughout history, and, regrettably, continues today. As we witnessed, as many as 800,000 of the Tutsi minority, men, women and children, were murdered in Rwanda. Mass violence has occurred against civilians in Bosnia, where up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys were systematically executed.
The obligations of the United States under the Genocide Convention are in the criminal code in title 18 beginning at section 1091. Genocide is defined as having the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The code offers severe punishment for anyone who commits genocide within the United States. The law also makes it a Federal crime for a U.S. national to commit genocide anywhere in the world. Fortunately, there has not been a need to use the law against anyone now covered by it. However, by only covering genocide if it is committed in this country or committed by a U.S. national, we leave a gap which allows non-U.S. persons who commit genocide elsewhere to come to this country with impunity under our laws.
To this end, the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman) introduced identical legislation designed to amend title 18 of the United States Code to expand jurisdiction of genocide over the following categories of people who have committed genocide outside of the United States: (1) an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence; (2) a stateless person whose habitual residence is in the United States; or (3) an individual physically present in the United States.
Similar to the legislation before us, many other Federal laws, including those laws that criminalize torture, allow for the extraterritorial jurisdiction over crimes committed outside the United States by those present in the United States.
Genocide continues to be a threat in the world and we should attack it wherever we find it. In Darfur, we see the tragic replay of suffering and death. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people who have been killed, raped, tortured, or forced to flee, and over 2 million people have been driven from their homes. For them, the commitment of ``never again'' after the Holocaust rings hollow. The United States should have the ability to prosecute those who find safe haven in the United States for their acts of genocide. The Genocide Accountability Act would end this impunity gap in the genocide law. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to adopt this important legislation.
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