IV
106TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
H. RES. 606
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.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
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
RESOLUTION
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:
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(1) Evidence of man’s inhumanity to man has
been present since the beginnings of recorded his-
tory.
(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 appe-
tite for violence, domination, and intolerance.
(3) The history of the modern age since the rise
of the democratic spirit during the eighteenth cen-
tury provides evidence that the solution to the di-
lemma 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 tol-
erance.
(4) Despite the best efforts of democratic na-
tions and the ameliorating influence of the universal
religious and humanist traditions, the twentieth cen-
tury was the bloodiest in history, with an estimated
175,000,000 people worldwide having lost their lives
because of politically motivated violence, genocide,
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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 pro-
gram, and the Cultural Revolution in the People’s
Republic of China; the Tibetan population in Chi-
nese-controlled Tibet; the victims of the Pol Pot re-
gime 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 vic-
tims caused by the apartheid system in South Afri-
ca, and of slavery everywhere; the victims of reli-
gious fundamentalism, particularly in Iran; the vic-
tims 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 insti-
tutional practices, particularly since the recent
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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 human-
kind may finally find the means effectively to re-
strain the sinister motivations of which human na-
tures 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 appro-
priate, to other nations and societies in their strug-
gle to achieve similarly lofty goals.
SEC. 3. DECLARATION OF POLICY.
The House of Representatives calls upon the Presi-
dent 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 inhu-
manity 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 na-
tions, to promote and enforce those values and rights.
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