Madam Speaker, I wish to say a few words in the debate this morning, basically to underline the importance of a serious diplomatic thrust to try to bring an end to this very unfortunate conflict. Hopefully the initiatives being taken now by the foreign affairs minister, by the Russians and by others will bear fruit. We should put a real emphasis on trying to accelerate the diplomatic efforts of finding peaceful solutions to what is happening in Yugoslavia, what is happening in Kosovo.
It need only be said in passing that we oppose what Milosevic is doing. It is abhorrent. It is barbaric. Something has to be done to stop what he is doing to the people in Kosovo. I also believe that we should try to escalate the presence of the United Nations in terms of it taking an initiative to do what it can to bring about a very peaceful solution. Right now people are suffering in that part of the world. People are being bombed. People are being killed. People are being exterminated. That has to end and end as soon as possible.
I want to try to bring a bit of human face to this situation if I possibly can. In 1968 I had the opportunity to go into the middle of a very vicious civil war in Nigeria, into the breakaway province of Biafra. This morning I dug up a comment in a speech I made in the House on November 26, 1968, a little over 30 years ago. I was only 12 years old; I was elected at the age of 11 or thereabouts to the House.
I spent two weeks over there. I spent one week on the Nigerian side and I spent one week in the war zone on the Biafran side. I had an experience which changed my life forever in terms of what humanity is all about. I literally saw people dying after being bombed. I saw people dying of starvation in huge sick bays in refugee camps.
At that particular time I travelled there with a Liberal member of parliament by the name of Ralph Stewart. Before us a couple of other MPs had gone, a Conservative named David MacDonald and a New Democratic named Andrew Brewin. We went there to try to bring attention to the suffering and the need for some humanitarian help.
I can remember flying into what was then known as Biafra. At that time the Nigerian armies had encircled the province of Biafra. There was a form of genocide going on where hundreds of thousands of people were dying. We flew in under the cover of darkness on a church plane bringing drugs and landed on a small jungle air strip. I spent seven horrifying days actually seeing what happens when there is war.
I remember being caught in a bombing raid and having bombs drop literally a few metres away. We thought we were going to die because these bombs were coming out of the darkness of a jungle night. People were screaming. Some people were saying the rosary. Other people were crying and running and being scattered.
The terror is hard to put into words. I reread the speech I made in the House back on November 26, 1968 describing the trip. The then minister of external affairs was Mitchell Sharp, and he spoke right after me.
One of the things we saw was a Catholic hospital that had just been bombed. Another was a Red Cross hospital that had just been bombed, both of them by mistake, I am sure, according to the military authorities at the time.
We also went to many refugee camps and what they called feeding centres and sick bays. They would feed people at five o'clock in the morning just before dawn, before sunrise, because if the bombers came over and saw a huge crowd of people in a jungle opening there was a chance that there could be an attack.
One of things I referred to in my speech, and I remember it to this day, was going to a feeding bay where they had 3,500 pregnant and nursing women coming for their daily iron pills and a bit of fish stock that was provided because of the protein in fish.
To go through this experience, to get caught in a bombing raid, to hear the airplanes doing the strafing, to go up to a war front and see wounded soldiers, and to be close enough to hear the rat-a-tat-tat of machines guns in the darkness of a jungle night, it certainly had an impression on me. I did not think I would come back many times during that one week. It had an impression on me of how uncivilized human beings are at times to one another. Everything has to be done to bring an end to that kind of torture and torment. I just wanted to relate some of those comments to try to make this situation a little more real.
The brunt of the situation now is being borne by the Kosovars who are in huge refugee camps. Some are in Macedonia and some in Albania. Many of the Kosovars are still trapped behind the lines in their native province, the part of Serbia they come from and have lived for many years. Many of these people are dying of starvation. Many of these people are being shot. They are being executed.
I remember when I was in Biafra, for example, at a hospital or a church when a worker came out of the jungle with a child in his arms who might have been four or five years old. The child was basically just the skeleton of someone who was barely clinging to life. In my life I have never seen a person as emaciated or skinny as that little child was.
That kind of thing is happening now. It is happening in Yugoslavia and it is happening because of a madman named Milosevic. It is also happening because there are NATO bombs being dropped in Yugoslavia.
When I was in these little jungle villages and lying there with bombs dropping, I realized one thing. A bomb does not discriminate between a very poor black African peasant and a white politician from the western world. It does not discriminate at all. If one did not believe that going into that situation, it becomes a reality extremely quickly when a bomb is dropping out of the sky. We all have the same kinds of fears.
Those people are going through hell on earth and there is no better way of putting it than that. It is an absolute hell on earth. We should do what is being initiated today. We should do whatever we can to escalate the diplomatic offensive by bringing in Russia, the United Nations and other countries like Canada that are highly respected in the international forum and building up the diplomatic offensive to try to bring an end to the killing, the torture, the bloodshed and the hell on earth that is occurring in that part of the world. That is what we have to do.
At the same time we should signal as a country that we do not want to escalate the conflict by being part of a naval blockade. I do not think we should be doing that. It just leads into the possibility of making the situation more of a tinderbox. It brings in the possibility of a conflict with Russia.
The oil that goes into Yugoslavia comes primarily from Libya and from Russia. As the President of France, Jacques Chirac, said a few days ago, if one stops a ship bringing oil to that part of the world it is basically an act of war. We know the situation now in Russia where there is basically no government. It is a situation that is almost analogous to anarchy. There are ultranationalists, communists, unrest and economic chaos. It would not take much to push that country into a situation where this conflict could escalate beyond control of the world.
We should do everything we can, absolutely everything we can, to bring a diplomatic end to this kind of a crisis. Those people are suffering. Those people are dying.
As we talk today there is a child dying. There is somebody being shot, someone being mutilated. Thousands of people are hungry. People have lost their families. People are crying. People do not know where their homes are. Their homes have been destroyed. This is real and genuine human suffering.
We stand here in a parliament well dressed, well fed, well nourished and with shelters over our heads. It is difficult to imagine the suffering these human beings are going through. They are like us. They are human beings. They are being deprived of their loved ones. They are human beings that suffer pain and death and see their families being killed.
This kind of thing is very dangerous and could escalate. We have a fine reputation around the world, going back to the days of Lester Pearson and before, where we are the peacemakers. We are respected. We have diplomatic clout and diplomatic power. We should do all we can to escalate that and emphasize that in the hours and days that remain in the next week or so.