Mr. Chair, I guess it is a bit of double-edged sword to stand in this place today to speak to this situation. My point of discussion would be vigilance, the vigilance of observer countries of the west.
Recent history has given us plenty of reason to be vigilant. We are just now commemorating the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. We have seen what has happened in Sri Lanka. We are seeing what is happening in CAR. We are seeing what is happening with D.R.C. and with Syria. What these things all have in common—and it will be the focus of my words today—is the use of sexual violence as a weapon, and the aftermath of that.
The signs that we missed in Rwanda and missed in Bosnia, the signs that we are seeing and have seen in Sri Lanka, the signs that we have seen and are seeing in Syria, we are beginning to see now in South Sudan.
The importance of vigilance by the west, by Canada and by observer countries, is paramount, because without that vigilance we allow the potential for something horrendous to happen. We contribute, although passively, to something that should not occur.
My concern is for the escalation of hostilities in South Sudan in the last number of week in regard to targeted violence based on ethnicity and based on gender. My concern is that we will not have the wherewithal to address this situation in a preventive manner, and it is over whether we will have the expertise and ability to deal with this situation in the aftermath.
I mentioned when I first stood that I am saddened to be standing in this place today, speaking to this issue, because one of the first trips I took as a member of Parliament was to South Sudan with my colleague from Newmarket. This was in January of 2012, so South Sudan was merely six or seven months old.
One of the things that struck us all on arriving in the capital of Juba was the fact that there was absolutely nothing in terms of infrastructure. There was absolutely no electricity unless one had a generator. Water was scarce in terms of being readily available. The airplane that landed us was a Boeing whatever, and it pretty well rolled right up to the door of the airport. We got off the plane and literally walked into waiting vehicles. The infrastructure was not there.
However, in the subsequent meetings that we had with individual parliamentarians and with representatives of the NGOs and the media, there was a sense of hope, in many cases, because of the desire and determination of the group of individuals that we met to build a Sudan that they could be proud of and that the world could be proud of.
It was a fragile hope, but it was a hope nonetheless, so to see what is happening in South Sudan today, slightly less than three years later, is disheartening. However, within that, I think we need to do the best we can as a friend of Sudan to make sure that we are there to help those individuals succeed in their desire to see Sudan succeed.
One of the ways we can do that is being there and being vigilant, especially in terms of the type of conflict this has the danger of turning into. There are reports that these recent targeted attacks were spurred on by radio announcements urging individuals to attack individuals from another tribe, individuals who did not see eye to eye with the overall communities they were in. I think the first attack claimed the lives of some 200 individuals, while a subsequent attack claimed the lives of another 40 individuals. This struck a chord with me, because that is the exact methodology that was used in the beginning of the Rwandan crisis.
We are now, 20 years later, seeing the aftermath of what happened in Rwanda. There are recent articles about interviews and discussions held some 20 years later with not only the victims of sexual violence but with the children born of these acts, describing how those relationships were affected. Mothers could not look at their daughters; children felt ostracized by their families and their communities. The support for those who suffered during this ethnic cleansing period does not extend to those children. They are left to their own devices in terms of finding help, whether they understand that they need or decide that they want help.
I will be repeating myself if I say that what I am hearing in the media now about the actions in South Sudan causes me great concern in terms of the direction that South Sudan may be going. We cannot look at these types of actions as offshoots of war. We cannot look at the tribal tensions in South Sudan as just things that happen. These tensions are at the core of the actions and the activities of the opposing forces in South Sudan, and they are used as a means of undermining the communities and the very society that these communities live in.
We in Canada must make sure that the past sins of the fathers are not visited on the young people. Youth make up over half of the population of South Sudan. I feel very strongly that we, as Canada and as the west, need to make sure that we send a clear sign that we are there to support those children and that the civilians in South Sudan will have an opportunity to grow in safety and freedom and to find their feet so that they can move forward.