Wolf: Malawi Should be Dropped from MCC Program for Allowing Sudanese President to Visit

Thursday October 13, 2011

Contact: Dan Scandling
Joe McNulty
(202) 225-5136

WOLF: MALAWI SHOULD BE DROPPED FROM MCC PROGRAM
FOR ALLOWING SUDANESE PRESIDENT TO VISIT

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) today demanded that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) drop Malawi from the program after learning the African nation allowed Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir – an internationally indicted war criminal responsible for the genocide in Darfur – to enter the country for a regional trade summit.

In letters to President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and MCC CEO Daniel Yohannes, Wolf wrote that “[i]t is unconscionable that American tax dollars are going to a country that openly allows someone like Bashir to visit.”

Wolf said, if funding for Malawi is not cancelled, the MCC will be complicit in aiding a genocidal government and should be completely shutdown.

Below is the complete text of Wolf’s letter to President Obama:

The Honorable Barack H. Obama
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I write today to demand that Malawi immediately be dropped from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) program as a result of the government allowing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir – an internationally indicted war criminal responsible for the genocide in Darfur – to enter the country for a regional trade summit.

It is unconscionable that American tax dollars are going to a country that openly allows someone like Bashir to visit.  Bashir is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children.  I have been to Darfur and seen what he has done.

His brutal ways, however, are not limited to just Darfur.  At a briefing I attended this afternoon I heard first-hand accounts of the atrocities that are unfolding in the Nuba Mountains – reports of door-to-door targeted executions based on ethnicity and political affiliation, Antanov bombers indiscriminately shelling civilian populations, mass graves and a rapidly growing number of displaced persons.

What is unfolding in Southern Kordofan today can only be described as a recurring nightmare in that region: a genocidal government hell-bent on maintaining its grip on power, treating civilian populations as mere collateral damage and Bashir is responsible.

Bashir is a wanted war criminal.  His murderous aims are unchanged.  American tax dollars should not be going to countries who welcome him.