Arabs enslave Blacks in Sudan

[theist]

So where is the UN? The Arab league?

-------

 

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Disgraceful silence in face of genocide

 

Sunday, May 30th, 2004

 

A generation has grown up in hell, or maybe it's two generations. Depending on how you read history, the civil war in Sudan has been raging for 21 years, or maybe 50. Suffice it to say, existence in the African nation has been - we resort to understatement - difficult.

Note, "existence." Not "life." If you accept the 21-year estimate, 2 million Sudanese have failed to maintain existence, and the death toll is rising. For in Sudan, there is today the world's greatest humanitarian disaster - a polite way of describing genocide.

 

A decade ago, the world turned its back on Rwanda, where ethnic cleansing claimed 800,000 lives in 100 days. Afterward: Oh the shock, oh the horror. Why didn't "civilized" society do something?

 

Well, world, it's happening again. And, except for the U.S. and South Africa, no one seems to care much. The United Nations alleges some interest, pledging aid and comfort. But this is the same organization that deemed Sudan's Islamic government worthy of a place on the Human Rights Commission, even though said government is the antithesis of all the commission is supposed to represent.

 

Last week, Sudan's leaders and the rebel forces that have been waging the eternal civil war signed a peace pact, brokered by the U.S. This, though, has no bearing on the abominations in the western part of the country, in the region called Darfur. There, Arab militias, supported by the government in Khartoum, have been slaughtering, raping, torturing and enslaving - yes, slavery thrives in Sudan - black Africans. The refugee estimate is between 1 million and 2 million, and the area, which is about the size of France, has been so decimated that one can reportedly drive for 50 miles without seeing a living being. What you will see are burned villages and scorched earth. And desecrated bodies.

 

If a black African in Darfur is lucky enough to escape being butchered by the Arabs, he or she must still contend with enslavement, famine and disease. Refugee camps in neighboring Chad are overflowing. There is little food and no medicine. In a couple of weeks, the rainy season will make roads impassable so supplies cannot be delivered. That will give Khartoum a nice excuse, since it is generally accepted that supplies are not being delivered now because the Sudanese government has blocked relief organizations from reaching the refugees.

 

Where are you, France and Germany? Where are you, Barbra Streisand? Where are you, Al Franken? When can we expect the documentary, Michael Moore? We do not mean to trivialize the tragedy, but loudmouths with a platform could be useful in galvanizing action. Or are we not supposed to care when the murderers are Arabs and the victims are black?

 

[Kulapavana]

even less is being said or done about black-on-black violence and abuses in africa, often committed by the black governments and leaders recognized and welcomed all over the world. many of these people are no better than animals and their actions prove it. when visiting africa Srila Prabhupada commented that some of the tribes there do not belong to the human species.

[krsna]

http://mirrormax.i8.com/custom3.html

[theist]

The media is criminal by their neglect of these stories. Instead they broadcast story after story about the Royal family and their birthday parties and philanderings. The people in general are interested in and feed only the most superfical garbage. Anything else might disrupt the party and upset their advertisers or something.

 

I need to take a walk and listen to a lecture tape and some kirtan. This stuff can easily overcome us and toss us into deep despair.

 

[krsna]

Certainly those poor people in Sudan are suffering greatly but Srila Prabhupada gives us hope than ALL of humanity's suffering can be solved by Krsna consciousness:

 

 

Excerpt from lecture by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, (Dec. 9, 1969)

 

 

 

This Krsna consciousness movement means to become Vaisnava and feel for the suffering humanity. But to feel for the suffering humanity, there are different angles of vision. Somebody is thinking of the suffering of the humanity from bodily conception of life. Somebody is trying to open hospital to give relief to the diseased condition. Somebody is trying to distribute foodstuff in poverty-stricken countries or places. These things are certainly very nice, but actual suffering of the humanity is due to lack of Krsna consciousness.

 

 

These bodily sufferings, they are temporary; neither they can be checked by the laws of nature. Suppose if you give some distribution of foodstuff in some poverty-stricken country, that does not mean that this helps make solution to the whole problem. The real beneficial work is to invoke every person to Krsna consciousness.

[krsna]

 

O God,history seems to repeat itself again and again...

 

**************************************

 

Ethnic cleansing blights Sudan

 

 

By Hilary Andersson

BBC correspondent, Sudan

 

 

 

Refugees in Chad have reported arbitrary killings and rape

 

It is being called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Arab militia men have driven an estimate one million black Sudanese villagers from their homes and there have been massacres on an unknown scale.

 

The crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan has finally caught the world's attention.

 

Darfur feels like the end of the earth. Desert winds of the Sahara blow and cause the sands to swirl high, choking anyone in their path.

 

They cloud the barren landscape with an opaque curtain that turns any inhabitants into shadows that can sometimes barely be made out.

 

We were travelling towards Darfur through roads of deep sand, over land in the remote reaches of eastern Chad, where often there was no road at all.

 

The killers tore Fadidja's clothes off, beat her, broke her arm and then raped her, one by one

 

 

At a refugee camp near the Sudanese border we began to talk to those who had fled Darfur and I soon realised that these were not normal stories of war.

 

Fadidja Isaac Ali, 35 years old and from a town in Darfur called Mulli, sat before me with her baby in her arms as she talked. She had been shopping at the market in her village when the gunmen came.

 

"The bullets began to fly, people fell, people ran. The evil men had come", she said.

 

"Who are the evil men?", I asked. "The Janjaweed", she said.

 

Historical feud

 

On that day in Mullis market, she said, 55 people were massacred. The killers found that Fadidja had survived and three of them took her away, tore her clothes off, beat her, broke her arm and then raped her, one by one.

 

All the stories we heard were similar. No-one in the refugee camps spoke of gun battles between soldiers, only of massacres of civilians by the Janjaweed militia - Arab militiamen often seen fighting with the Sudanese government - or of massacres resulting from aerial bombings of villages by Sudanese government planes.

 

 

Every time I asked why they thought this was being done to them, they said the same thing: "It is because we are black."

 

It may seem strange that here in the middle of Africa, one type of black person - they call themselves Arabs - would drive another blacker type of person from their homes.

 

But then remember, the Hutus massacred the Tutsis in Rwanda. And whites ethnically cleansed whites in Bosnia.

 

Ethnic cleansing always seems to be rooted in dark historical feuds and it is the same here.

 

For years there have been tensions between the blacks and Arabs of Darfur over cattle, and now Sudan's government feels threatened by the emergence of rebel groups in the area.

 

Living with fear

 

For several days we journeyed on until we reached a tiny village on the border with Darfur. There we met the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) rebels, who try to defend the blacks of Darfur.

 

The commander, Hamis, was in a small mud hut surrounded by sandbags. He was charging his satellite phone from a homemade wooden box of DD batteries, and two 20-year-old M3 rifles were stacked by his bed.

 

 

The SLA took up arms in 2003

 

We set off on foot to cross the border into Sudan and into what must be the world's most remote war zone on the edge of the Sahara... in 50 degree heat. My head was thumping from the sun.

 

Eventually we entered a grove of mango trees.

 

Hidden inside were about 30 SLA soldiers. Some were uniformed, some not.

 

One wore a Tommy Hilfiger jacket. They wore amulets on their heads, containing little Muslim prayer books, and each had an old automatic weapon.

 

Then came a distant drone. The young soldiers went quiet, eyes to the sky.

 

Above were government Antonovs capable of carrying a massive amount of explosives.

 

Had the planes bombed we would have been obliterated. I felt strangely cold, and the sickly feeling of fear began to creep in.

 

This is what it must feel like to be a villager in Darfur.

 

The planes continued north, thank God.

 

'Execution-style massacres'

 

The men offered us horses for the rest of the journey and we rode through the heat of the day into the heart of Darfur.

 

The rebels fanned out in front of us in case the Janjaweed militia were in the area. But it was silent here.

 

 

Very few journalists have been able to reach Darfur

 

The villagers had already left or been killed.

 

The villages were burnt, their schools were empty, the books torn up, and the wells had been destroyed so no-one could come back.

 

There were abandoned shoes and cooking pots. The place resounded with its own emptiness.

 

I had spent weeks before my trip trying to find a way of accessing an area nearby, from where stories were filtering out of execution-style massacres.

 

But it was simply too dangerous to go there. So I had asked if an eyewitness to a massacre could get here to meet us.

 

The message miraculously had travelled and one came.

 

Ongoing atrocities

 

Abdul was from a town called Deliege, where more than 100 black men, he said, were taken off in government trucks to a valley.

 

Abdul says he heard the guns when more than 70 of them were executed by a bullet to the back of the head.

 

He carried a list of those who were killed at other similar massacres nearby. The killings are still going on now.

 

There was another massacre just days ago.

 

Ethnic cleansing in its rawest form is rampaging unchecked in Darfur.

 

We returned to the mango tree rebel base late at night, and the rebels lit a fire and made tea.

 

Then they escorted us back out into the desert and under the immense black sky and a vast array of stars we crossed back into Chad.

 

It was such a dark night that we could not even see our feet before us.

 

We slept on the ground that night, just across the border from the rebel base.

 

I woke up when the moon finally rose at three o'clock in the morning. I watched as it cast its pale ghostly light across the cursed land we had seen and wondered, after Rwanda and Bosnia, why Darfur is being allowed to happen?

 

 

[krsna]

Sudanese children dying of hunger

 

 

Aid workers fear there could be thousands of burials in Darfur

Hundreds of children have started to starve to death in Sudan's war-torn western province of Darfur.

The BBC's Hilary Andersson saw the burial of two-year-old Ikram and says 400 other children in the same camp in Kalma were unable to keep food down.

 

Their families have fled attacks by pro-government Arab militias, accused of forcing black Africans off the land.

 

Last week, a senior aid worker said 300,000 people would starve in Darfur, even if help is sent immediately.

 

Some 10,000 have died in Darfur, since a rebellion broke out last year and one million have fled their homes.

 

The rains have already begun to fall, which will soon make Darfur, an area the size of France, virtually impassable, our correspondent says.

 

'Too little'

 

Speaking after his return from the area, UK Secretary for International Development Hilary Benn said Darfur was undoubtedly the largest humanitarian crisis in the world and more aid agencies were needed there.

 

"We are in a race against time in Darfur," he told MPs.

 

 

Adam's mother walked for 10 days after their village was burnt

He admitted that the UK response to the crisis had been too little, too late but said the UK was committed to doing all that it could.

 

"I have also been concerned about the adequacy and speed of the UN's response, although this should now change."

 

Our reporter in Darfur says that while Ikram died, another boy on the same mat, Joseph, could not be coaxed to eat.

 

His mother could do nothing but watch.

 

The mother of nine-month-old Adam says that she walked without food for 10 days to reach the camp.

 

"The militias burnt our village... They were burning the children," she said.

 

Our correspondent says village after village in Darfur has been burnt, while food is running out in all the camps, where people have sought refuge.

 

Air-strikes

 

"If we get relief in, we could lose a third of a million. If we do not, it could be a million," Andrew Natsios, head of the US Agency for International Development told a UN donor conference last week.

 

The figures were based on mortality and malnutrition rates, he said.

 

The government and two rebel groups have signed a ceasefire but the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) has accused the army and its militia allies of attacking them near the border with Chad earlier this week.

 

Jem official Abu Bakr Hamid al-Nur told Reuters news agency that the government had used an Antonov aircraft and helicopters to bomb the rebel positions.

 

 

 

[theist]

Sometimes I wish Krsna would empower me with ksatriya energy, give me a sharp blade, then place me in the middle of the UN with all the doors locked and all members present.

 

I would love to take the heads from these pompous, blathering,babbling,bloviating, bobble-head dolls while they are in session.

 

While millions suffer they debate over the meaning of a word.

------

UPDATED AT 1:18 AM EDT Saturday, Jun 19, 2004

 

Is the brutality in Sudan genocide?

 

By DOUG SAUNDERS

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

 

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It is without question the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world today, with more than 30,000 dead and a million people driven from their homes, trapped in the searing desert heat without reliable supplies of food, water or medicine.

 

But are the people of Darfur victims of genocide? Do the atrocities visited on the farming families of western Sudan qualify as an organized, planned campaign of ethnic cleansing, or are they some lesser brutality?

 

While the conflict raged on this week — yesterday, Chad's army killed 69 Arab militiamen and a new United Nations report said that more than 16,000 children are suffering from malnutrition in the region — a bitter debate over the precise meaning of genocide and the status of the Sudanese conflict burst into the open, dividing the international community and threatening to further delay action to bring peace to the region.

 

The conflict cuts to a central dilemma in international law: If a conflict is proven to be genocidal, then the world's major powers are required under UN treaties to take action to stop it. But this burden of proof has itself become a hindrance to international action. Some observers have begun to complain that the concept of genocide, which entered international law as a result of the Holocaust committed by Nazis, has become so stringent and so difficult to apply that it should be abandoned in situations such as that of Sudan.

 

It is an argument that bears a sickening resemblance to a debate that took place almost exactly 10 years ago, when the world waffled over the precise status of what became known as the Rwandan genocide as more than 500,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were hacked to death by Hutus over 100 days. World leaders resolved not to let this happen again, but many of this week's disputes sounded uncannily familiar.

 

All week, top diplomats such as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Allan Rock, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, have described the crisis in stark and urgent tones while deliberately avoiding use of the word genocide.

 

"Based on reports that I have received, I can't at this stage call it genocide," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan offered Thursday."

 

"There are massive violations of international humanitarian law, but I am not ready to describe it as genocide or ethnic cleansing yet."

 

 

But according to The New York Times, senior White House officials are now considering upgrading the catastrophe's status from "ethnic cleansing" to "genocide," in part because of pressure from evangelical Christian groups.

 

 

The distinction is legally crucial. If Darfur is genocide, then the countries that have signed the UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide are required under Chapter VII of the UN charter to use armed force to put an immediate end to the conflict.

 

The 1948 convention provides a stringent definition of genocide. It must involve "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group," including killing, physically or mentally harming or preventing childbirth among members of the group, removing the group's children or imposing physical conditions that will destroy the group.

 

Human-rights groups say that Darfur easily fits into this definition, and that avoiding the genocide label is immoral. For much of the past year, nomadic "Arab" warriors known as Janjaweed have been slaughtering "black" farmers (the racial distinctions are not rooted in physical or religious differences) driving them out of their villages, killing their children, raping the women, taking the cattle and burning the buildings, often with support from Sudanese government bombers and the Khartoum government — an apparent effort to seize control of the region's natural resources.

 

"These people have not been displaced because they are involved in some age-old conflict. They've been displaced because of targeted attacks on civilians," said Leslie Lefkow, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Amsterdam who returned from the region this week.

 

"There hasn't actually been a lot of fighting. There have been attacks and burnings and rapes, and it has clearly taken place with the knowledge and assistance of Khartoum. The people cannot leave the refugee camps because they will be raped or killed; it is the successful displacing of an entire population from rural areas."

 

Groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have assembled sizable dossiers of research to show that the Darfur action involves a targeted attempt to eliminate the agrarian ethnic groups of western Sudan. They say that this easily qualifies as genocide.

 

"The step to be taken now is really to go the next step and consider Chapter VII action at the Security Council," Ms. Lefkow said. "This would have political value because [of] the message sent to Khartoum, that the international community is not going to stand by and let this happen."

 

But governments and the UN have run into problems with two words in the genocide convention: with intent. While the Janjaweed raids may have come close to wiping out the rural ethnic groups of Darfur, it is difficult to prove that this is the specifically intended goal of the Khartoum regime. Human-rights groups have assembled numerous instances of Sudanese warriors declaring their genocidal intent, but the UN and some governments are waiting for documents or reports linking the actions directly to Khartoum.

 

A very similar debate took place in 1994, while the Rwanda slaughter was taking place. Harvard University scholar Samantha Power, whose book, A Problem from Hell, chronicles this period, found a U.S. Defence Department memo from May of 1994 warning officials to "Be careful. Legal [office] at State [Department] was worried about this yesterday — genocide finding could commit us to actually 'do something.'." Of course, the United States and other countries did nothing, a failure that has led some activists and scholars to question whether the emphasis on proving genocidal intent is really necessary. Some say that "circumstantial" evidence should be allowed to prove genocide.

 

"There's no tangible evidence in this case," said Errol Mendes, a University of Ottawa law professor who has written extensively on crimes against humanity, "but these are Arab militia that are coming from fairly large distances on horseback. To prove genocide, you have to prove systemic planning — it was obvious in cases like Rwanda and Srebrenica [in Bosnia]. But here, one would look for what we lawyers call similar-fact evidence: If a particular ethnic group is targeting a particular area, then there can be little doubt that there was systemic planning."

 

But others suggest that the genocide convention itself should be avoided. Its weakness, they say, is that it sets as its standard the Holocaust, which was a meticulously documented, centrally planned action that used elaborate networks of prisons and death chambers. Other mass crimes can be equally serious and deserving of international action without being organized or carried out this way, they say.

 

"I think it's time to move away from these fine legal distinctions; those can be saved for after the fact. Now it's much more important to sensitize the public and the policy-makers into action," said Frank Chalk, a historian specializing in genocide at Montreal's Concordia University.

 

He is one of several scholars who are calling for a broad category of "atrocity crimes" that would carry an obligation of international action without the stringent burden of proof required for genocide. The term was coined by Washington law professor David Scheffer, who says it "permits a much more accurate and focused discussion and I always find resonates better with policy-makers and the general public, who, in the end, we must be speaking to in order to advance this issue."

 

Mr. Scheffer believes that a simple category of atrocity crime would have permitted action in Rwanda and the Balkans, and would have made it possible to launch an international war against Iraq on humanitarian grounds.

 

In Sudan, Mr. Chalk pointed out, there is no question that what has taken place is both an atrocity and a crime; the specific perpetrators can be identified later.

 

"In Darfur, you have hundreds of thousands of displaced people, you have 30,000 people killed — that's enough, isn't it?"

 

 

[Guest guest]

B"H

 

Sir:

 

The power of Arab oil money is such that the controllers of the world must listen to them. Michael Moore successfully exposed that.

 

Sad, but true. You will not here too much about Arab genocides of black people EVEN from the African-American press that is so quick to condemn police brutality.

 

A True Monotheist In Israel

[Dervish]

I've known about this since the 1990's. It never makes mainstream news, but is in several journals specializing in that region of the world, plus the 700 Club does a special on it sometimes, I am told (only watched that show once, myself). Bush wanted to pursue phantom Al-Qaeda and a dictatorship relatively tame compared to the horrors that have been going on in the Sudan for so many years, and people wonder why the USA's motives are questioned so many times.

[theist]

Powell was just in the Sudan calling the world's attention to it. Yes it has been happening to the black Christians for a long time.

 

But for some reason you turn this in to an attack on the US and don't mention those perps doing the crime.

 

The world doubts the US motives. Where the __CK is the rest of the world?

 

 

[Dervish]

It wasn't my intention to make an "attack" on the US, I am merely questioning my birth country's international priorities, which affect everybody living here. The actions of the Sudan govt are deplorable, this goes without saying. The Muslim world's silence is also reprehensible.

 

The USA is the only one with the military might to take a decisive stand against these demons, yet they only seem to intervene in situations where there is something impressive to gain. If they come out and say it this is their proprity, then it's no problem, but instead there is this sanctimonious talk of stopping dictators (which they supported 20 years ago, even with knowledge of their active chemical weapons) and terrorists (the occupation only seemed to increase Al Qaeda support in Iraq), when there are much worse activities going on in the Sudan.

[Guest guest]

This is always the problem. If the U.S. does something it is 'imperialistic'. If the U.S. does nothing it 'doesn't care'. I mean, the Congo has been going through civil wars and massive bloodshed, and I believe it was either a French or Dutch colony. And the same for Rwanda a few years back with hundreds of thousands killed.

 

I think the U.S. should do something because it has power. But atleast it is calling attention to the Sudan. But if the U.S. did go in there would be an uproar that the U.S. wants to control Sudanese oil fields. But you can't count on Europe to do anything. They couldn't even bring themselves to stop the war in Yugoslavia. It took the U.S. President Clinton to order NATO to end that war.

[theist]

And where is the world uproar over the so-called food for oil program that was suppose to provide for the Iraqi people?

 

Turns out France and top administarators of the program where taking big brides from Saddam who profited big time from the program to the detriment of the poor in Iraqi. The man at the UN who headed the program profited 3 million dollars while the Iraqi's lacked medicine. Coffee-cup-inhand's son is also highly implicated.

 

Any wonder why they opposed the liberation of Iraq? $$$$$$ folks.

 

The UN is simply a pack of low life vultures who dine at fine New York resteraunts.

[krsna]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3909649.stm

[Guest guest]

neglect is just another form of criminal act by the world.

[Guest guest]

Sudan angered by "genocide" label

Sat 24 July, 2004 02:38

 

 

 

By Nima Elbagir

 

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese Arabs have attacked a U.S. congressional resolution describing atrocities in Darfur as "genocide", while people driven from their homes are asking how Washington could make it safe for them to return.

 

"The international concern over Darfur is actually a targeting of the Islamic state in Sudan," Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, not commenting directly on the resolution, told a public meeting after Friday prayers south of Khartoum.

 

In Khartoum, 34-year-old driver Ismail Gasmalseed said: "Is Iraq not enough? Do they want to destroy us too? ...America wants everyone who is Arab to pay. They do not understand anything."

 

Rebels and human rights groups say Khartoum has armed and backed Arab militia known as the Janjaweed(Ganjaweedheads) who have been forcing non-Arab African villagers off their land in Darfur in an extension of a long conflict over farmland and grazing.

 

Supporters of the resolution approved by the U.S. Congress on Thursday hope it will help mobilise the international community to protect Africans from the militias.

 

The accusation of "genocide" is highly controversial. The United Nations has declared the situation in Darfur the world's worst humanitarian crisis but has not called it a genocide, which would force it to take action.

 

The world body estimates that the 15-month-old conflict between Arab nomads and non-Arab farmers has killed at least 30,000 people and displaced more than a million, many of them driven from their homes by marauding Janjaweed militia.

 

A PLAN IN STAGES

 

The Bush administration has drafted a U.N. resolution threatening sanctions unless the Sudanese government disarms the Janjaweed and removes all restrictions on access to Darfur.

 

Russia, China, Pakistan and Algeria opposed the use of the word "sanctions" in the resolution on Friday, preferring only a threat of "further action", diplomats said.

 

The Sudanese government says it is trying to comply but it will take time to implement its plans.

 

"There exists a real problem which has to be resolved on a humanitarian, political and security level and we intend to do that," Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told the French daily Le Monde in an interview published on Friday.

 

"But one has to understand that we are applying a plan that is working in stages," he added.

 

Russia rejected U.S. criticism of its sales of MiG-29 fighter jets to Sudan on Friday. Russian news agencies quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying the sales had been based on a longstanding contract predating the Darfur unrest.

 

Tens of thousands of people are now threatened with hunger and disease in squalid, overcrowded refugee camps inside Sudan and over the border in Chad.

 

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR reported on Friday that two refugees had died in an operation by Chad's army inside one of the camps close to the Sudanese border on Thursday. There was no immediate explanation for how the refugees died.

 

The agency said the troops had moved into the camp to stem unrest and find people involved in recent attacks on humanitarian workers.

 

AID AGENCIES TOLD ORDER RESTORED

 

Chad told international relief groups, including UNHCR, on Friday that order had been restored in two camps about 50 km (30 miles) from the Sudanese border and it was safe for aid workers to return. A UNHCR official said it would proceed cautiously.

 

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier will visit Chad and Sudan's Darfur region next week to show support for an African Union observer mission, his ministry said on Friday.

 

Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has called on the international community to take moral responsibility for resolving the crisis, is sending Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to the region next month.

 

But displaced Darfuris in Khartoum said they had doubts about the international community's commitment to intervene.

 

"We were told that the United Nations would make us safe, but we waited so long in Darfur and no one came to make us safe. I'm not sure if we will be safe," asked Khadija, an 18-year-old who said she was abducted by militiamen in Darfur but escaped.

 

 

[Guest guest]

Well the UN is really getting tough now. They are drafting a resolution that may call for sanctions if the Sudanese Govt. doesn't start protect the over 1 million poor blacks that have been driven from the homes, robbed, gang raped and had over 30,000 killed.

 

Better watch out Arabs, Kofi Annan is on your case now.

 

If this world was run by human beings there would have soldiers boots on the ground the minute this **** started.

------------------------

 

U.N. Calls for Sudan to Halt Attacks by Militias

By WARREN HOGE

 

Published: July 30, 2004

 

 

NITED NATIONS, July 30 — The Security Council passed a resolution today that threatens the Sudanese government with punitive measures if it does not disarm and prosecute Arab militias who have forced black Africans off their land in the Darfur region through a campaign of killing, rape and pillage.

 

The vote on the United States-crafted resolution was 13 to 0 with China and Pakistan abstaining.

 

Passage was achieved after the United States revised the measure on Thursday to drop the word "sanctions" and substitute a reference to a part of the United Nations charter that in effect lays out sanctions as the consequence of non compliance with the demands of the resolution.

 

Principal among those demands is the call on the government in Khartoum to show tangible progress in disarming and bringing to justice the government-supported marauding militias in 30 days. Under the terms of the measure, the Security Council will receive reports every month on whether Sudan is fulfilling its commitments or should be subject to international sanctions.

 

The Arab militias, known as Janjaweed and supported by the Sudanese government, are accused of killing up to 30,000 black Africans and gang raping women and girls, destroying crops and polluting water supplies in a campaign that United Nations officials say constitutes ethnic cleansing and the United States Congress has called genocide. More than one million people have fled their land into refugee camps in Sudan and neighboring Chad.

 

John C. Danforth, the American ambassador to the United Nations and a former Bush administration special envoy to Sudan, told the council that it had long been his hope to see Sudan emerge as a "model of ethnic reconciliation."

 

"The last thing we wanted to do was lay the groundwork for sanctions," he said. "But the government of Sudan has left us no choice."

 

"It has done the unthinkable. It has fostered an armed attack on its own civilian population. It has created a humanitarian disaster. So the resolution we have just adopted is our necessary response if we are to save the people of Darfur."

 

The measure, cosponsored by Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Chile and Romania, also places an immediate arms embargo on all fighters in Darfur and calls on the government to end all restrictions on relief workers and equipment in the area.

 

Pakistan and China said they abstained out of concern that Sudan was not given enough time to live up to its commitments and that outside action would be complicating rather than helpful.

 

The Sudanese ambassador Elfatih Mohamed Ahmed Erwa said he was "overwhelmed with sorrow and sadness over the hasty resolution" and said it came at a time when his government "is in a race for time to implement its agreement with the United Nations."

 

Sudan signed a joint communiqué in Khartoum with Secretary General Kofi Annan on July 3 pledging to rein in the violence in Darfur, and Mr. Erwa said today that that accord was now being used as a "Trojan horse" by "some activists within the U.S. adminstration" to bring military pressure on the Islamic government in Khartoum.

 

He said his government had responded immediately to the terms of the communiqué, deploying police and arresting militia members, but that the Security Council had ignored this progress in response to "colonial" pressures from Washington.

 

In Khartoum, foreign minister Mustafa Ismail welcomed the weaker wording of the measure, saying, "The friends of Sudan and the Sudanese diplomacy have succeeded in trimming the resoulution and curbing its extremity and aberration."

 

Adotei Akwei, a spokesman for Amnesty International in Washington, said the organization was "extremely disapppointed" with the softened language. The resolution, he said, "represents the abandonment of the people of Darfur and an abdication of the Security Council's role as a human rights enforcing agent."

 

In Cairo, Hossam Zaki, a spokesman for the Arab League, deplored the implicit threat of sanctions and said it masked longstanding Western antagonism to the Islamic government. "Many would say that the U.S. administration, as well as some European countries, have found in the Darfur crisis a long lost pretext to put the government under the sword of international sanctions," Mr. Zaki said.

 

He asked, "How come the Security Council and those with a humanitarian agenda are so active when it comes to such a situation, when they turn a blind eye to the miserable situation in the Palestinian territories."

 

In Accra, Ghana, the African Union said that Sudan must act now to protect its citizens, after a fact-finding mission reported back that the security situaiton in the Darfur area had worsened.

 

The African Union has 96 military observors monitoring a ceasefire between the Sudanese government and rebel groups in Darfur and plans to send 270 troops from Nigeria, South Africa and Rwanda.

 

One of the revisions of the resolution in recent days designed to build support for it called on United Nations member states to reinforce the African Union monitoring and protection teams and to provide them with personnel, funding and equipment.

 

The head of the 53-member union, President Olusegun Obansanjo of Nigeria, said today that there was a need for more soldiers in Darfur. "With what we have on the ground now, it appears we must have additional forces protection," he said.

 

 

 

 

[krsna]

'Realism' and Darfur

 

Sunday, August 1, 2004; Page B06

 

 

THERE HAVE always been beggars outside palaces, and comfortable people have always preserved their capacity for happiness by screening out other people's pain. But this self-protective instinct seems particularly powerful at the moment, as genocide unfolds slowly in Sudan's western province of Darfur. The world knows, and on Friday the United Nations Security Council acknowledged, that Sudan's government is responsible for burnings of villagers, systematic rapes and murder by starvation. It knows that these atrocities continue. And yet outsiders are content with measures that won't stop the appalling suffering. They issue statements but refuse to send adequate relief supplies. They condemn violence but refuse to send peacekeepers to protect civilians.

 

 

 

How to explain this numbness? There are excuses for inaction -- or, more charitably, "caution" -- and they deserve to be confronted one by one. The first is that outsiders must respect Sudan's sovereignty, for sovereignty is the basis of orderly international relations. States threaten their neighbors only if they espouse aggressive foreign policies, this argument goes. What they do within their own borders is their own concern, and meddling establishes the dangerous principle that intervention is generally acceptable. As Henry Kissinger has argued in another context, the legal doctrine of national sovereignty and the principle of noninterference -- both enshrined in the U.N. Charter -- emerged at the end of the devastating Thirty Years War, the 17th-century conflict during which perhaps 40 percent of the population of Central Europe perished in the name of competing versions of universal truth. Humanitarian intervention leads to "virtue run amok."

 

This "realism" has always had a tenuous hold on American foreign policy for the good reason that this nation is founded upon universalist principles. But it seems particularly misplaced in the age of international terror, when respecting the sovereignty of failed states such as Afghanistan is not a viable option. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, demonstrated that what states do within their own borders can affect international security. Sovereignty is therefore a less useful principle than it once was, and Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general, has commissioned a study on ways of updating it. Refusing to save hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur out of defer- ence to an already tattered doctrine seems unwarranted.

 

Then there is the argument that foreign policy must be conducted "in the national interest," and that saving people in Darfur fails that test. There is an admirable democratic quality to this argument: The elites who run representative governments should make policy that reflects the outlook of the voters whom they represent. But do ordinary voters really oppose action? A recent PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll of 892 Americans found that, if the United Nations were to determine that genocide is occurring in Darfur, 57 percent would favor foreign intervention, including American intervention, while only 32 percent would be opposed. The nation's interests are in fact broader and more compassionate than the national-interest argument implies.

 

Finally, there is the fear that foreign intervention in Sudan, especially one led or orchestrated by the United States, could trigger a popular backlash throughout the Muslim world. If this were correct, it would be extremely serious: The war against terrorism is a battle for Islamic hearts and minds. But the basis for this fear is shaky. It is true that Egypt's government opposes foreign intervention in its southern neighbor, not least out of a cynical belief that its own security and economic interests are served by an unstable Sudan. It is true, equally, that Sudan's Islamic government has greeted talk of Western intervention with a pledge to repel the "crusaders." But the key to winning hearts and minds throughout the region is not to defer to the autocratic government of Egypt, still less to Sudan's rulers, whose victims in Darfur are after all Muslims. In contemplating intervention in Sudan, Arab opinion must be considered. But it's not clear that this means that intervention should be ruled out.

 

Perhaps there are other arguments for "caution" in the face of Darfur's genocide, and we invite President Bush and other leaders to come forward and explain them. According to officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development, up to 30,000 people in Darfur have died violently, 50,000 have died of disease and malnutrition, and the death toll is likely to reach at least 300,000. The reasons for non-intervention had better be as powerful as those astonishing numbers.

 

[theist]

But even if the US has been too slow still its the only power that is pushing the issue at all. IMO the US shopuld just ignore the limp wrist talk about the issue at our next luncheon crowd at the UN. They are useless and may be able to find their niche in delivering humanitaian aid in the form of food and medicine. Beyond that they are useless.

 

I would like to see the US increase it's miltary by at least three fold. And let it be known that acts like this in Sudan will only bring swift decisive action against perpertrators. And then do it.

 

Sound like the US as the policman of the world. Yes. Someone has to do it.

 

These Black African Sudanese aren't bother nobody. Mostly village people trying to scratch out a living for their families. One million now driven from their homes and 50,000 dead. And the UN wants to talk about it some more before issuing one of their meaningless resolutions.

 

It's all too easy and tempting to just say, "Oh what the hell, it's just Africa, so who cares." Well ignoring things like this diminish everyone. Turning an eye the other way over these massive crimes diminishes the world just like ignoring. a woman's cries from the street and not at least calling the cops robs a man of his manhood.

 

Inaction is not a neutral position.

 

If one is in a transcendental position than I have nothing to say but for the rest of the world it should make us really pissed off. if it doesn't perhaps we need to ask ourselves why not.

------------------------

This article was found at the online version of afrol News. The URL and reference to the article is http://www.afrol.com/articles/13909

 

 

 

Sudan

Politics | Human rights

US declares genocide in Sudan

Secretary of State Colin Powell:

«Genocide may still be occurring in Darfur.»

© afrol News / US govt

afrol News, 9 September - US Secretary of State Colin Powell today made a statement saying his government had reached "the conclusion that genocide has occurred and may still be occurring in Darfur." A US government team that was launched in July had interviewed 1136 Sudanese refugees in Chad had come to this conclusion, Mr Powell said. Before taking unilateral steps, Washington now was to urge the UN to "take action" and "to initiate a full investigation."

 

Given the legal implications of officially terming the massive attacks on civilians in Darfur as "genocide", the US government, its allies and the UN have avoided this, until now. The US House of Representatives earlier declared the situation in Darfur genocide, but this resolution was not binding for the US government. Mr Powell's declaration however may have legal consequences for how Washington has to act towards Sudan.

 

Mr Powell today briefed the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee on "the crisis in Darfur". The American Secretary of State said: "The evidence leads ... the United States to the conclusion that genocide has occurred and may still be occurring in Darfur. We believe the evidence corroborates the specific intent of the perpetrators to destroy 'a group in whole or in part,' the words of the [uN] Convention. ... We believe other elements of the convention have been met as well."

 

Under the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide occurs when several criteria are met. This includes the deliberate physical destruction of a group in whole or in part; that a national, ethnic, racial or religious group is targeted and that killing or other crimes are committed against this group.

 

The UN Convention also imposes a general duty on states that are signatories to "prevent and to punish" genocide. By saying that the US concludes that "genocide has occurred" in Darfur, Mr Powell thus indirectly says that Washington is obliged by international law to prevent this "genocide" that according to him "may still be occurring in Darfur."

 

Mr Powell however told the US Senate that the next step would be urging the UN to act. Following US' obligations, "today we are calling on the UN to initiate a full investigation. To this end, the US will propose that the next UN Security Council Resolution on Sudan request a UN investigation into all violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law that have occurred in Darfur, with a view to ensuring accountability," the Secretary of State said.

 

The top US diplomat however made it clear that Washington holds the Sudanese government accountable for what it calls "genocide" in Darfur. His investigation team had found "evidence" of "large-scale acts of violence, including murders, rape and physical assaults on non-Arab individuals" committed by the Khartoum government and its allied Janjaweed militias. "Sudanese military forces destroyed villages, foodstuffs, and other means of survival," he added.

 

- I know, that the government ... in Khartoum will reject our conclusion of genocide anyway, Mr Powell said, adding that this conclusion was the current US judgment "and not the judgment of the international community."

 

Correspondently, the Khartoum government has rejected most of the claims presented by the US, other Western powers and some UN officials regarding the Darfur crisis. While the UN claims the conflict has caused up to 50,000 deaths, Sudan's Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail yesterday said that fewer than 5,000 people have died in the conflict. Khartoum further denies backing the Janjaweed, calling the militias "a group of criminals."

 

While the Khartoum government has experienced a diplomatic setback by Mr Powell's statement, the US-backed Darfuri militias, fighting Khartoum, celebrated the statement as "a welcome development." The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) has been warning about preparations of genocide for more than a year. "We believe the international community will now take more practical and decisive action against the government," an SLM spokesman told the French news agency AFP in Nigeria.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[krsna]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3653502.stm

[theist]

 

The EU meanwhile urged the United Nation to investigate claims that genocide is taking place in Darfur.

 

 

Watch out the big bad European Union is urging the UN to look into the situation. There are over one million refugees and they asre now dying at the rate of 10,000 a month. What the ___K is there to look into? DO SOMETHING NOW!

 

 

At a meeting in Brussels, European Union foreign ministers also warned Sudan of possible sanctions unless it took action to disarm militias threatening refugees in Darfur, western Sudan.

 

 

Sanctions. What a joke. The Sudan is oil rich and they sell most of it to Pakistan and China. Is China going to stop buying their oil?

 

 

Last week, Sudan categorically rejected a statement by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in which he described the killings in Darfur as genocide."

 

 

Another reason the US should simply triple it's military strength and take unilateral action and protedct those poor people.

 

[krsna]

INTERNATIONAL 10.17.2004 Sunday

 

UN: 10,000 People Dying Monthly in Darfur

 

 

In the Darfur region of western Sudan, nearly 10,000 people per month have lost their lives from malnutrition and disease adding up to 70,000 deaths since the crisis started in February of 2003.

 

The World Health Organization's (WHO) Darfur Representative, David Nabarro, described what was happening in the region as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world and added that aid was insufficient. The United Nations (UN) is reportedly undergoing financial troubles and may suspend humanitarian aid operations. While the US defines the events in the region as genocide, Sudan indicates that years of tribal conflict in the region and famine were the real causes of the deaths. Sudan claims that the West is interested in the natural resources in the region rather than the people and that it is trying to divide the country. Leaders in Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Chad are meeting in Libya today regarding a possible solution. The next round of discussions among the five leaders will be held on October 21st. The first round of discussions was held in Nigeria. Libya was selected despite the fact that the neighboring country of Sudan provides better security for the delegates of western countries. Chad and Libya in particular have been playing an important role in resolving the crisis in Darfur, although both countries are accused of arming some of the tribes in Darfur. It is expected that the first team of 4,500 people from the Africa Union Peace Force will be sent to the region today.

 

 

[theist]

The inaction by the UN and the other __shole so-called leaders in the world is already inspiring the rise of private armies. Goggle on Executive Outcome.

 

I am not totally comfortable with this but the US is stretched way too thin to help much other than raise the issue which Powell is doing. It may be the only option and perhaps it is the way to go. I'm not sure. But these people need some serious help NOW.

[Guest guest]

...And where is Black activist Minister Louis Farrakhan on this issue? Why, on the side of the Arabs, of course!

 

Minister Farrakhan’s Message To The Sudan Intellectual Community:

 

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1596.shtml