The Toronto Star, Canada
March 5, 2005 Saturday
No excuse to ignore Darfur
Nobody who saw the horrific photos and who read the accompanying
commentary by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times about the
current genocide in the western region of the Sudan called Darfur
could remain unmoved (Toronto Star, Feb. 24).
As Kristof put it, during past genocides against Armenians, Jews and
Cambodians (he might have added 800,000 Rwandans also) it was
possible to claim we didn’t really know fully what was going on. This
time, there is no excuse.
What is happening, according to the International Commissions of
Inquiry (ICI) in its report to the United Nations just a few weeks
ago, is that “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” are being
committed by “Janjaweed” militias with the full approval and
assistance of the government in Khartoum against hundreds of
thousands of black farmers.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has described the mayhem, rape,
mutilation, destruction of homes and crops followed by starvation and
disease as “little short of hell on Earth.”
An estimated 200,000 non-Arabs have been killed, 1.6 million people
have been driven from their dwellings, and an estimated 2 million
men, women and children are reportedly at risk of being wiped out by
mid-summer if nothing is done to stop the carnage.
Thousands of photos documenting the savagery have been collected by
African Union monitors, Kristof reported. While he apologized for the
gruesomeness of the four accompanying his article, he made the
obvious point that “the real obscenity isn’t in printing pictures of
dead babies – it’s in the world’s overall passivity that is
permitting this outrageous annihilation to go on.
Thank God a powerful U.S.-based group, the Save Darfur Coalition,
composed of more than 100 religious, humanitarian and human rights
organizations, () has taken up the cause of raising
public awareness and agitating for international political action.
But, to date, the overall response has been muted.
Others have spoken out. For example, as far back as last July 14, the
Committee on Conscience of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum took
the unprecedented step of declaring “a genocide emergency in the
Sudan.”
Louise Arbour, Commissioner for Human Rights for the U.N., has
alerted the Security Council on the findings of the ICI.
Both houses of the U.S. Congress have declared the mass murdering to
be genocide. Former secretary of state Colin Powell has accused the
Sudanese government of “supporting and sustaining” the rampaging
militia.
Yet nothing truly effective has been done.
Sudanese President Umar Bashir has ignored all calls to stop the
carnage. Perhaps he knows that conflicting financial and other
interests on the part of the major world powers are working to make
them very reluctant to intervene.
There are huge oil resources in the southern Sudan that are being
hungrily sought after by British, Indian and other would-be
investors. The entire Nile Basin, as the region is called, is rich in
resources – but also ripe for drought, famine, and plague. Polio, a
short time ago almost defeated, has broken out with fresh virulence
in eastern Sudan.
If you have access to the Internet, go not just to the site already
given above, but also to and learn about one
direct initiative aimed at fingering some of the dollar structure
supporting the chaos.
The Hon. Rev. Walter F. Fauntroy, a former congressman and adviser on
civil liberties to several presidents, is chairman of the Divest
Sudan Campaign as well as president of the National Black Leadership
Roundtable. His group claims that $91.2 billion (U.S.) by 100
prominent American pension funds is invested in publicly-traded
companies which are currently helping to prop up Khartoum’s
“murderous regime.”
His group has been urgently calling on such funds to disinvest
immediately. He, himself, has been arrested on several occasions for
demonstrating and protesting on the steps of the Capitol.
The question, of course, is what can we do to avoid having to tell
others one day that we stood by stunned as another genocide happened
before our very eyes?
Kristof points out that the answer is massive indignation – “so far
the response has been pathetic.”
U.S. Senator Paul Simon said after the Rwandan genocide that if every
member of the U.S. House and Senate had received 100 letters from
people protesting the Rwandan affair when it was in its beginnings,
the overall response would have been quite different. That’s relevant
now.
Look at the websites and respond. Here are two more: and
, where you can sign a petition, or write to your
own M.P. today. The horror of Darfur can be stopped, but only if we
act now.
Speaking of evils, it is truly sad that at a time when there is so
much hatred and criminality in the world the Supreme Pontiff of the
Roman Catholic Church has chosen to release a book condemning love
between two persons of the same sex. God is love and wherever there
is genuine love, God is always there too.
Tom Harpur is a theologian whose focus is on cosmic spirituality. His
website is at
GRAPHIC: ABD RAOUF AP FILE PHOTO Sudanese President Umar Bashir may
have pledged to bring peace to the wartorn Darfur region but has done
nothing to stop the carnage in the western area of the country.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress