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April 7, 2008

For five years governments have watched the slaughter in Darfur and failed to take action. And so an unprecedented phenomenon has emerged: individuals have taken up the responsibility to protect this tormented population. Scores of US Congressmen and European parliamentarians, as well as Nobel prizewinners, athletes, artists and ordinary citizens have taken a public stand urging China to use its influence to stop the killing and to reassess its no-strings-attached backing of abusive regimes across the globe.

But the voices of individuals alone will not be enough to move China. Those most likely to have China's ear in the lead up to the Games are those underwriting the ceremony. But corporate sponsors Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Johnson and Johnson, General Electric, Visa, Addidas and Microsoft have refused to do anything at all to express their concern. For them, even in the face of genocide, it is "business as usual". If you are as disgusted as I am at this shameful conduct by these sponsors, contact them and let them know how you feel.

If Beijing elected to act rather than talk, there is plenty it could do.

• China could use its influence to insist that the Janjaweed be disarmed.
• China could demand that the regime call a halt to the on-going attacks and aerial bombardment of civilians.
• China could demand that Khartoum cease to obstruct the deployment of peacekeepers.
• China could refuse to sell weapons to Sudan.
• China could threaten to suspend new oil deals with Sudan.

How can China host the Olympic games at home, and underwrite genocide in Sudan?

We look at Rwanda and despair at our abysmal failure to act.

When the history of this terrible episode in human destruction is written, will we have any less reason to despair? Our country, the United Nations and all the nations of the world failed the people of Rwanda, and we are failing the people of Darfur, collectively and individually, even as we have utterly failed our most essential selves.

As Elie Wiesel wrote in amazement...

"The victims [of the Holocaust] perished not only because of the killers, but also because of the apathy of the bystanders. What astonished us after the torment, after the tempest, was not that so many killers killed so many victims, but that so few cared about us at all."

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