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| July 31, 2008 |
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The world could easily provide helicopters needed by Darfur peacekeepers and NATO states alone could provide over six times the number required, Darfur campaigners said in a report on Thursday.
A lack of helicopters is one of the main problems facing the U.N.-African Union mission in Sudan's Darfur region, which is far below its full strength and is also struggling with delays due to the Sudanese government and U.N. bureaucracy.
The UNAMID force needs six attack helicopters, 18 for transport and one for civilian use, but the countries asked for help have said they have none available.
A report published on Thursday said many countries would easily be able to provide the helicopters required.
"Many of these helicopters are gathering dust in hangars or flying in air shows when they could be saving lives in Darfur," said a foreword to the report by ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and child rights activist Graca Machel said.
"This report sets out for the first time which states have the necessary helicopters and estimates how many are available for deployment to Darfur." The report named the Czech Republic, India, Italy, Romania, Spain and Ukraine as countries which between them could readily provide 71 transport helicopters to the mission. It added NATO member states could provide 104 helicopters.
India, which is traditionally a contributor to U.N. peacekeeping missions and is a heavy investor in Sudan's oil industry, has 20 surplus helicopters available, it said. The 36-page report said helicopters could have saved lives during a July 8 ambush of UNAMID which killed seven of the force and seriously wounded 19 others.
Salim Ahmed Salim, the former AU Darfur envoy, said the new report would "explode the myth" that with international commitments in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there are not enough helicopters for UNAMID. In an article in the International Herald Tribune he said UNAMID "was branded as the most ambitious peacekeeping mission ever. It is also one of the least supported."
"UNAMID is an example of peacekeeping on the cheap, with disastrous results."
The 15 council members struck a deal on a revised British draft resolution after Western powers agreed to include wording that echoes African Union concerns that International Criminal Court moves to indict Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes could derail the fragile Darfur peace process.
The resolution makes it clear the council is ready to discuss suspending any future ICC genocide indictment of Bashir in the interest of peace in Darfur.
Western diplomats said the resolution would likely be adopted unanimously when the council meets at 1900 GMT. Sudan’s U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem told Reuters it was an ”acceptable” text for Khartoum.
| July 30, 2008 |
Late 1st General Dr. John Garang De Mabior
So read the invitation to the powerful and moving memorial ceremony today. It celebrated the life and legacy of Dr John Garang-his courage, his vision and his dream for a new Sudan. It was an honor for me to be there. At 7pm-when the plane he was flying in crashed and killed him, we all lit candles and we stood in silence and respect
Reuters
Tuesday July 29 2008
By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - China has installed Internet-spying equipment in all the major hotel chains serving the 2008 Summer Olympics, a U.S. senator charged on Tuesday.
"The Chinese government has put in place a system to spy on and gather information about every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying," said Sen. Sam Brownback.
The conservative Republican from Kansas, citing hotel documents he received, added that journalists, athletes' families and others attending the Olympics next month "will be subjected to invasive intelligence-gathering" by China's Public Security Bureau. He said the agency will be monitoring Internet communications at the hotels.
The U.S. senator made a similar charge a few months ago but said that since then, hotels have come forward with detailed information on the monitoring systems that have been required by Beijing.
Brownback refused to identify the hotels, but said "several international hotel chains have confirmed the existence of this order."
Spokesmen at the Chinese Embassy in Washington were not available for comment.
| July 29, 2008 |
Many African nations and of course China are invoking Article 16 of the Rome statute-which gives the UN Security Council authority to delay ICC proceedings for 12 months. But key players should first extract significant concessions from Al Bashir. ..what is the point of simply giving this to Krtm? Especially with no peace process in sight. There is a good chance that another, much more robust rebel assault on Khartoum will take place in the near future: is South Africa waiting for that? for urban civil war? for a collapse in security in Darfur that will precipitate full-scale humanitarian withdrawal?
We are leaving for Juba
AddisAfrican Union headquarters
Yesterday our delegation met with the heads of the African Union including Commissioner Jean Ping, Senior Political Advisor Nakaha Stanislas, and the Commissioner for Peace and Security Ambassador Ramtane Lamamara.
They told us "We need help. We do not have sufficient means to sustain our troops... Everybody knows we need external assistance...
There are only 9 battalions on the ground now. We are supposed to have 18... We don't understand why no one will give us the helicopters we need. Many countries have helicopters. " Over and over they said ,"We need help."
Rodolphe Adada, joint representative of the United Nations-African Union mission (UNAMID), "concurred with the report on its major findings, especially the critical shortages UNAMID continues to face in the area of troops, personnel, equipment and logistics," a statement said.
A report by the Darfur Consortium, a coalition of more than 40 aid groups operating in Africa, said that six months after its initial deployment on December 31, UNAMID had "failed to provide adequate protection."
In the first six months, violence has displaced an average of 1,000 people a day and attacks against humanitarian agencies have escalated, said the report released earlier on Monday.
Despite its lack of equipment and personnel, UN peacekeepers in Darfur can and must do far more to protect civilians in the war-torn Sudanese region, with UNAMID "in danger of becoming the world's latest broken promise," it said.
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, July 28 (Reuters) - Libya and South Africa, trying to block the International Criminal Court from indicting Sudan's leader for genocide, want the U.N. Security Council to prevent such a move in a resolution extending the mandate of international peacekeepers in Darfur.
The U.N. Security Council was meeting on Monday to discuss the Libyan and South Africa proposals, which have the support of China and Russia, after the ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, asked the court's judges to issue a warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's arrest.
To get word out to the international community about what they heard and learned on their first week, members of the delegation held a media briefing in Bangkok on July 25th where they shared testimonies gathered from survivors of Cyclone Nargis, women’s groups, prisoner rights groups, and civil society organizations with members of the international press. Mia Farrow told reporters that the world should use the upcoming Beijing Olympics as a platform for demanding that China end its support for Burma’s military junta. Click here for more on the press conference <http://www.nobelwomensinitiative.org/news-event-news/41/258-nobel-womens-initiative-hosts-a-media-briefing-in-bangkok> .
Delegation leadership has been joined by Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai as the next leg of the journey begins. Now in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the delegation will spend the upcoming week traveling through Juba in South Sudan and Chadian refugee camps bordering Darfur. Stay tuned for updates on the delegation’s meetings with women’s groups, parliamentarians, and representatives of the African Union.
| July 28, 2008 |
Addis-NWI Press release
Nobel Peace Laureate Women Call for Peace in Sudan
--July 28, 2008. (African Union, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
A delegation of the Nobel Women's Initiative, including Nobel Peace Laureates Wangari Maathai of Kenya and Jody Williams of the United States, and award-winning American actress-activist Mia Farrow, is looking forward to meeting with African Union Commissioner Jean Ping and AU Commissioner for Peace and Security Ramtene Lamamra. The delegation is calling for an immediate cessation of violence in Sudan's Darfur region, and full support for legitimate negotiations to build sustainable peace. Of paramount concern is the on-going, systematic violence against women and children including the use of rape as a weapon of war. To achieve these ends will require strong leadership from all African countries, with the support of the African Union and the international community.
The Nobel Women's Initiative delegation is in Africa as part of a three-week mission with stops in Thailand, the Thai-Burma border, Addis Ababa, South Sudan and the Chad-Darfur border.
The delegation commends the African Union for stepping forward to work actively in Darfur, and extends its condolences for the losses it has suffered in the region. The delegation calls for the international community to fully implement UN Resolution 1769, which allows for the full deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur.
The delegation is appealing to the President of Sudan to allow the resolution to be fully and rapidly implemented for the sake of the people of Sudan, in particular the people of Darfur. In 2005, at the UN World Summit, the resolution regarding the responsibility to protect was unanimously adopted, including by the Government of Sudan. The delegation is calling upon President Omar al Bashir to accept the responsibility to protect the people of Darfur, with the full support of the African Union and the international community.
The delegation is concerned about the practice of extracting resources from Sudan and indeed all of Africa in exchange for weapons that fuel conflicts and are the cause of untold suffering . It is calling upon the international community, particularly those who do business directly with African governments and consider themselves friends of Africa, to cease supplying weapons and work instead to build sustainable peace, human security and real development to benefit all the people of Africa.
Delegation members note that it is within these nations' considerable power to persuade Khartoum to cease their ongoing bombardments and ground attacks upon civilians and admit the full deployment of peacekeepers.
After leaving Addis, the delegation is going to South Sudan and refugee camps in Eastern Chad, along the border with Darfur. In their meetings with government, civil society and women's groups in Sudan and Chad, Professor Maathai and her colleagues are looking forward to listening to what the groups have to say, and plan to encourage them to continue the important work of pursuing peace despite all the challenges.
Representatives of the women's delegation explained the goals of their trip as follows:
1) To spotlight and raise awareness of the massive violations of women's human rights;
2) To reinforce efforts to bring about participatory governance in Sudan and Burma (and throughout the world); and
3) To call upon citizens around the world to take individual and collective action to build sustainable peace and to insist that the international community implement existing commitments for peace, justice and equality in Burma and Sudan.
The Nobel Women's Initiative was founded in 2006 by six Nobel Peace Laureates. Struck by increasing instability and gross violations of women's rights worldwide, the women laureates have brought together their extraordinary experiences to work for peace with justice and equality. Violence and repression in Sudan and Burma are among the focal issues for the Nobel Women's Initiative, in addition to women's rights in Iran, ongoing tensions between the U.S. and Iran, disarmaments and the gender dimensions of climate change.
Increased political pressure on the Burmese military junta to take steps toward democracy including freeing Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners must not be eclipsed by the desperate need for humanitarian aid in the wake of Cyclone Nargis. This, according to Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams, actress-activist Mia Farrow and a delegation of prominent international women led by the Nobel Women’s Initiative visiting Thailand this week to meet with Cyclone Nargis victims who have fled to the Thai-Burma border as well as women’s groups and other community organizations.
“Handing the military junta in Burma aid without also using the opportunity to push for democratic reform will not help the people in Burma in the short, medium or long-run,” says Professor Williams, who received the Nobel Peace prize in 1997 for her work on banning landmines. “As it stands, international aid is not reaching the people who need it most—and civil society groups trying to help those in need are being harassed and even imprisoned.”
Earlier this week, the UN together with ASEAN and the Burmese military junta released the final Post-Nargis Joint Assessment report that provides the data recommending the level of international aid required by Burma. The report also makes recommendations regarding implementation of the aid and accountability.
Since the cyclone in May, the military regime has arrested at least 17 activists including the most famous comedian in Burma for taking aid to the affected communities, and international aid organizations report that their efforts to distribute aid—including medical help—are hampered or even sometimes blocked by the military regime.
“We salute the work of those courageous Burmese individuals and grassroots organizations that put their lives at risk to help the survivors,” says Ms. Farrow, internationally-known for work to help the victims of the war in Darfur. “It is unacceptable that the people of Burma—already suffering after years of repression—should now be dying from starvation and disease. It is long past time for some semblance of accountability and transparency. The people of Burma deserve nothing less.”
Williams, Farrow and the other delegation members—which also includes Dr. Sima Simar, Chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission—collected testimonies this week from prisoner rights groups, women’s groups and other civil society organizations working along the Thai-Burma border.
“As my sister Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said, we must use our freedom to promote the freedom for the people of Burma,” says Prof. Williams. “The people we spoke to don’t understand why there is no international outrage over a regime that steals aid and resells it to needy survivors. In the words of one of the Nargis survivors, ‘The regime is very rich now. It looks like the international community is supporting and protecting the regime. They send supplies to us but it is the regime who receives it. As long as they are in power, we will have nothing.’”
It is estimated that 40% of Burma’s national budget is dedicated to military spending, while less than 3% goes to health and education. Civil society groups report a collapse of human services within Burma, and cite the violence and conflict as one of the major barriers to improving the situation. Burma has the 4th highest child mortality rate in the world, at 106 deaths per 1,000 lives births. In Burma’s conflict zones, those rates are estimated to be higher – comparable to the Congo in Central Africa.
The Nobel Women’s Initiative delegation is calling for the UN, ASEAN and other international institutions to pressure the Burma military regime to make immediate steps toward greater democracy. Specifically, the women’s delegation is calling for:
- the immediate release of all political prisoners in Burma, including Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi;
- the end to the campaign of violence against Burma’s ethnic minorities, and specifically end the use of rape as a weapon of war;
- the delivery of aid directly to the people of Burma, not into the hands of the military dictatorship;
- a commitment from ASEAN, as well as the UN Security Council, to act upon their own call for democratic reform including freedom of assembly in Burma; and
- China and Russia to follow the lead of India to stop selling arms to the military dictatorship.
After Thailand, the delegation will visit Addis Ababa, Juba in South Sudan and conclude their trip in Chadian refugee camps bordering Darfur. In Africa, the delegation will make the link between the on-going human rights crisis in Burma to the war in Darfur and Sudan.
The Nobel Women’s Initiative was founded in 2006 by 6 women Nobel Peace Laureates to address increased instability and violations to women’s rights worldwide. The 7th Nobel Peace Laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is under house arrest in Burma.
--30--
From Bangkok: late night thoughts return to the Thai-Burma border
Bangkok,We are a world away from the Thai Burma border and those who are struggling there, but my thoughts return to the Thai-Burma border. There are so many things I would like you to know. A few days ago I posted a Time magazine article about a remarkable young woman named Charm Tong who works on the border. I met her in Chiang Mai but her work is not there. For security reasons I cannot disclose the location of the school Charm Tong founded for 30 students from Burma. I was fascinated by what she is doing and I think you will be too. Every year, there are at least one thousand applicants for the 30 places in the school. They come from many different locations in Burma. The testing is rigorous. For 10 months the chosen few will receive an intense education. Their teachers are from around the world. The fortunate 30 come to live in her school.- a house at an undisclosed location in Northern Thailand. They do not leave the house for fear of deportation. Our meeting with the students, male and female aged 18-26, was powerfully moving and inspiring. They told us their stories and described the human rights violations and atrocities they have endured, including rape and the burning of their villages. They have never known freedom but they long for it. A young woman said, "Here we can ask questions and discuss freely. We are working and learning together." A boy told us. "The school encourages young people to learn about human rights. We didn't know about our rights-- about social justice and democracy."
A female student who looked no more than 14 stood up to say,
"I want to share my story with you. "--but she could not continue. Jody went over, hugged her, sat beside her and held her hand. Other students fought tears and some wept openly. After a long silence, the girl spoke again.
"On August 12, 2002 my sister encountered a soldier near our home. He raped her. She cried and cried. She was so angry at him. I was crying too. After they are raped, women are treated as if they are bad. That soldier was able to escape without punishment. They will continue to do this as long as the regime remains in power. I don't want any more women to suffer like my sister. Please tell everyone about the women's situation in Burma."
Here are some quotes from students who shared their dreams;
"My village is surrounded by military. A woman cannot go outside -the soldiers rape her. Women cannot do anything. I want to go back to my community and teach women their human rights."
"My dream is to become a teacher. In my village there is no school. and no teacher. I want to help the children learn to read and write. I want to teach them history. I'm very lucky to attend this school. It is the first step toward my dream.
"I also want to be a teacher on the Thai-Burma border. There are 96 or 97 orphaned children in my community. Burmese soldiers shot their parents and many children were killed too. I have a CHANCE for education."
Most of the students said they hope to be teachers because in their communities in Burma, there are none.
A teacher, Lyn Vasey, from the US told us, "my heart is bursting with pride. At least a thousand students would like to be in this position. We could only select 24. These 30 are here because the staff agreed to take cuts in their salaries."
| July 27, 2008 |
Journey for women's rights: dispatches from our delegation to Thailand, Ethiopia, Sudan and Chad
I think my pal Jody Williams is better at maintaining her blog than I have been. Here is the link to her site. http://www.It isn't easy to get on-line and when we do have internet access, there isn't much time. Our days are full and often draining. Today we are in Addis Ababa, having flown all night.
Here in Addis we have a press conference, will meet with the US representative to the African Union, the South African Ambassador to the AU, AU Commissioner Jing Ping, and AU commissioner for peace and security Ramtene Lamamra.
We will also meet with Ethiopia's First lady.
Bill Clinton will arrive tomorrow. Don't know if I will see him.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/25/arts/AS-Myanmar-Mia-Farrow.php
New York Times - United States
... and likely to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity from the International Criminal Court for the last five years of bloodshed in Darfur
| July 26, 2008 |
heroes on the border
Dr CynthiaDr Cynthia is a legend here. She first set up a clinic in her own home but the flow of sick and wounded soon overwhelmed her small house. So the Thai Government made an alliance with her-and now there is an AMAZING clinic just on the border itself. People risk crossing the border to get help. At Dr Hero's.
In Burma, on average, people move three times a year. There is military fighting around villages and many villages are burned. There is forced relocation, where people are driven from their homes and fields, resulting in food instability and high mortality and malnutrition rates. After 50 years of brutal civil war, landmines are still littering the countryside. Burmese people face forced labor, systematic rape and live in a state of terror.
One woman in three dies in pregnancy. "Pregnancy is a death sentence," said one woman. Only 3% have access to medical assistance.
We met with former political prisoners-both women and men. Currently there are over 2000 political prisoners in Burma.
They have a small museum or memorial showing photographs of the imprisoned and the missing. Many are monks,captured during the recent crackdown. The photographs also show prisoners being tortured.
Since 1994 there have been 31 UN resolutions condemning violations of human rights in Burma.
The abuses continue
One man said, 'The UN does not work for those who suffer.
They work for governments-no matter what those governments are doing to the people. The US, UK and France did vote for political reform but with China and Russia on the Security Council no help came to us.
Burma is a traumatized society. Even the soldiers--from both sides."
| July 22, 2008 |
Dr Radovan Karadzic was arrested yesterday In Serbia. Dr James Smith, of the Aegis Trust, stated: "This is a great day for international justice and sends a warning to genocide suspects everywhere that their future lies in the courtroom."
Wartime President of the self-declared Republika Srpska in Bosnia, Karadzic is accused of massive atrocities including the massacre of 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica, in July of 1995. Indicted the same month by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Karadzic disapeared into hiding in 1996. Ratko Mladic, his military commander, is still on the run.
"When I heard this news I actually didn't feel any sense of jubilation; I thought it was about time," stated Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia. "It should have happened twelve years ago, but there are so many reasons why this is a positive outcome. This is not just about justice for the victims. This is far more important than that, especially with what is going on in Sudan, in Darfur. This is about the rule of international law."
Are you listening Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir? And Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe?
And what about George W. Bush, and Cheney, Rumsfield, Rice, Ashcroft- the whole bunch of them? ls their excuse, "we thought there were weapons of mass destruction", pure (criminal) incompetence or something far more sinister? I think they deserve a fair trial. The charge of course is crimes against humanity. Let them hire fleets of the finest lawyers, but will they, in a court of law, be able justify the deaths of some 600,000 Iraqi civilians and the destruction of their country? Can that lame excuse justify the agonizingly pointless deaths and mutilations of our own American soldiers? And what about the devastation of our economy , not to mention the squandering of whatever credibility and respect the US once had within the international community? They must be brought to trial.
We are leaving for Mae Sot-where where there will not be internet access. Will blog again on Thursday evening!
TIME MAGAZINE
How's this for an intimidating experience? You're about to address a 200-strong meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Your topic is the long-standing campaign of terror by Burma's military regime against unarmed civilians in Shan state, the childhood home you fled. Your audience includes members of that same military regime. Also, you're 17 years old.
"My voice was shaking," says Charm Tong, now 24, and already a seasoned and celebrated campaigner for Shan state's embattled people. "But I thought, 'You have to do this. You don't get so many opportunities to tell the world.'" So she made an impassioned speech—the presence of Burmese officials only emboldening her. "They were forced to listen to what I had to say," she says. Three years later, aged 20, Charm Tong set up a unique school for young Shan in northern Thailand, which is now training a new generation of human rights activists. She is also a founding member of the widely respected Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN), whose meticulous reports have documented the rape of hundreds of women and girls by Burmese soldiers.
Charm Tong's political education started early. She was born in Burma's central Shan state, home to the country's biggest ethnic minority, and where killings and mass relocations of civilians were—and still are—shockingly common. Charm Tong was about six when her parents sent her to a Catholic orphanage on the Thai-Burma border, where she was brought up with 30 other children by a Shan nun. She saw her parents once a year. "I cried a lot," she remembers. "I was young and didn't understand why my parents had sent me away. Now I appreciate it. They thought I'd be safe and get an education."
She was a voracious learner. Charm Tong rose just after dawn for English lessons, attended Thai high school during the day, and took Chinese classes in the evenings. Weekends were reserved for studying her mother tongue, Shan. She was also schooled in the suffering of refugees who poured across the nearby border into Thailand to escape persecution or poverty. Unlike Burma's other ethnic minorities, the Shan have no refugee status in Thailand, and therefore no official protection or support. Many risk arrest and ill-treatment as illegal manual laborers, while women are often trafficked into the sex industry.
At age 16, Charm Tong began working with human rights groups, interviewing sex workers, illegal migrants, HIV patients and rape victims. The following year, she spoke in Geneva on their behalf—and still speaks, in four languages, with the poise and confidence of a mature woman.
In 2001 she set up the School for Shan State Nationalities Youth. Mostly funded by private donations, the school is located in a modest rented house in northern Thailand. Not only Shan students attend, but also Burma's other ethnic minorities, such as the Palaung, Akha and Pa-O. Due to the Shan's shadowy legal status, the school's exact location is secret. The young students, who sleep on the floor in spartan dorms, cannot leave the grounds unescorted during their nine-month term. "They're all under house arrest," jokes Charm Tong. Each year more than 150 young people apply; the school can accommodate only 24.
Survival comes first for many Shan, says Charm Tong, learning only a distant second. Even outside the conflict zones, Burma's education system is a shambles; untutored, even the brightest youths end up in menial jobs. "I was very lucky to get nine years' education," says Charm Tong, whose school is an attempt to rescue some of Burma's so-called "lost generation." Students study English and computing, and receive training in human rights action, such as how to collect testimonies and write reports, from Charm Tong and other local activists. Most of the school's 90 or so graduates now work for youth or women's organizations as teachers, human rights defenders, health workers and community radio broadcasters. "The idea is that they use their education to promote other people's rights," says Charm Tong.
When not at the school, Charm Tong lends her energy to SWAN, a small but vocal women's group whose "License To Rape" report enraged the junta. "Rape is still widespread and very systematic," says Charm Tong, who co-authored the report. "It's used to terrorize communities." Burma's generals, who dismissed the report as "fabrications," regard SWAN as an enemy of the state. Charm Tong is unfazed. "The generals are the enemy of the people," she shrugs.
Charm Tong is like "a candle in the darkness," says May, 19, a girl from Burma's northerly Kachin state. "She never behaves like she's superior or better. She is like our sister, and the school is our family."
On the Burma border
Traveling with the Nobel Women’s Initiative
Another struggle is taking place here. 3-4 million people have fled from Burma into Thailand where they are regarded as illegal immigrants and live without health care, education, without the opportunity to earn a living wage and and in fear of being sent back to Burma.
The official Thai population is 64 million. Not included in that count are the 3-4 million ‘illegal immigrants’ who fled here from Burma. Only 150,000 are registered as refugees, the vast majority live without any rights, in perpetual fear of being returned to Burma. Forcible returns are an almost daily occurrence. The work for refugees is ‘difficult, dirty and dangerous’. They have no regular income, sexual harassment comes with the territory. Many work in factories where they also live in wretched and overcrowded conditions. Refugee children born in Thailand have no citizenship- they are undocumented and stateless without education or medical care, they cannot own property or obtain a license to drive. About 4000 are hiding in the jungle.
Thai ethnic minorities comprise 10% of the total population. Although their ancestors may have been living here for 1000 years, they too are denied Thai citizenship. It is difficult for them to find work. The government has recently turned much of their land into national parks. Those who were living on that land suddenly became ‘illegal.”The intent behind this is clear to the women we spoke to-- to weaken or eradicate the culture of ethnic minorities.
One woman told us she went all the way to Bangkok to voice her grievances at the Parliament. A male member of Parliament advised her, “don't try to get out of the kitchen. Go home and breast feed your babies. If your babies are healthy, consider yourself a success.’
The woman replied, ‘It is so hard for me. What I am able to earn is less that what you pay to feed your dog.”
Then she said to us,”I hope this event will allow our voices to be heard and that one day there will be equality.’
| July 21, 2008 |
"The African Union requests the UN security council ... to defer the process initiated by the ICC, taking into account the need to ensure that the ongoing peace efforts are not jeopardised, as well as the fact that in the current circumstances a prosecution may not be in the interests of victims and justice," the AU council said
The international court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is seeking an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president, and other top Sudanese officials, on charges of waging a campaign of genocide and rape in Darfur.
Remembering What Alex Wrote
In 2004, Alex DeWaal wrote this description of the Khartoum regime and its genocidal assault upon the Darfur region:"the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide by force of habit."
| July 20, 2008 |
"We have (to take) ... a strong stance in solidarity with our brothers in Sudan and move effectively with regional and international organisations and the ... states in the Security Council to immediately reconsider this demand by the prosecutor," he said, according to extracts of his speech.
Sudan has asked China and Russia, as well as the Arab League and the African Union, to help it pursue a U.N. Security Council resolution suspending a warrant for Bashir for 12 months.
Diplomats in New York say the Arab League and the AU's Peace and Security Council are expected to call on the Security Council to block any ICC moves in the interests of bringing peace to Darfur, devastated by the 5-year-old conflict.
Arab countries, largely ruled by autocratic leaders, usually resent allegations of human rights violations in the region.
Analysts say Arab leaders are also concerned that failing to thwart the ICC move against Bashir may encourage more foreign intervention in their affairs.
Many Arabs and Muslims accuse Western powers of launching a war on their faith in the name of human rights while ignoring what they see as war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians and by U.S. troops in Iraq. (Writing by Alaa Shahine; Editing by Mary Gabriel)
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved.
The Nobel Women’s Initiative seeks:
* To spotlight the massive violations of women and women’s rights – which are nothing less than human rights – that occur daily and not only have an impact on women individually but also on their families, their communities, and often the entire fabric of a society;
* To spotlight the struggle for human rights which when recognized and accepted also reinforce efforts to bring about participatory governance in Burma and the Sudan (indeed throughout the world); and
* To call upon citizens around the world to take individual and collective action to build sustainable peace as well as to insist that the international community implement existing commitments for peace, justice and equality in Burma and Sudan;
We have come to the area of the Thai/Burma border and will continue on to South Sudan and Darfuri refugee camps in Chad,
* To build alliances with women and women’s organizations there by:
* Listening to their unique stories, perspectives and experiences;
* Learning from their work to build sustainable peace in their communities how they see the role of women in actively negotiating peace agreements in their countries and in rebuilding their communities and societies when the conflicts have ended;
* Conveying their messages to other women’s organizations where we live and work and through our collective networks as well as to the media and to governments at national, regional and international levels; and by
* Highlighting China’s influential role in these crises
www.nobelwomensinitiative.org
For Darfuris, justice is the enemy of peace
A war crimes trial for Sudan's leader would be gratifying. But is it worth the price?
By David Rieff
July 20, 2008
The long-awaited decision by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to indict Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir on genocide and war crimes charges has been greeted with relief and satisfaction by the vast majority of people haunted by the tragedy of Darfur.
For Darfur activists -- and no African cause since the movement against apartheid in South Africa has had such reach or influence -- Bashir is the architect of what they are certain has been a genocide just as surely as Adolf Hitler was the architect of the Holocaust. And if this is true, they argue, it would be immoral not to try to bring Bashir and other central figures in the Khartoum dictatorship to justice. Some of these campaigners argue that the indictment represents the first significant step toward an effective regime of international justice in which world leaders guilty of crimes against humanity will no longer enjoy the kind of impunity that they have had in the past.
Attractive as these arguments are, and counterintuitive as it may seem to oppose them, they are nonetheless deeply flawed. To begin with, the bedrock assumption of those committed to the concept of international justice represented by the International Criminal Court is that peace and justice are almost always compatible goals -- and that, on the rare occasions when they are not, justice should have priority.
But in reality, there is no reason to believe this is true. Indeed, the example of post-apartheid South Africa illustrates this perfectly. Real justice would have demanded that the leaders of the white racist regime pay for their crimes; peace, on the other hand, demanded an accommodation. The moral genius of the African National Congress was to understand that peace was what the newly liberated country needed, not civil war, and so instead of trials there was a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which, in exchange for confessions, the authors of the horrors of apartheid were effectively let off scot-free.
There is also the example of post-Pinochet Chile. Few observers of that country seriously believe that Gen. Augusto Pinochet would have stepped down in 1990 if he had believed that he would be required to face a war crimes tribunal, or that the Chilean military would have agreed to the return to democracy. Patricio Aylwin, the president of Chile during the transition, made the bargain all but transparent when he remarked, "We will tackle the excesses of the past," adding, "within the realm of the possible." Like the ANC, Aylwin understood that justice cannot and should not always be the first priority, much as one might wish it otherwise.
Those who have welcomed the indictment of Bashir set a great deal of store on the importance of memory and of truth, but it sometimes seems as though it is they who have forgotten these hard lessons of the recent past, in which it became clear that the sensible course was to acknowledge that peace was more important than justice when it came time to choose.
Would it be emotionally satisfying to see Bashir in the dock? Of course it would. After all, most of us who believe that this indictment is a tragic mistake also believe that, under settled international law, the Sudanese president is guilty of crimes against humanity (whether Darfur is a genocide is a separate issue, but even if it is not, as groups like Doctors Without Borders have argued, the crimes against humanity committed at Bashir's behest are more than bad enough). At least 200,000 people have been killed in the Darfur conflict, according to most estimates, and most of those deaths have been attributed to militias unleashed by Bashir's government to quell the insurrection.
But the question remains: Is Bashir's indictment worth it or, to put the matter even more starkly, is the price that the Darfuris almost certainly will pay for this indictment (if the International Criminal Court's judges allow it to go forward) really worth it? After all, it is not as though the ICC has an army or even a police force that can go to Khartoum and seize him. Indeed, even the use of phrases like "bringing Bashir to justice" raises the question of who is actually going to do this. Yes, if Bashir decides to take a trip to a European Union country, he would probably be arrested and turned over to the ICC, but that seems extraordinarily unlikely at this point.
No matter how many times advocates of the new norms of international law claim otherwise, and insist that there has been a sea change in the extraordinarily disparate group they call the "international community" (even though presumably the term encompasses both Canada, where the ICC got its start, and China, Sudan's great ally), the reality is that it is virtually inconceivable that Bashir will actually be apprehended and put on trial. To believe differently is to vastly overestimate how much has changed in the world.
One thing that has not changed is that there are really only two viable ways to end a war. The first involves total victory a la World War II; the second involves a negotiated settlement. Were those who welcome the Bashir indictment to also state firmly that they favor the first option -- that just as nothing short of Hitler's and Tojo's fall would do, so only the fall of the Khartoum dictatorship is an acceptable outcome -- that would be one thing. But with a few honorable exceptions, notably one of the leading Darfur campaigners, Smith College professor Eric Reeves, few have been willing to do so. And if all-out regime change is not the goal, then to secure a peace in Darfur means negotiating with Bashir rather than fantasizing about arresting, trying and imprisoning him.
<http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article27947>
Sudan Tribune - Sudan
Ali Alwafi, JEM military spokesperson said an Antanov plane attacked the village of Serf in Jabal Moon area in West Darfur on Friday morning at 10.30.
Sudan Tribune - Sudan
Times Online - UK
It was barely two months since the ministry of health had transferred me to this village, Mazkhabad, in the remote north of Darfur. ..
| July 19, 2008 |
I will blog when possible. This trip will be amazing!!
Dear Friends,I am at a Paris airport. Long wait for my flight to Bangkok.
I'm a little jet lagged even now, but very excited about the trip and about meeting my remarkable traveling companions. Once I get to Thailand, I will be traveling with the Nobel Womens Initiative. We will meet at the Bangkok airport and travel together to Chaing Mai, Mae Sot and Sukhotha- on the Burmese border in Thailand. From there we will go to South Sudan (via Addis Ababa) and finally to eastern Chad. The delegation will be in Chad for 3 days but I will stay on after they leave, traveling along the Chad/Darfur border for 12 days. The group will include my pal Jody Williams, who founded the ICBL (International Campaign to Ban Landmines). Land mines were banned in 1997 and she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Prof Williams led a high level mission on Darfur for the UN's Human Rights Council.
We met in Abece (eastern Chad) in 2007 and wrote a piece together for the Wall St Journal.
Wangari Maathai is the Nobel Peace Laureate of 2004 for her work in conserving the environment in Kenya and empowering women by improving their quality of life.
Prof Maathai has helped women plant more than 30 million trees on their farms and school and church compounds across Kenya. Prof. Maathai was elected to Kenya's parliament in 2002
Dr Sima Samar is Chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. In the face of threats to her own safety, Dr Samar has defied the Taliban's edicts that deny women their basic rights in Afghanistan.
She established and runs 4 hospitals and ten clinics and provides medical training courses. Dr Samar runs schools in Afghanistan for more than 20,000 students and 1,000 refugee girls in Pakistan. Her literacy programs are accompanied by mobile clinics, food distribution, information on family planning and hygiene.
Dr Samar is the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Sudan.
Leymah Gbowee is the Director of Women Peace and Security Network Africa based in Ghana, with chapters in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Liberia. The group works to ensure that women who bore the brunt of violent conflicts have a place at the table in peace processes.
Ms Gbowee also founded Women in Peacebuilding Program to address the trauma faced by the Liberian people during the country's brutal 14 year civil war. Ms Gbowee served as a Commissioner Designate for the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Qing Zhang founded China Programs Director for Verite. She oversaw the interviews of 5000 women factory workers focusing on the exploitation they experience. She organized an annual conference to identify legal violations in Chinese factories. She has developed programs on worker education/sex education, prevention of HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, SARS, nutrition, overtime working conditions and micro-entrepreneurship.
Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, MD, is the co-Pastor of Bethel AME Church in Boston and a pediatrition at the South End Commmunity Health Center. She founded "Do the Write Thing", which serves over 550 young women in Boston's public schools and two juvenile detention facilities. Rev White-Hammond has made 7 trips into south Sudan where she has been involved in obtaining the freedom of 10,000 women and childrem. She has also traveled to Darfur. . Dr White-Hammond is Chair of the Save Darfur Coalition.
This is gonna be AMAZING. I will try to blog wherever I have internet access.
| July 18, 2008 |
Organisation de la Presse Africaine.
His death brought to nine the number of UNAMID peacekeepers killed in Darfur this year.
| July 16, 2008 |
Plagued by decades of dictatorship, unrest, coup attempts and rebellions, the vast but sparsely populated former French colony is ranked among the world's least developed states. Basic infrastructure is in ruins, bandits roam the bush unchecked by the army or police and borders are left unguarded.
| July 14, 2008 |
ICC calls for arrest of Al Bashir
Ocampo: "His motive was power, control, but his intent was to commit genocide."Bashir is accused of: 3 counts of genocide; 5 counts of crimes against humanity; and 2 counts of war crimes committed in Darfur.
He is accused of masterminding and implementing a plan to partially wipe out ethnic groups (Fur , Masalit, Zaghawa ) that were producing the rebels that were challenging his rule in Khartoum..
"This was no counterinsurgency", Ocampo says, "The alibi of the president was 'a counter insurgency'. His intent was genocide."
This is the first time a sitting head of state has been accused of genocide.
UN currently has evacuation plans in place, in case aid workers or peacekeepers are again attacked.
| July 13, 2008 |
From the Los Angeles Times
... and why he should stay home
By Mia Farrow and Ronan Farrow
July 13, 2008
President Bush's announcement that he will attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics came in the wake of brutal crackdowns in Tibet and during a week when seven peacekeepers were murdered in the Darfur region of Sudan, where China continues to underwrite the carnage.
It also came at a moment when a growing group of U.S. and international politicians have taken a stand by eschewing the opening ceremonies -- the only component of the Games geared not toward celebrating the athletes but entirely toward burnishing the Beijing regime's political image. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper were joined recently by European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering in deciding not to attend. Barack Obama and John McCain have indicated that if they were president they would not attend unless they saw a significant improvement in China's human rights record.
Bush has squandered an enormous opportunity. Beijing has been notoriously indifferent to traditional diplomatic pressure, but it has leaped into action to protect the Games. Early efforts by human rights activists to link Darfur to the Games prompted Beijing to hastily appoint an envoy to the region, to soften its veto threats on the U.N. Security Council and, most significantly, to sign last year's U.N. resolution authorizing a protection force for Darfur.
A presidential boycott of the opening ceremonies might have proved to be a powerful additional point of leverage with an otherwise intractable regime. A boycott limited to the opening ceremonies also would have had the advantage of not targeting the athletes. And it would have sent a strong symbolic statement to Beijing at little substantive cost to U.S.-China relations.
Instead, Bush has made a powerful statement tacitly approving China's behavior. His decision is regrettable.
It was a missed opportunity for the United States to stand strong in support of the anguished people of Darfur as well as the Tibetans in their long struggle.
It was an opportunity to express solidarity with those Chinese citizens whose human rights are being denied, to demonstrate moral leadership and to represent the values and principles our nation was founded on.
It was a golden opportunity now lost.
Actress Mia Farrow has made nine trips to the Darfur region. Ronan Farrow, a student at Yale Law School, has worked on human rights issues in Darfur and South Sudan and on U.S.-China relations for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. They are mother and son.
By Nick Meo
12/07/2008
A high-ranking commander who armed and led Janjaweed militiamen in attacks on hundreds of villages in Darfur has come forward to claim that he did so at the behest of the Sudanese government.
Chadian rebels ride on vehicles as they speed across the desert during an attack on the eastern Chadian town of Gos Beida
Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court are tomorrow expected to take a significant step towards putting Sudan's leaders on trial by presenting evidence against President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. As they pursue a case against Sudan's rulers in Khartoum, some of the most damning evidence yet that the killing was directed by the government has been provided by Arbab Idries, who was a key commander between 2003-7.
An estimated 300,000 black Africans died in ethnic massacres in Darfur at the hands of Arabic-speaking militias, in what the US has described as genocide. A further 2.5 million refugees have been driven from their homes.
Mr Idries admitted that troops under his command committed rapes and killed old people and children. "We were attacking villages where there were only the blacks," Mr Idries said in the interview. A Muslim, he is himself black as were many of the men he commanded. "These people were civilians. They had no weapons."
For several years, Mr Idries was one of the most feared men in a savage conflict. The sight of him, imposing and brutal in the saddle as he gave orders to Janjaweed horsemen, was the one of the last things seen by hundreds of farmers and their families before they were slaughtered.
The Khartoum government has always argued that the massacres were the result of tribal disputes in a remote area in which it had no hand. But the detailed account Mr Idries can provide about the campaign of slaughter could prove vital as a case is built against Sudan's rulers.
After falling out with the regime he has fled abroad to a secret East African location and is now in hiding and trying to strike a deal with international prosecutors which could save his skin. He said he had become repelled by the slaughter that he helped direct but it is more likely that he feared falling victim to political manoeuvrings within the regime. Reports from Khartoum suggest that regime figures are increasingly fearful that international pressure to pursue war crimes suspects will soon force them to offer up scapegoats.
As the expected ICC announcement approaches, Sudan's government has become increasingly angry. Its spokesman at the UN said any charges brought against the president would be "a criminal move", and Westerners in the capital Khartoum are taking extra security precautions as fears of revenge attacks grow. UN staff based in the city have been ordered to practice evacuation drills.
Mr Idries's account, given during several hours of interviews, is both chilling and convincing in its detailed description of a murder campaign by ferocious horsemen who despised the Darfuris as racial inferiors. It also outlines a clearly thought-out campaign of "ethnic cleansing".
He said: "When we entered a village we were to steal and loot whatever we could. As for the water wells, we put sand in and blocked them. We cut down trees and burnt villages. We wanted to force the population out of their areas and give them no chance to live there again.
"These instructions came from Khartoum."
He claims to have played a key role in the slaughter from its outset in 2003, when at a secret meeting he was first ordered to recruit northerners to drive out both rebels and civilians. He says that a government figure told him: "We need only land. We don't need the people there."
Soon he was leading killing sprees against some of the poorest people on earth. In 2003 and 2004 he was a commander in North Darfur, then from 2005 he was in charge of intelligence and logistics based in Nyala, SouthDarfur.
He now believes the Sudanese government wants to kill him. He said: "I know too much – I handled too much money and did too many things. The Sudanese government will never let me live." He also repeated claims that China, which has oil interests in Sudan, supports the campaign of killing.
For the journalist Phil Cox, who was filming for More4 News, meeting the former commander was a deeply unsettling experience.
Mr Idries gave him details about villages where he had ordered massacres days before Mr Cox visited them during hazardous trips, filming their smoking ruins littered with corpses. Mr Idries said: "In Gegira I see very bad things. The village is damaged. No rebels, only civilians. Gegira is attacked by militia of Janjaweed. They attack the village, burn it. Rape the women."
BBC News - UK
A BBC Panorama investigation has uncovered evidence that China is currently providing Sudan with military assistance in Darfur. The UN has imposed an arms ...
Another Chinese veto-another blow for justice
In an indication of just how hard it is to gain international cooperation on anything, yesterday the UN failed to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe despite the massive wave of brutality and condemnation surrounding the fraudulent presidential 'election' of Robert Mugabe. Predictably and shamefully, China and Russia two of the permanent five (P5) members of the Security Council led the way against the resolution.The resolution would have placed an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, a travel ban on Mugabe and 13 of his top officials, and authorized a seizing of any of their overseas assets.
The resolution was expected to go through, as people felt that the Chinese would not want to use their veto so close to the Beijing Olympic games, and the Russians had recently indicated some support for the resolution.
Once again the inherent flaws of the United Nations are on full display.
| July 12, 2008 |
"UN Secretary General tells Sudan president he is working on blocking ICC indictments - Sudan news agency reports"
http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/darfur/2008/07/11/a-long-term-much-needed-shift-in-norms-weighed-against-short-term-uncertainty/
Briefing by UN Undersecretary for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guéhenno
makes clear that extremely heavily armed Janjaweed militia, Khartoum’s
military proxy, attacked the UN/African Union forces in North Darfur
(July 8, 2008)
Eric Reeves
July 12, 2008
On July 8, 2008, at approximately 2:45pm local time, heavily armed
Janjaweed militia attacked a joint police and military patrol of the
UN/African Union Mission in Sudan (UNAMID) in an area approximately 100
kilometers southeast of el-Fasher, near the village of Umm Hakibah
(North Darfur). In a firefight that lasted approximately three hours,
seven UNAMID troops and police were killed and twenty-two were injured,
seven of these critically. Ten vehicles were destroyed or taken during
the attack. Although there was initial uncertainty about the identity
of the attacking force, this uncertainty has been eliminated in the
course of a preliminary investigation. In addition to various published
reports, UN Undersecretary for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guéhenno,
offered a compelling July 11, 2008 briefing to the UN Security Council
in closed session, making a number of telling observations that point
unambiguously to Janjaweed forces as those responsible:
[1] Guéhenno told the Security Council that the attack on
UN-authorized peacekeepers “took place in an area under Sudanese
government control and that some of the assailants were dressed in
clothing similar to Sudanese army uniforms. He also said the ambush was
‘pre-meditated and well-organized’ and was intended to inflict
casualties rather than to steal equipment or vehicles” (Voice of
America [dateline: UN/New York], July 11, 2008). The peacekeepers
attacked reported seeing approximately 200 fighters, many on horses---a
signature feature of the Janjaweed (Arabic for “devil [or spirit] on
horseback”).
Shame on us all
Major Jill Rutaremara, a Rwandan military spokesman, condemned this week's devastating Janjaweed/government attack on UN peacekeepers. He also blamed the high level of causalities on the poor equipment of the forces. "Our peacekeepers are ill-equipped in a situation where they come under attack from heavily armed people,"Though UNAMID force is supposed to have 26,000 members, only about 9,000 troops are on the ground now. The Sudanese government continues to block an effective deployment of the force and the international community has acquiesced . We have failed to support the peacekeeping mission in every essential way. If the peacekeepers had had appropriate intelligence capacity and equipment this tragedy almost certainly would have been avoided .
The peacekeepers have been pleading for 26 helicopters. No nation has offered even a single helicopter.
Excellent article and U-tube link
Darfur - A Summary <http://www.By admin
The crisis in Darfur is a problem many have heard of but have failed to grasp. This article is designed to be a quick summary rather than an exhaustive explanation. It designed to give people a quick understanding of the crisis
| July 11, 2008 |
Who murdered the peacekeepers in Darfur?
My sources have now made it clear that the attack on UNAMID was by Janjaweed, with ample support from the government of Sudan. Khartoum will claim the culprits were rebels --simply not true.CHINA, Sudan's Enabler and Defender
The International Criminal Court is on the verge of issuing an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir for crimes against humanity. At this very moment, China is preparing to introduce a United Nations resolution to suspend the jurisdiction of the ICC over Sudan. The Chinese backed resolution proposes stripping the ICC of its power to investigate or prosecute Sudanese authorities for 12 months. Under Article 16 of the Rome statute the UN Security Council has that authority, renewable at 6 month intervals. If the UN Security Council invokes such a suspension, they will be held accountable by the people of the world. I think the resolution will be vetoed, hopefully by the US, almost certainly by the UK and France, who have been clear supporters of the ICC. It will be an interesting time to see the P5 (US, UK, France, Russia and China) forced to put their cards on the table. Whom will they stand for? The perpetrators or the victims?This move by Beijing further casts China in the role of Sudan's enabler and defender, and secures their position as the second most culpable nation in the world.
| July 10, 2008 |
July 10, 2008
The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
As President Bush and the Group of 8 leaders who are meeting in Japan again shun their responsibilities in Darfur, there is a serious argument to be made that genocide is overrated as an international concern. The G-8 leaders implicitly accept that argument, which goes like this:
Genocide is regrettable, but don’t lose perspective. It is simply one of many tragedies in the world today — and a fairly modest one in terms of lives lost.
All the genocides of the last 100 years have cost only 10 million to 12 million lives. In contrast, every year we lose almost 10 million children under the age of 5 from diseases and malnutrition attributable to poverty. Make that the priority, not Darfur.
Civil conflict in Congo has claimed more than 5.4 million lives over the last decade, according to careful mortality surveys by the International Rescue Committee. That’s at least 10 times the toll in Darfur, but because Congo doesn’t count as genocide — just as murderous chaos — no one has paid much attention to it.
Does a mother whose child dies from banditry, malaria or AIDS grieve any less than a mother whose child was killed by the janjaweed?
The world has been trying to pressure Sudan to stop slaughtering Darfuris for nearly five years, yet the situation in some ways is worse than ever. In contrast, we know how to combat malaria, child mortality and maternal mortality. The same resources would save far more lives if they were used for vaccinations and bed nets.
So instead of pushing President Bush to worry about Darfur, where it’s not clear he can make a difference, get him to focus on bed nets or deworming or iodizing salt in poor countries or stopping mother-to-child transmission of the virus that causes AIDS or so many other areas where his attention could have a humanitarian impact.
Genocide is horrific, but that doesn’t make it a priority.
This is a coherent and legitimate argument, and there are moments when I catch myself sympathetic to it.
Yet in truth, genocide has always evoked a transcendent horror, and it has little to do with the numbers of victims. The Holocaust resonates not because six million Jews were killed but because a government picked people on the basis of their religious heritage and tried to exterminate them. What is horrifying about Anne Frank’s diary is not so much the death of a girl as the crime of a state.
There are also practical arguments, for genocide can create cycles of revenge and displacement that make it far more destabilizing than any famine or epidemic. The Darfur genocide may well lead all Sudan to fragment into civil war, interrupting Sudanese oil exports and raising oil prices.
The Armenian genocide still festers after nearly a century; and former President Bill Clinton has said that his greatest foreign-policy mistake was his failure to respond in Rwanda. In the same way, the G-8’s collective shrug today about the Darfur genocide — because the victims are black, impoverished and hidden from television cameras — will be a lingering stain.
After five years of genocide, President Bush still hasn’t taken as simple a step as imposing a no-fly zone or even giving a prime-time speech about it. He gave Beijing a gift, his pledge to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics, without pushing hard for China to suspend military spare-parts and arms deliveries to Sudan.
The Islamic world has been even more myopic, particularly since the victims in Darfur are all Muslim. Do dead Muslims count only when Israel is the culprit? Can’t the Islamic world muster one-hundredth as much indignation for the genocidal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Muslims as it can for a few Danish cartoons?
This coming Monday, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is expected to seek an arrest warrant in connection with Darfur, and his past statements suggest that it may be for the Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for genocide. That would be a historic step requiring follow-through.
A personal note: I have seen children dying of AIDS and hunger; I have had malaria and been chased through the jungle by militias. I want the G-8 to address all the aspects of global poverty, yet nothing affects me as much as what I have seen in Darfur.
I tilt obsessively at the windmills of Darfur because, quite simply, its people haunt me: the young woman who deliberately made a diversion of herself so the janjaweed would gang-rape her and miss her little sister running in the opposite direction; the man whose eyes were gouged out with a bayonet; the group of women beaten with their own babies until the children were dead.
Yes, genocide truly is “that bad.”
LATIMES
War on Darfur's peacekeepers
July 10, 2008
The tragedy in Darfur tends to fade in and out of the world's consciousness, mostly forgotten until some new outrage reminds us that millions of people there are still displaced and slowly starving in refugee camps as heavily armed rebels, militiamen, government soldiers and assorted bandits plunder the countryside. Comes now another outrage.
On Tuesday, about 200 bandits on horseback and in SUVs mounted with antiaircraft or anti-tank weapons opened fire on a U.N. peacekeeping force that had been investigating the killing of civilians in north Darfur. At least seven peacekeepers were killed and 22 wounded in a two-hour gun battle.
The brazen assault was horrifying but hardly surprising, given that the peacekeepers are a grossly undermanned and under-equipped contingent of sitting ducks. Astonishingly, it has been almost a year since the United Nations approved a strong force of 26,000 police and soldiers for Darfur, the largest peacekeeping force in the world -- or it would have been if it had ever been deployed. The 9,000 or so peacekeepers in the country consist almost entirely of the old, discredited African Union force that should have been replaced by now; the AU troops simply painted their green helmets blue and switched to a new command structure.
The peacekeepers lack trucks, armored personnel carriers and, most critically, helicopters, which are needed to effectively patrol the Darfur region, an area of Sudan the size of France. Some of the equipment is being held in port by the Sudanese government, which has also blocked the deployment of non-African troops. Yet the Western countries that approved the peacekeeping mission still stubbornly refuse to contribute the helicopters, without which it can't succeed.
China remains the second-biggest villain in this tragic tale, after the murderous Sudanese government. Beijing buys huge quantities of Sudanese oil and has obstructed efforts by the U.N. Security Council to impose tougher sanctions on the goons in Khartoum. A protest movement targeting the Beijing Olympics flared up during the international torch relay but has quieted since. We're rooting for that to change by the time the Games open.
It's all very well to embrace the spirit of international brotherhood and respect for human achievement that the Olympics represent, but Beijing is hoping to reap a PR bonanza from hosting the Games, and those hopes richly deserve to be dashed. Bring on the competition -- and the protests aimed at exposing China's unconscionable behavior.
UN anger over Darfur attack
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has condemned an attack on a joint UN-African Union force in Darfur that left seven peacekeepers dead. Ban said in a statement on Wednesday that the attack was an "unacceptable act of extreme violence" against the peacekeepers in Darfur. He called on the Sudanese government to do its "utmost to ensure that the perpetrators are swiftly identified and brought to justice".
The attack happened when the UN-AU police and military patrol were ambushed by unidentified militia between Gusa Jamat and Wadah, 100km east of Shangil Tobayi in north Darfur.
A UN official said on Wednesday 22 peacekeepers were injured in the attack.
Suna, Sudan's official news agency, reported that the attackers were travelling in a convoy of about 40 vehicles.
| July 9, 2008 |
Seven peacekeepers were killed and 22 were wounded, seven critically, UN spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters in New York. The peacekeeping force known as UNAMID, which is severely under-equipped and under-manned, has suffered a string of attacks since it assumed control from an African Union force in Darfur, gripped by escalating insecurity and banditry.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who was flying back from the G8 summit in Japan, "condemns in the strongest possible terms this unacceptable act of extreme violence against AU-UN peacekeepers in Darfur," she said.
UN officials in Sudan said a Ghanaian was among the dead, and that 17 Rwandan peacekeepers, and others from Ghana, Senegal and South Africa, were among the wounded. Some of the victims are in intensive care.
The peacekeepers were attacked while returning from following up allegations by the Minni Minnawi faction of the Sudan Liberation Army, which signed a 2006 Darfur peace deal with the government, that two former rebels had been killed.
Two UN officials in Sudan said Janjaweed -- state-backed Arab militia -- were suspected of carrying out the attack.
In late May, dozens of heavily armed men on horseback ambushed a UNAMID patrol in Darfur and seized weapons from Nigerian troops near El Geneina, and in a separate incident a Ugandan policeman was found murdered in North Darfur.
Last September, 10 AU peacekeepers were killed in a well organised attack on their camp at Haskanita in southern Darfur.
Details of the latest attack emerged as visiting British Foreign Minister David Miliband said it was difficult to see future optimism in Darfur, which has been riven by conflict for more than five years. Until security is provided and a political process underway, it would be wrong to be anything other than "extremely cautious about the prospects, because of the scale of devastation that has already happened," he said. "I think it's very difficult for those of us who live in wealthy countries and lead comfortable lives to talk about optimism when there is such a humanitarian crisis that exists in Darfur," he told reporters.
The World Food Programme, the largest UN humanitarian agency, has cut rations by half because banditry has made the roads increasingly dangerous.
Since UNAMID took over from a small African Union force on December 31, only 7,600 troops and 1,500 police have been deployed -- barely a third of the projected total of 19,500 soldiers and 6,500 policemen.
The force lacks the air transport and cover desperately needed to support troops across terrain with limited roads, as well as transport vehicles.
The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease and more than 2.2 million fled their homes since the conflict broke out in February 2003.
July 9 – New York -- The murder yesterday of seven peacekeepers in Darfur is yet another example of the tragic failure of the international community.
Almost a year ago, the United Nations authorized a protection force of 26,000, but today only a fraction of that number is deployed. The international community has failed to support the mission in every essential way, including training, equipment and intelligence. The UN itself has expressed the fear that in its present form the peacekeeping operation will scarcely be able to protect itself, much less the people of Darfur.
The United Nations, China, the United States, and all the powers of the world must share the enormity and shame of this failure.
Darfur’s people have been pleading for protection for five long years. When will we respond?
THIS WEEK U.N. AND U.S. ALLOW SUDANESE GOVERNMENT TO SACK KEY US CONTRACTOR
Peacekeepers on patrol were ambushed today leaving at least one dead, 19 injured, and six missing.
The international community continues to allow Khartoum to block the full deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur. This week, the Sudanese regime refused to allow the United Nations to renew its contract with PAE, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. PAE is the only contractor tasked with building camps for incoming peacekeepers.
The international community is failing to support the peacekeeping mission in Darfur and as a result we are watching it fail. Private contractors can play an essential role in Darfur as they have expertise in camp building, training and in providing medical support. They also have desperately needed equipment. The U.S., the U.N. and all the nations of the world are once again allowing the Khartoum regime to dictate the conditions under which Darfur’s victims can be protected. This decision further imperils UNAMID’s under-supported mission. The result will be continued suffering for the people of Darfur.
Darfur militia ambush kills one UN/AU peacekeeper
9 Jul 2008
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - An ambush by armed Darfur militiamen has killed at least one and injured 19 staff from a joint U.N.-African Union (UNAMID) peacekeeping mission, a UNAMID spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
One person has been confirmed dead from the U.N. police, around 19 people wounded, and at least three are in a critical condition. Six soldiers are still missing.
The UNAMID soldiers and police were ambushed on a routine patrol by around 30 vehicles full of armed militia in the Um Haqiba area of North Darfur on Tuesday.
U.N.-African Union Force Short of Funds, Soldiers, Equipment
By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 4, 2008
EL FASHER, Sudan -- Nearly a year after its creation, a joint U.N. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/United+Nations?tid=informline> -African Union <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/African+Union?tid=informline> peacekeeping mission to Darfur is struggling, with fewer than half the soldiers promised, broken-down equipment, government obstacles, and what commanders say are the unrealistically high expectations of a world that has failed to support them.
The mission, the largest peacekeeping force in U.N. history, was to have been the robust replacement for an underfunded, poorly equipped A.U. force that had been on the ground since 2004. But of the 26,000 police and soldiers who were to deploy to protect civilians in this region of western Sudan, only 140 Bangladeshi police and a smattering of officers, engineers and U.N. bureaucrats have arrived. The rest of the 8,000 or so troops in the field are holdovers from the old A.U. mission -- soldiers who merely painted their green helmets U.N. blue.
"We've just re-hatted -- changed the green hat to blue and put on the U.N. patch," said David Senanu, a police superintendent from Ghana who was among those who made the switch when the new mission officially took over Dec. 31.
The mission is charged with protecting Darfurians in imminent danger and facilitating humanitarian assistance, among other tasks. The hope is that a beefed-up peacekeeping force could eventually enable some of the 2.5 million displaced Darfurians to return home safely.
But the mission is taking over at perhaps the most chaotic point in the five-year-old conflict, in which about 450,000 have died. While the first years were defined by one-sided attacks by government forces on civilians, the conflict is now a multi-sided scramble for weapons and trucks in which humanitarian groups and peacekeepers are increasingly targeted. That makes the mission as critical, and precarious, as ever -- if it can only get off the ground.
Logistical and bureaucratic obstacles imposed by the Sudanese government, which has tried to block the force from the start, have prevented the full deployment of the new battalions. But Western nations that pushed for the force have also caused delays by failing to provide basic equipment -- including helicopters, armored personnel carriers and trucks -- that the African countries providing most of the troops cannot afford. Officials say it costs about $45 million to equip one battalion.
"We still have no helicopters. We still have no medium transport. This is not the responsibility of UNAMID," said the mission's top military commander, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai of Nigeria, referring to the hybrid force by its acronym. "This is the responsibility of the whole world."
But inside the camps, people who had high hopes that a U.N. force would do more to protect them are growing skeptical. Though some peacekeepers said they were greeted with cheers as they headed out on their first patrols in January, that enthusiasm is waning in some places. When the blue-bereted police first arrived in Abu Shouk, a sprawling camp on the sandy edges of this market town, people quickly recognized them as the same faces as before. The police have been chased out of the camp six times, and a camp leader who was the liaison with the mission was beaten up, U.N. police said.
"There is no difference," said Adam Sadiq Haroun, who has lived with his family at Abu Shouk for five years. "They come and patrol, but I don't know exactly what they are doing. . . . They say they are here to protect you. But still people are coming here and robbing, and time is passing."
After the problems in Abu Shouk, police chief Michael Fryer of South Africa <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/southafrica.html?nav=el> switched his forces around to put new peacekeepers in the camp, which he said seemed to help. But his more ambitious plans -- nonstop patrols, better lighting and permanent police stations in the camps, and a force at least 40 percent female to deal with cases of sexual assault -- have been thwarted because he does not have the people, bulletproof vests or cars. As he waits for 4,000 new police to arrive, Fryer is struggling to maintain the old force as deployments end.
"We are giving extensions to former A.U. police just to keep up our numbers," Fryer said in an interview at the new UNAMID headquarters here, a razor-wired compound with rows of white, air-conditioned trailers in the hot sand.
Criticism from Darfurians and outside advocates pushing for better protection of civilians is taking its toll on his officers. "On my level, I can handle it," Fryer said. "But my poor peacekeepers on the ground, it affects their morale. . . . I think expectations for this mission were very high, and we're just not in a position to meet them."
U.S. officials and other foreign diplomats have blamed Sudanese officials for dragging their feet on approving a list of troop-contributing countries and signing an agreement on how they are to operate, and for failing to allow unrestricted flights and holding up equipment at a port.Equipment for the first four new battalions -- two Egyptian, two Ethiopian -- has been delayed for months at Port Sudan. Once released, it will take two months to reach Darfur.
The new peacekeeping mission has been attacked four times, with at least four trucks stolen. The soldiers have never fought back. Agwai said that doing so would make peacekeepers one more party to the conflict, possibly leading to more attacks or jeopardizing the government's cooperation.
"I am not here to stop bullets," he said. "Defending people does not mean we are going between lines."
Agwai and other commanders said the fundamental problem is that there is no peace to keep. The new mission can help "smooth things over" and perhaps deter attacks, Agwai said, but the notion that soldiers can create peace is unrealistic. "If peace is not returned to Darfur, it is not the fault of UNAMID," he said. "It is the fault of the parties to the conflict."