August 10, 2004

Genocide in Africa? Nah...nothing goin' on here...

...or here either.

According to the Reuters news wire, an EU mission to the Darfur region of Sudan said it had found

"no evidence of genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur, although killing was widespread, with little evidence of government efforts to protect civilians."
The saga continues...
The conclusion of a fact-finding mission put the EU at odds with the U.S. Congress, which has leveled accusations of genocide at Sudan over a campaign of looting and burning by Arab militiamen against African village farmers.
Wait... does this mean the U.S. government has learned its lesson from the tragedy of its indifference 10 years ago? Not really. The only difference this time is that instead of primitive indigenous tribes butchering eachother, Arab militias are involved.

General Romeo Dallaire(ret), former commander of the UN mission in Rwanda reflects on the international "intervention" in Rwanda:

"Some 2,000 personnel from several countries, including France, United Kingdom, United States and Italy, had come to evacuate their expatriates and though they were stumbling on corpses, they remained firm in totally ignoring the catastrophe." (source)
Pieter Feith, speaking on behalf of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana comments, "We are not in the situation of genocide there...But it is clear there is widespread, silent and slow, killing going on, and village burning on a fairly large scale," (Reuters)

Though the United Nations report "more than a million people have been driven from their homes by the conflict and many are threatened by hunger and disease," Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir responded, "Those who say 30,000 and 50,000, we challenge them to bring their names, their families, their tribes, their graves." (Reuters)

Sorry, Mr. Bashir, being that your country possesses nothing of vital interest to the Western world, you probably won't be sent any blue helmeted undertakers to gather your dead.

Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said, "he was pleased that the Arab League and the African Union had both said there was no ethnic cleansing or genocide in Darfur." (Reuters)

I'm sure you are, Ismail, ol' buddy. I'm sure you are.


Sources:
Reuters: EU Mission Sees Abuses, But Not Genocide, in Darfur By Marcin Grajewski with additional reporting by Tom Perry in Cairo

Africa Focus: Rwanda/U.N.: Acknowledging Failure

(all emphasis added is mine)


LEARN SOMETHING! To learn more about Zeropa and the U.S.'s indifference toward the Rwandan genocide of 1994, check out Human Rights Watch's thorough report appropriately titled, "Ignoring Genocide"

Posted by Kyer at August 10, 2004 12:20 PM
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