The
genocidal horrors and persisting barbarities in the Sudan
Paul I.
Adujie
Lawcareer@msn.com
New York, United
States
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
The horrifying conditions
being endured by millions of Black African Sudanese were catalogued by Nicholas
Kristof Esq. of The New York Times in a series
of heart-wrenching articles. He did a remarkable job of reporting the genocide
and ethnic/religious cleansing taking place in Darfur Sudan, as he portrayed the horrific and protracted
conflict in the Sudan and the genocide in Darfur, which has been financed and supplied, amply with
materials, by the so-called government in the Sudan. What has happened or still happening in Darfur is complete human tragedy in every sense!
The Sudanese government
that ought to protect all its citizens and provide for every citizen’s safety
and security is widely reported as engaging in the despicable acts. The current
government in Khartoum has disgustingly supported and encouraged
pillaging bands of Arabs, called Janjaweed (sounds more like they have been smoking Ganja-weeds(?) -- considering the egregious violations of human
rights)! The Sudanese government has been implicated in this
catastrophes. It is actively engineered by the Khartoum government in order to re-engineer illegally the
color line and to tilt the ethnic and religious configuration of the Sudan, particularly, the region that is called Darfur.
It is noteworthy that the Khartoum government and its opposition recently reached,
yet again, another peace agreement to end the protracted internecine war in that
country. But we must not gloss over the continuing sufferings of millions of
Sudanese people in the hands and weapons of marauding Arabs, supported by their
military regime friends in the Sudanese capital. Some have argued, that the
western world, particularly the US, have frequently offered winks and nods to
the Khartoum government, because, of the one big reason, which is American
interest is Sudan's recently developed oil wealth; The Bush administration is
always looking for new sources of supply and has declared African oil to be a
strategic national interest, perhaps, that makes human rights violations
secondary?
We are
all aware and too familiar with the frequency at which the ever-fragile peace
in the Sudan, have faltered. The Sudan have had thirty years of civil
war of endless misery, it is mostly war of attrition for far too long. This
internecine war has raged for far too long! This protracted conflict in the Sudan has festered for far too long.
And it has openly degenerated into this Arabs versus Black Africans, with the
Arabs having the upper hand, mostly because the day’s government in the Sudan supports and supply weapons to
the Arab raiders. The genocide perpetrated in Darfur
by the Janjaweed and their Khartoum cohorts, is really
not different from thirty-year conflict, the Darfur
tragedy is continuation and another salvo in inglorious efforts to Arabize the Sudan, the conflict have been replete with
color, ethnic and religious undertones and maneuvers in all putridity.
The current Darfur horrors, human crises and unwarranted human
sufferings, are exacerbated by the introduction of race into an already very
sour and sordid affairs, the Arabs are quoted as having told their victims of
rape “that Black people are slaves and property of the Arabs” this of course,
tallies with the already infamous slave trade reputation in the Sudan, where
people, and organizations, (well meaning people) have been buying freedom for
scores of enslaved Black Sudanese, in order to rescue them from bondage or
certain death. All these have occurred with the tacit encouragement of the
Sudanese government. This ethnic and religious cleansing is visited on African
Sudanese by their Arab compatriots. It is particularly saddening to learn that
the marauding Arabs were armed and fortified by the government of Sudan, a
government which ought and supposed to protect the lives of all citizens
equally, whether of African or Arab descent, whether Christian, Muslim, or
African traditional religionists.
I was deeply moved by
Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, as he
wrote an eye-opening series of articles that were based on firsthand knowledge
and interviews that he personally conducted on the ground, in the Sudan. The world seemed to have neglected the cries emanating
from the crises-torn Darfur, an integral part of Sudan. The world
seemed to have neglected the excruciation that has been going on in the Sudan. I have myself known of the lingering crises, but I managed not to
have made sufficient public commentaries, as I have on many occasions,
regarding Palestine and Iraq. I have not contributed enough to the debate of
the crises in the Sudan, but the extraordinary horrors that were recounted by
Mr. Kristof in the pages of The New York Times
are very moving and sobering indeed. An added impetus was the criticisms from
some of my fellow Nigerian debaters of public issues, whose criticisms, urgings
or perhaps goading, with their very critical comments regarding my apparent
neglect of the Sudanese issues. They argue that I have ignored or neglected
contributions to the Sudan debate deliberately! Nothing could be further from
the truth: I have actually in the past
publicly commented on the endlessness of the decades old Sudanese crises but
before the mayhem and genocide in Darfur.
The truth is, I protest
injustice everywhere, including injustices directed at Arabs, Palestine, and Iraq, and everyone else. There is absolutely no reason
for me to ignore my African siblings in the Sudan, whether they are Christians or Muslims or
whatever their holies! I resent injustice wherever and by whomever against
anyone. I absolutely abhor injustice in the most implicit and explicit language
and sense, there is.
Perhaps
the world is finally waking up to the myriad horrors and multiplying tragedies
in the Sudan? The Secretary General of the
United Nations, Mr. Kofi Anan and Secretary of State
General Colin Powell of the United States are meeting in the Sudan next week,
albeit, belatedly, one would have expected the lot of Africans to be better
under the watch of Mr. Anan and Mr. Powell, both are Africans, for all intent
and purposes, but unfortunately, the genocide in the Sudan have occurred, when
these men are in visible positions, at the UN and US respectively. The genocide
in the Sudan is a shocking reminder and replay
of the genocide in Rwanda, as the world ignored and
neglected the Rwandan version ten years ago, so have the world now, crises in Africa, are frequently, conveniently
ignored and neglected. Africans are no more a warring people than anyone else,
but Africans are never the beneficiaries of rapid response from NATO, EU or
from even the toothless bulldog UN, not even when Mr. Anan, an African is in
charge! He could made pronouncements since or could have moved the world to
take action, even if symbolic. In the mayhem perpetrated by the Janjaweed, there have been wide scale killings, burning and
destruction of villages, crops, water source destroyed and poisoned, these were
clearly, actions that were taken intended, to make Darfur
uninhabitable for the residents, who have been compelled to flee; So many
innocent children, women and men have been murderously hacked to death, and
millions more are still displaced and suffering, as they have become refugees
in their homeland and in neighboring Chad, there are some dying of starvation,
yet others, are dying from a epidemic of diarrhea due to the tenuous refugee
living conditions, food, blankets and emergency supplies are needed, the
situation is more dire, than words can express! Countless numbers are already
dead!
Mr. Kristof wrote the following
in The New York Times:
“Similar atrocities were happening all over Darfur, in western Sudan, leaving 1.2 million
people homeless. Refugees tell consistent tales of murder, pillage and rape
against the Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit
tribes by the Arabs driving them away. As this genocide unfolded, the West
largely ignored it. That was not an option for Ms. Khattar
and her husband, Ali Daoud.”
“They found the bodies of Ms. Khattar's
mother and father; her father's corpse had been thrown in a well to poison the
water supply.” “Officially, Sudan had agreed to a
cease-fire in Darfur. But at the end of
May, a Sudanese military plane spotted the villagers' hideout, and soon after,
the Janjaweed attacked.” “." Then, she says, the
males were all shot to death, while women were taken away to be raped.” “There
were 45 corpses, all killed because of the color of their skin, part of an
officially sanctioned drive by Sudan's Arab government to purge the western
Sudanese countryside of black-skinned non-Arabs.”
“The Sudanese authorities, much like the Turks in 1915 and the
Nazis in the 1930's, apparently calculated that genocide offered considerable
domestic benefits — like the long-term stability to be achieved by a
"final solution" of conflicts between Arabs and non-Arabs — and that
the world would not really care very much. It looks as if the Sudanese bet correctly.”
“Perhaps Americans truly don't care about the hundreds of thousands
of lives at stake — we have other problems, and Darfur is far away. But my
hunch is that if we could just meet the victims, we would not be willing to
acquiesce in genocide.”
“Time for Action on Sudan” -- The New York Times
Editorial:
“The United States and the UN Secretary general have strongly condemned the vicious ethnic cleansing
campaign sponsored by Sudan's government, which
threatens hundreds of thousands of people with starvation before autumn. That's
not enough. The situation demands strong action.”
“The civil war of the last two decades between Sudan's Arab Muslim rulers
and the partly Christian south now appears to be ending, after a cost of some
two million lives. But just as a peace agreement was being worked out, a new
war erupted in the mainly Muslim region of Darfur, where non-Arab
residents rebelled against Arab domination.”
“To suppress this revolt, Khartoum's autocratic clique of
generals and politicians has backed a thuggish militia known as the Janjaweed, which has terrorized non-Arab communities. Women
have been raped and branded, villages razed and crops destroyed. More than
15,000 people have been killed and about a million more driven from their
homes.”
Bush administration lawyers are busily studying whether this meets
the legal definition of genocide, but that misses the point. Whatever you call
it, the rising death toll could soon evoke memories of the tragedy in Rwanda a decade ago, when
both the United States and the Security
Council found excuses to stand aside while 800,000 died. That shameful failure
must not be repeated”
“Both Washington and the United Nations need to convince Khartoum that they will not
settle for a peace that permits terror and starvation in Darfur.”
“Sudan's government should
cut off support for the Janjaweed and send its army
to disarm these war criminals. It should allow international relief groups and
human rights monitors access to the camps where hundreds of thousands of people
now live under harsh and insecure conditions. And it needs to arrange emergency
food airlifts until Darfur's people can return to
their lands and provide for themselves. This will not happen without strong
pressure on Khartoum, but in the Security
Council, Pakistan, Algeria and China have been more
interested in shielding Sudan's government from
criticism than in protecting its people from starvation.”
Hundreds of thousands of lives may depend on quick, firm
action.
Mr. Kristof
in one of his articles, wrote:
“I wrote about Ms. Khattar in my last two
columns, recounting how the Janjaweed Arab militia
burned her village, murdered her parents and finally tracked her family down in
the mountains. Ms. Khattar hid, but the Janjaweed caught her husband and his brothers, only 4, 6
and 8 years old, and killed them all.”
“Ms. Khattar decided that the only hope
for saving her two daughters and her baby sister was to lead them by night to Chad. They had to avoid wells where the Janjaweed kept watch, but eight days later, half-dead with
hunger and thirst, they staggered across the dry riverbed that marks the border
with Chad. “ “That's
where I found Ms. Khattar. She is part of a wave of
1.2 million people left homeless by the genocide in Darfur.” “So when I found her, Haiga was leading her brothers and sisters 30 miles across
the desert to the town of Bahai” “There is no childhood here. I saw a
4-year-old orphan girl, Nijah Ahmed, carrying her
13-month-old brother, Nibraz, on her back. Their
parents and 15-year-old brother are missing in Sudan and presumed dead.”
“Ms. Khattar's
children have nightmares, their screams at night mixing with the yelps of
jackals, and she worries that she will lose them to hunger or disease. But her
plight pales beside that of Hatum Atraman
Bashir, a 35-year-old woman who is pregnant with the
baby of one of the 20 Janjaweed raiders who murdered
her husband and then gang-raped her.; Ms. Bashir said
that when the Janjaweed attacked her village, Kornei, she fled with her seven children. But when she and
a few other mothers crept out to find food, the Janjaweed
captured them and tied them on the ground, spread-eagled, then gang-raped them.
"They said, `You are black women, and you are our slaves,'
and they also said other bad things that I cannot repeat," she said,
crying softly. "One of the women cried, and they killed her. Then they
told me, ‘If you cry, we will kill you, too.'"
Other women from Kornei confirm her story and say
that another woman who was gang-raped at that time had her ears partly cut off as
an added humiliation.” “Ms. Khattar, the orphans, Ms.
Bashir and countless more like them have gone through
hell in the last few months, as we have all turned our backs — and the rainy
season is starting to make their lives even more miserable. In my next column,
I'll suggest what we can do to save them.
For readers eager to act
now, some options are at www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds
http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/editorialsoped/opedcolumnists/kristofresponds/index.html?offset=479&fid=.f3beae7
“A LONG THE SUDAN-CHAD BORDER — The
ongoing genocide in Darfur is finally, fortunately, making us
uncomfortable. At this rate, with only 250,000 more deaths”
“The U.N. describes Darfur as the No. 1
humanitarian crisis in the world today. The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates
that at best 320,000 more people will still die of hunger and disease this year
— or significantly more if we continue to do nothing.”
Moreover, apart from our obligation to act under the Genocide
Convention, acquiescence only encourages more genocide — hence the question
attributed to Hitler, "Who today remembers the Armenian
extermination?"
“But we can pass a tough U.N. Security Council resolution
authorizing troops, as well as more support for African peacekeepers.”
“Governments tend to be embarrassed about exterminating minorities. In Sudan, a bit of publicity
about Darfur coupled with a
written statement from President Bush led Sudan to agree to a
cease-fire in April and to improve access for aid agencies. More publicity prompted it to promise
to disband the Janjaweed raiders.
Sudan lies and wriggles out
of its promises, but its genocide is still calibrated to the
international reaction. Likewise, it is still denying visas and blocking
supplies for emergency relief, but pressure has led it to improve access.
So, Mr. Bush, if a single written statement will do so much good,
why won't you let the word "Darfur" pass
your lips? Why the passivity in the face of evil? You could save tens of
thousands of lives by making a forceful speech about Darfur. Conversely, your refusal to do so is
costing tens of thousands of lives.
If the Sudanese were notorious pirates of American videotapes, if
they were sheltering Mullah Omar, you'd be all over them. So why not stand up
just as forcefully to genocide?” “Mr. Bush seems proud of his "moral
clarity," his willingness to recognize evil and bluntly describe it as
such. Well, Darfur reeks of evil, and we are allowing it to continue.” Readers can
also contribute to one of the many aid agencies saving lives in Darfur. (I've listed some at http://www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds
http://www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds,
We betrayed those values when we ignored past genocides, and we are
betraying them again now. “In my last three columns, I wrote about Magboula Muhammad Khattar, a
24-year-old woman struggling to keep her children alive since her parents and husband were killed by the Janjaweed.
Each time I visited the tree she lives under, she shared with me the only
things she had to offer: a smile and a bowl of brackish water.” “Is a cold
shoulder all we have to offer in return? “
“In my last column, I wrote about Magboula
Muhammad Khattar, a 24-year-old woman whose world
began to collapse in March, when the Janjaweed Arab
militia burned her village and slaughtered her ... Similar atrocities were
happening all over Darfur, in western Sudan, leaving
1.2 million people homeless. Refugees tell consistent...” “The Bush
administration says it is exploring whether to describe the mass murder and
rape in the Darfur region of Sudan as ''genocide.'' I suggest that
President Bush invite to the White House a real expert, Magboula
Muhammad Khattar, a 24-year-old widow huddled under a
tree” Mr. Kristof and The New York Times have done
great service to the Sudan and humanity with excellent
journalistic work on the Sudanese imbroglio.
Human relationships eventually lead to disagreements
and unfortunately arms conflicts or war are the end result, however, when this
phenomenon occurs in Africa, some, are quick to express exasperations and all
manners of irritations, as if conflicts and war are a peculiarly African thing!
When there are crises outside of Africa, there are rapid
response systems, from NATO, UN, US, EU etc, because the
lives of others are more valuable than the lives of Africans? Or what else
might explain the neglect that led to the genocide in Rwanda and again now in Darfur Sudan? What explains the
grudging response from the UN? And why is no one,
dropping food and necessities from 30,000 feet with airplanes? As was clearly
the case in Kosovo/Bosnia, then repeated in Afghanistan and Iraq, similar crises torn
countries, which are co-incidentally not on African soil? There are always
these tepid lackluster responses from the UN and the rest of the world.
Sudan needs urgent aid Sudan's hellish humanitarian crisis
Thousands starving in Darfur Some 300,000 people will
starve, even if emergency aid is delivered immediately, according to the head
of the United States aid agency. Some 10,000 people
have died, and a million made homeless in a conflict between rebels and Arab
militias. UN officials blame Sudan's government, which they say
supports the militias as they rape and kill Darfur's people. The world must act;
Africans must be in the forefront leading the efforts!
Additional
Links: Dithering as Others Die http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/opinion/26KRIS.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fNicholas%20D%20Kristof Ignoring past genocides, we have betrayed basic American
values - and we are betraying
June 23, 2004 Magboula's
Brush With Genocide http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/opinion/23KRIS.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fNicholas%20D%20Kristof
Magboula Muhammad Khattar is
part of a wave of 1.2 million people left homeless by ...
June 19, 2004 Sudan's Final Solution http://query.nytimes.com/search/abstract?res=F60B13F93F5D0C7A8DDDAF0894DC404482&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fNicholas%20D%20Kristof
In my last column, I wrote about Magboula
Muhammad Khattar, a 24-year-old woman.
June 16, 2004 Dare We Call It
Genocide? http://query.nytimes.com/search/abstract?res=F70A13FB35540C758DDDAF0894DC404482&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fNicholas%20D%20Kristof The Bush
administration says it is exploring whether to describe the mass murder and