Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘darfur’

The results are in: By an overwhelming majority of 99%, South Sudan has voted to split from the North and form its own country. When/if statehood is officially declared in July, the folks over at Sporcle are going to have a busy day.

Meanwhile in Darfur (yeah, remember Darfur?), fighting has been escalating once again, while the world ignores it and focuses on South Sudan.

Lisa posts her thoughts following a fascinating interview with five refugees from Darfur currently staying on an Israeli kibbutz. An absolute must-read.

Yesterday’s Ynet had a piece about female Sudanese refugees from Darfur who have found their way to Israel and the private shelter that has offered them a refuge:

Eleven young women and 18 of their children are living in a shelter in a community in the Carmel region. The only difference between them and the rest of the residents is their origin: They have all escaped from the terror of genocide in Darfur, they have all somehow infiltrated into Israel and left behind families that they will never see again.

These women are not only haunted by the atrocities they have endured and by the family they have left behind – probably never to see again – but they face extreme hardships in Israel. Most crossed the border illegally from Egypt after enduring many hardships in their journeys, and their husbands are in prison. They are young women struggling to raise babies alone without any means of support besides the donations that keep the shelter running. They are in a land and culture that couldn’t be more different from their own. And the Israeli government, despite being openly sympathetic to their plight on a world stage, is not offering much help:

“The state claims that the refugees are a security threat because they are citizens of an enemy country, and I want to mention that during the Holocaust Jewish refugees were turned away from numerous countries with the excuse that they were German citizens. We cannot forget that we are talking about human beings, even if their religion and skin color is different. We have to give them the opportunity to continue on with their lives and overcome what they have lived through”.

I don’t mean to pick on the Israeli government here; obviously, Israel needs to balance its security concerns against its humanitarian ones. And the whole world should be doing more, Canada included.

Still, these women are eager to try to rebuild their lives in any way they can:

“The most important thing for them is education. They want to send their children to kindergarten and to school and to learn Hebrew. They all willingly learn about Judaism and the traditions of the Jewish people, and every Friday we have a Shabbat party.

“They also want to go to work, and are always asking me to try to arrange work for them. Every visitor is inundated with questions, maybe he has news from their husbands in prison, or knows when they will be allowed to go to work.”

The shelter needs help, and I encourage everyone to consider making a donation:

The shelter subsists solely on donations and needs all possible supplies: baby supplies such as blankets, sheets, clothing, cribs and carriages; a dryer; toys; and books in Arabic and English ,and Hebrew and English school books. To donate email sigal@hotline.org.il

Let’s spread the word.

A Reuters article, perhaps accidentally, stumbles on the true crux of the matter when it comes to North Korea:

North Korea has committed “crimes against humanity” against its own people according to an independent report published on Monday that made a long-shot appeal for the U.N. Security Council to deal with the issue.

Released after North Korea’s October 9 nuclear test, the report describes Pyongyang’s brutal treatment of its citizens, from the beatings of pregnant women to force miscarriages to the abduction, torture and execution of political prisoners.

Commissioned by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, the paper seeks to spotlight rights abuses that have been previously reported but are often overshadowed by concern about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

(Emphasis mine).

And that, after all, is the point. North Korea has been committing horrific crimes against humanity that beg the question of why, more than sixty years after swearing “never again”, the world sits back and allows them to happen.

The answer to that question can presumably be found in two little words: nuclear weapons. The theory is that, while in the midst of dealing with the nuclear crisis, there’s little that the world can do about anything else North Korea is doing.

So what’s our excuse, then, when it comes to (nuclear-less) Sudan?

As the Sudanese government does its best to boot the United Nations, the violence is getting worse.

Damian links to this Times article from last week in which a janjaweed defector explains, in horrifying detail, the atrocities that he helped commit against civilians.

In the latest chapter of the continuing saga of the irrelevance of the United Nations, the U.S. and Britain are co-sponsoring a resolution to deploy U.N. troops in Darfur:

The U.S. and British sponsored resolution would authorize the deployment of 20,000 U.N. troops and police in Darfur to take over from some 7,000 African Union troops, who have been unable to end bloodshed in the western Sudanese region.

Though the resolution, likely to be put to a vote on Thursday, would state that Sudan would need to agree to the deployment, it was expected to add pressure on Khartoum to drop its opposition to U.N. peacekeeping troops.

“Our judgment here is that we think we’ve found a formulation that would win acceptance on the (Security) Council,” U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters at the United Nations.

What about a formulation that would actually end the bloodshed?

This resolution – even if it passes – will be nothing more than symbolic. The U.N. is having trouble finding a few thousand troops to send to Lebanon; where will it find 20,000 for Sudan? Even if they go, chances are they’ll be equipped with nothing more than a blue helmet and a whistle. And, of course, for any of this to have made a difference, it would’ve had to have happened about four years ago.

As usual, the United Nations fell asleep at the wheel, and millions have been paying the price. If this resolution passes, it will be another case of far too little, far too late. Isn’t it time we admit that the U.N. is completely and utterly powerless to prevent, diffuse or end armed conflict and genocide?

Update: Similar sentiments from this Gazette editorial about Venezuela’s bid for a seat on the security council:

It’s not as if Chavez could make the Security Council less effective than it is now. Russia and China already take care of that, as we have seen in the case of Iran’s determined rush to acquire nuclear weapons. Sanctions? No no, say the Russians and the Chinese. Let’s talk and study for a few more months before we get to sanctions. What could go wrong?

From Rwanda to the Balkans to Darfur to Lebanon, and elsewhere, the Security Council has shown itself impotent and useless. Or worse than useless, as in approving a toothless resolution to disarm Hezbollah.

[. . . ]

Slaughter continues in Darfur, Iran becomes nuclear, Hezbollah re-arms. At the UN, meanwhile, urbane and well-dressed diplomats keep talking about process.

Venezuela on the Security Council? Hey, why not? It’s not as though other members such as Syria have exactly set the bar all that high.

Remember Darfur? The “UN sez we can’t call it genocide cause then we’d have to do something about it” crisis where deaths aren’t in the hundreds (like in Lebanon) but in the hundreds of thousands? The crisis that everyone loves to conveniently forget because it can’t be blamed on Israel or the United States?

Well, things are getting worse there, believe it or not:

Fighting between tribal militia groups in Darfur is on the rise, driven by the prevalence of weapons in the region, the senior United Nations envoy to Sudan warned today.

The situation in Darfur’s north and west, where clashes have become more violent recently because of the greater availability of weaponry, is particularly tense, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Jan Pronk told reporters during a press conference in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

He added that both fighting between the parties to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) and other groups, as well as fighting among rebel groups, has heavily affected the civilian population.

That’s UN-speak, so for the uninitiated, here’s a rough translation:

Peacekeeping efforts are woefully inadequate, and there’s still all-out chaos in Darfur. Militia groups and rebel gangs are bringing in weapons and using them to kill displaced people in camps where they’re supposed to be under UN protection. Millions of people who were forced from their homes and raped and tortured and starved and saw their family members killed sometimes right in front of their eyes are still facing the imminent threat of death even after years of “monitoring the situation”.

And the world watches Lebanon and wags its finger at Israel and does nothing to so much as lift a finger in Sudan. As usual.

Anyone who still believes that the United Nations has a role to play in protecting people or brokering crisis situations should just take a long hard look at Darfur.

This report is truly disturbing: the local head of MSF (Doctors Without Borders) in Darfur, Sudan has been arrested, ostensibly because MSF published a report detailing widespread reports of rape in Darfur without permission:

Sudan arrested the local head of an international aid agency on Monday over a report on hundreds of rapes in Darfur in the first such action against a top relief worker since a rebellion in the area began in 2003.

Paul Foreman, the country head of the Dutch branch of aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), told Reuters he had been arrested but was being freed on bail.

[ . . . ]

Farid said the arrest warrant had been issued after consultation with the governmental Humanitarian Aid Commission. Under Sudanese law, he said MSF should have consulted the Commission before publishing any reports.

In New York, Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, expressed concern about Foreman’s arrest and urged Sudanese authorities to drop the charges immediately.

“It is an incontestable fact that rape and sexual violence are rampant in the ongoing crisis in Darfur,” Egeland said in a statement. He said MSF Holland’s “work in treating victims of rape and sexual violence, and speaking out about the terrible crimes being committed has been exemplary.”

The tragedy of Sudan’s Darfur region is that the whole catastrophe was created by human beings while other human beings stood by and did nothing to stop it. The figures are staggering: more than 2 million driven from their homes, some death figures up in the neighbourhood of 400,000 including those directly murdered by the janjaweed and others dead from starvation or disease. The stories that survivors have told about mass rape are truly horrifying.

But the Sudanese government admits to nothing. Not to arming and funding the janjaweed militias. Not to being responsible for the genocide – and let’s call a spade a spade here – that continues to be carried out as the world fumbles and fumes and for the most part stands idly by. And certainly not to what everyone knows is fact.

Compared to the horror stories already widely circulated in the press, MSF’s report was nothing new. But now, the head of MSF has been charged with “spreading false information” simply for speaking the horrible truth. Sadly, I have a feeling that the world will ignore this injustice as well.

Autonomous Source has a story that’s getting little press coverage but could have widespread implications.

Debbye warns us that Carolyn Parrish may be staging a comeback, now that Paul Martin’s so desperate to inflate his ranks with just about anyone. Why can’t she just disappear?

Imshin and Lisa both share travel tales.

And over at Peaktalk, a strongly-worded post criticizing the Liberals of playing politics with human lives in Darfur. On principle I agree, though I have to sadly admit that there’s precious little that Canada could do even if we were honestly committed to trying.

Today is Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It is a day to remember the 6 million who perished.

But beyond that, it is a day of reflection: on the world that let it happen, on Jewish identity before and after the Holocaust, on Israel and its role, and on where we go from here.

Sadly, this day gets more and more relevant each year, as antisemitism rises and the world sits idly by.

Meryl has some must-read links. Jewlicious has the story of the MTV Holocaust commemoration special, which is probably not as irreverant as it sounds (at least I hope not). Allison has second-grade humour with a bitter Holocaust twist. And Jewschool promotes a rally against the genocide going on in Sudan’s Darfur region – only the latest chapter in the countless episodes of “Again” that have occurred since we resolved “Never Again”.