April 8, 2005
On Anniversary of Rwanda Genocide, Activists Demand Action on Darfur
OneWorld US

Activists invoked this week's anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to ratchet up calls for stronger action on what they termed another unfolding genocide neglected by the international community, this time in western Sudan's Darfur region.

Abid Aslam, OneWorld US

WASHINGTON, D.C., Apr 8 (OneWorld) - Activists invoked this week's anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to ratchet up calls for stronger action on what they termed another unfolding genocide neglected by the international community, this time in western Sudan's Darfur region.

''In a mere 100 days in 1994, 800,000 people were butchered in Rwanda and the U.S. government did nothing,'' said Salih Booker, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Africa Action. ''This time we will not allow the White House to twiddle its thumbs in the face of genocide.''

Booker's group sponsored a vigil by politicians, celebrities, activists, and people from Darfur at the White House Wednesday night. They demanded that President George W. Bush move the U.N. Security Council to form a multinational intervention force for the troubled region, where military experts and humanitarian groups have said an overstretched deployment of African peacekeepers badly needs reinforcement.

Rebels in Darfur took up arms against the Sudanese government in early 2003, after years of tribal conflict over scarce resources in the arid region. They accused the government in Khartoum of neglect and of arming Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages.

Khartoum has admitted arming some militias to fight the rebels but has denied any links to the Janjaweed, which it has called outlaws.

The fighting has killed at least 180,000 and forced more than two million people from their homes since the conflict began, the United Nations said. British parliamentary investigators estimated the death toll at up to 300,000. Africa Action put the number killed at around 400,000, adding that recent reports showed the security situation deteriorating as the humanitarian crisis grew desperate.

The U.S. Congress has declared that genocide is taking place in Darfur and the U.S. State Department, under intense pressure from activists, has conducted its own investigations and sought to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution issuing a similar declaration, so far to no avail.

Sudanese officials have countered U.S. claims of genocide by saying that Washington presented a false dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and now had turned to presenting a dossier against Sudan, another Arab state with oil.

In something of a breakthrough, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday handed the names of 51 people suspected of war crimes and atrocities in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The list, drawn up by the U.N. commission investigating allegations of killings, torture, and rape included Sudanese government and army officials and militia and rebel leaders.

The U.N. also submitted other documents outlining war crimes allegations to the court in The Hague after the U.N. Security Council broke precedent and voted for the first time to refer a case to the ICC.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was quoted in news reports as saying his country would refuse to hand any Sudanese national to a foreign court. Tens of thousands of people reportedly marched through the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, protesting against the U.N.

Likewise, Washington has opposed the ICC on the grounds that it would impinge upon U.S. sovereignty and expose U.S. military and other personnel to possible prosecution. But in the Darfur case U.S. diplomats lent tacit support to the referral by abstaining rather than vetoing the council's decision.

Even some Bush administration detractors praised Washington's new stance.

''The U.S. decision to allow the Security Council to send the Darfur case to the ICC puts teeth behind the U.S. government's declaration last summer that genocide was taking place,'' said Citizens for Global Solutions, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank and advocacy group. It hailed the abstention as ''an indication that principles and pragmatic policy have prevailed over politics in the Bush administration.''

Heather Hamilton, the group's vice president, urged further U.S. action.

''Now the U.S. must remain engaged with the court and share the information it gathered to make the genocide determination last summer,'' she said. ''These materials should not sit in a file cabinet in Foggy Bottom; they should be shared with the ICC prosecutor to help him build a solid case against those orchestrating the massacres in Sudan.''

The U.S. State Department's headquarters are located in Washington, D.C.'s Foggy Bottom area.

The ICC referral came on the heels of a Security Council resolution that imposed a limited arms embargo and personal sanctions on certain Sudanese individuals.

Those were promising moves but ''more urgent steps are required to stop this genocide,'' said Ann-Louise Colgan, policy director at Africa Action.

''There is a pressing need for a rapid and robust international intervention in Darfur to protect civilians, to enforce the ceasefire, and to facilitate a massive expansion of humanitarian operations. Unless such an intervention is mounted immediately, up to a million people could be dead by the end of this year,'' Colgan said.

With limited international support, African Union (AU) peacekeepers have been able to establish pockets of security in Darfur despite being a small, slow-to-deploy force, said humanitarian group Refugees International. AU troops have headed off attacks, negotiated the release of hostages and provided enough security for some displaced villagers to return home, the Washington, D.C.-based group said.

The successes seem improbable for a force of only around 1,800 personnel in an area the size of Texas with few roads, airfields and other infrastructure, vast deserts, high temperatures and a summer rainy season that turns everything to mud, Refugees International said in a recent field report.

Even so, Human Rights Watch showcased in February what it called new eyewitness testimony that the Janjaweed attacked villages in south Darfur in December and January, sometimes with government air support. It said this violated a ceasefire pact and agreements to cease hostile aerial activity.

The rights watchdog also assailed rebels for attacking civilians and called on anti-government groups to respect civilians and civilian infrastructure and to cease attacks on humanitarian workers and convoys.

Human Rights Watch also had been prominent among international groups demanding that the U.N. Security Council refer cases involving atrocities to the ICC.

Annan, the U.N. head, on Thursday told the world body's Human Rights Commission in Geneva that the 53-nation group's failure to protect against human rights abuses in Darfur and elsewhere underscored his recent proposal to replace it with a new council with greater authority. The idea was among a raft issued recently and aimed at spurring efficiency and confidence in the United Nations system.

Rwanda marked the tenth anniversary of its genocide Wednesday under banners emblazoned with the words ''Never Again.''

Two national memorials were opened, one commemorating some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed by Hutu militias after the assassination of an ethnic Hutu leader and the other, dedicated to 10 massacred Belgian peacekeepers.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame said his country bore primary responsibility for the killings and upheaval but he chided the West once more for turning a blind eye to the genocide at the time. He singled out France, which he said had trained government troops and Hutu militias knowing that they planned to commit genocide.

Few Western countries had sent senior representatives to the anniversary events in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

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