Israeli Holocaust Memorial Authority urges action for Darfur

JERUSALEM, July 18, 2004 (dpa) — Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Authority called Sunday for world leaders to take “immediate concerted action to halt the tragedy” in the Darfur region of Western Sudan “before it devolves further”.

In a statement, Yad Vashem urged the leaders of world nations “to provide effective humanitarian aid to the region and to punish the perpetrators of the heinous crimes that are being committed there”.

“The aggregate of news reports about the situation in Darfur indicates that the escalating humanitarian crisis includes aspects of ethnic cleansing and perhaps even genocide,” the statement said.

“It is imperative that we learn the lesson of past failures to respond in time to evolving genocidal evil,” the statement added, noting the world had been slow to respond to news of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, or the “unrestrained genocide” which took place in Rwanda in the 1990s.

Darfur, an area larger than France, has for years has been riven by tensions between the black African and Arab populations.

An escalation in the conflict over recent months has seen up to 30,000 people killed and around 1.2 million forced from their homes by government-backed Arab Janjaweed militias. The situation has been described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.