No to the silence and conspiracy surrounding the genocide of Darfur
BY Mahmoud A. Suleiman
Important Note: The above title is borrowed from the Darfur Women Action Group Site: http://www.darfurwomenaction.org/?gclid=Cj0KEQiAiMHEBRC034nx2ImB1J0BEiQA-r7ctgy80HdfXJTNBaYpb7y_zEb5SlVu2Q52_lBZJvmYl1oaAmMc8P8HAQ
Please note that this article comes on the backdrop of the 72nd Anniversary of the Nazi Holocaust on Thursday, January 26, 2017. All the Genocide features continue in Darfur continues under the sight and hearing of the world represented in the United Nations Organization (UN) and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) of USA, UK, France, Russia, China, and the European Union (EU), the African Union (AU) and the League of Arab, formally the League of Arab State and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. It remains to be seen what the new US President Donald J. Trump intends to do. Humanity lives in a strange world that harbored the perpetrators of genocide like Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir of Sudan to remain at large travels around the world despite the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2009. Some might ask about the feasibility of the presence of international institutions and human rights organisations, including the International Criminal Court (ICC) without being activated as they should!
The War waged in Darfur represented one of the major armed conflicts in Sudan, after the end of southern Sudan conflict by the cessation of the South and gained its independence from Sudan in 2011. The crisis in Darfur began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel groups began fighting the government of Sudan, which they accused of oppressing Darfur’s non-Arab population and denying them from participating as citizen in sharing the Power and Wealth of the country, given the fact that the population of the Region amounts to more than 20 per cent of the entire population of the country.
As of February 2017, the Issue of the Sudanese Civilians in the Region of Darfur will mark the 14th XIV morose and ill-fated Anniversary. In a nutshell, it is not easy to calculate the inventory of those lean years in the light of the continued implementation of systematic genocide against the population of the region by the ruling regime of the branch of the Global Muslim Brotherhood Movement (MBM) in Khartoum headed by the Génocidaire fugitive from International Justice, Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir and his cronies, entourage of corrupt failed group. Sometimes such an inventory is referred to as the harvest of the wildfire, metaphorically! Also sometimes it is referred to as a cry over spilled milk. However, there is always one important thing stands out from such continuing misery caused to the survivors of genocide in Darfur in 2004, ten years after the genocide in Rwanda, 59 years after the Nazi HOLOCAUST From 1941 to 1945 and Nine years after the genocide in Bosnia 1992-1995. Nevertheless, in order that one to be more serious on this overtly serious matter one would try going further to expose the failures that accompanied the civilian populations who suffered all kinds of woes of killings, gang rape of women and young girls, mass displacement, forced migration, looting of property, burning of homes while the international community remained inept, toothless and divided along the lines of intersecting interests with the National Congress Party (NCP) regime that offers concession after a concession in lieu of being kept on the helm of once a Greater Sudan – one million Square Mile sized, the Map of which now has been distorted by the forced secession of its southern part , including the people who have established another failed neighbouring country. By Thursday 26 January 2017, the Nazi HOLOCAUST has marked the 72nd Anniversary. AS for the people of the region of Darfur, Genocide still continues unabatedly and new breed of weapons being used by the NCP regime, including Chemical Warfare in the localities of the Jebel Marra Massive in the Central State of Darfur, of Western Sudan. While this article incorporates Genocide as a core item, one shouldn’t bypass the suffering of the people of Cambodia under the Communist rule of Khmer Rouge led by the infamous brutal regime of Pol Pot. The brutal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh’s 2.5 million residents. Former civil servants, doctors, teachers and other professionals were stripped of their possessions and forced to toil in the fields as part of a reeducation process. Khmer Rouge movement led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During that time, about 1.5 million Cambodians out of a total population of 7 to 8 million died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork –precisely of Genocide. http://www.history.com/topics/pol-pot.
Regrettably, and Unfortunately, the matter does not concern the absence of the tragedy of the people of Darfur from the international community Radar, but the worst is the closeness and the rapprochement developing between the members of the international community represented by the United States of America (US) under the former President Barak Obama and the European Union (EU) with Omer al-Bashir’s regime. Before the end of his term in office, Obama opted for a partial lifting of economic sanctions, whereas the (EU) offered the gift of millions of euros to the Government of criminal genocide Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir.in lieu for cooperation in curbing the flow of migration from the Horn of African nations – Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti to the shores of Europe across the Mediterranean Sea or through Libya. Regarding the partial lifting of economic sanctions on Sudan, one would like to say that if this brings about improvement to the daily living of the disenfranchised Sudan citizen one will welcome it. However, one knows for fact that the only beneficiaries of the decisions of the Obama US Administration to lift the economic sanctions are the Genocidal criminal Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir and his entourage and his followers. Obviously, one means the parasitic capitalists and business opportunists in the NCP Sudan who arranged themselves well before the issuance of the decision by the Obama Administration. The share of the average Sudanese people would be the grip of the wind and go empty-handed as usual in the NCP prolonged era of decadence.
The foregoing neglect for the Darfur people’s tragic cause by the current International Community seems contrary to the time when the United Nations (UN) has described Sudan’s Western Darfur region as one of the world’s Worst Humanitarian Crises. At the time, more than 300000 civilian have been killed, more than 2.3 million people have been displaced, most of them living in squalid camps in Darfur and neighbouring Chad as refugees. The Sudanese government waged a proxy warfare using the Janjaweed militias drawn from Arab tribes who have used scorched-earth tactics against the rebels’ civilian communities. Those earlier Janjaweed militias have been cloned overnight by the NCP regime into the infamous entity known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) directly. Administratively, the (RSF) operate directly under the Command of the (NCP) President Omar al-Bashir, making the Sudan Armed Force (SAF) irrelevant and so is the security service, known as the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS). Peacekeepers and aid workers have restricted access to those in need of Food and humanitarian aid to the needy in places of conflict. http://news.trust.org//spotlight/Darfur-conflict. Since 2003 to date, the Darfur region of western Sudan has been the site of terrible violence, death, and displacement; what the United States has labeled ‘genocide’. http://origins.osu.edu/article/worlds-worst-humanitarian-crisis-understanding-darfur-conflict.
The Sudanese people are likely face an even more difficult array of hard choices a year ahead and left with only limited hard choices of accepting the status quo or confronting the NCP regime head on in an attempt for ousting it by all the available means. Difficult and Painful as it is, there must be an action; inaction would strengthen the regime and making it more oppressive than before. This is more so after the regime strengthened by the support it received from the White House in the US and the EU in Brussels. The Genocide or Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on a society. It forces us to examine the responsibilities of citizenship and confront the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction. Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. . Meister Eckhart, the German theologian, philosopher and mystic was quoted as saying: The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/inaction.htm
The Dictatorial (NCP) regime in Sudan continued oppressing the entire population with an iron fist over the past 28 lean years since its ill-fated coming through Military coup d’état on Friday, the 30th June 1989. It falsely legitimized its existence on the helm of Sudan by series of forged and rigged elections boycotted by majority of the Sudanese public while the main political opposition is either in exile or in the regime’s prisons. In spite of this tyrannical regime finds unlimited support from the international community. This is nothing but a travesty of justice imposed through the international organisation, under the rubric nomenclature of international community.
Charles de Montesquieu generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French lawyer, man of letters, and political philosopher who lived during the Age of Enlightenment has been quoted as saying There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman is an author, columnist and a blogger. His blog is http://thussudan.wordpress.com/