Minnawi calls on the U.S. to not give up on Darfur plight

August 1, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudan Liberation Movement led by Minni Minnawi (SLM-MM) called on the United States to not give up its responsibility to protect the people of Darfur and to hold accountable the perpetrators of Darfur crimes.

On the occasion of the 14th anniversary of the SLM’s creation in the first of August 2001, Minnawi issued a statement condemning the regime of president Omer al-Bashir for the atrocities committed in the western Sudan region in its counterinsurgency campaign launched after a rebel attack on El-Fasher airport in February 2003 by then called “Darfur Liberation Movement”.

He also accused the successive governments in Khartoum of igniting hostilities among Darfur tribes and destroying peaceful coexistence between its divers tribes established by “grandparents” across dozens of centuries.

The rebel leader who was received by former U.S. President George Bush after the singing of a peace agreement with the government in 2006 called on the American administration to ” shoulder (its) responsibility regardless of constraints from the Security Council”.

“We need your individual role to protect and save the people of Darfur who are under threat of extinction by a criminal a cowardly terrorist .We hope to see a greater role of the US as it was the first state in 2004 called what going on in Darfur was a genocide and ethnic cleansing,” Minnawi further said.

He said the Troika countries, United Kingdom, Norway and U.S., should increase their pressures on Khartoum’s regime to stop the “genocide now under way in Darfur”.

Further, he called on the governments that support the government of president Bashir to build their relationship with “people rather than governments because nations are permanent and governments are temporary”.

UN agencies estimate that over 300,000 people may have died in the 12-year conflict in Darfur region. But the government says the figure was grossly exaggerated. However President Bashir who is accused of war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Court said that around 10,000 people were killed.

Minnewi concluded his statement by calling on the Sudanese people to conjugate their efforts to resist the “new round of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the people of Darfur, Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile. (And to) Save no effort to halt and condemn this criminal government until it stops its day and night crimes and violations against the helpless people of Darfur and other war areas”.

(ST)