Bush references genocide in State of the Union Address but declines specifics
Genocide Intervention Network
Contact: Ivan Boothe, Director of Communications, Genocide Intervention Network
(202) 557-1636, [email protected],
www.GenocideIntervention.net
President Wishes ?End of Tyranny in Our World’ Without Naming Darfur Crisis
White House, State Department Must Follow Words With Action to Stop Genocide
Feb 1, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — The Genocide Intervention Network recognizes
the Bush Administration’s leadership on resolving the 21-year civil war
between the Sudanese government and southern Sudan, while imploring the
president to make a similar moral commitment to ending the genocide in
the western region of Darfur.
Innocent people in Darfur are not protected. High-level attention from
the White House will end the genocide.
While the president noted the compassion shown to “a refugee fleeing
genocide” in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he chose not
to outline the concrete policies necessary to translate that compassion
into human security for Darfurians.
“The president must follow his words with action,” says GI-Net Chief
Executive Mark Hanis. “He must introduce a UN Security Council
resolution giving the peacekeepers in Darfur the mandate to protect
lives, he must ask Congress to restore funding to the peacekeeping
force, and he must revoke the license of Khartoum’s personal lobbyist.”
The situation in Darfur has continued to deteriorate since declarations
of genocide by President Bush and the U.S. Congress in 2004. The United
Nations reported that from October to November 2005, the number of
civilian deaths in Darfur nearly doubled.
A poll in the summer of 2005 by PIPA-Knowledge Networks revealed that
more than seven in ten Americans felt the United States should take an
active role in supporting the peacekeeping force in Darfur.
The Genocide Intervention Network works to mobilize an anti-genocide
constituency in the United States and Canada to raise the costs for
inaction by politicians in the face of genocide. Accessible online at
GenocideIntervention.net, GI-Net empowers its members with the tools to
support initiatives that prevent and stop genocidal violence, in
particular by protecting civilians in Darfur, Sudan.