Mia Farrow to protest China’s failure to push Sudan on Darfur
June 15, 2007 (NEW YORK) — Actress Mia Farrow unveiled plans for an Olympic-style torch relay beginning this summer as part of a campaign aimed at shaming China into cutting support for Sudan over its role in the Darfur conflict.
Farrow, a U.N. goodwill ambassador, and a new activist group called Dream for Darfur are hoping to use the spotlight of the 2008 Beijing Olympics to draw attention to China’s economic and diplomatic support for Sudan. China buys two-thirds of Sudan’s oil and has close commercial ties with Khartoum.
They are asking China to suspend debt relief for Sudan, end arms transfers to the regime, and increase diplomatic pressure on the Sudanese government.
Jill Savitt, director of Dream for Darfur, said the organization hopes China will act before the games, reaffirming the Olympics as a symbol of “world peace through sporting.”
“It’s irreconcilable for the host of the Olympics to also be complicit in an ongoing genocide,” Savitt said in a telephone news conference Wednesday.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made homeless in Darfur during four years of attacks by Arab militias known as the janjaweed and allegedly backed by President Omar al-Bashir’s government. The government denies the charge.
The torch relay will begin Aug. 8 in Chad near the Sudan border and make its way through countries associated with genocide: Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia, Germany and Cambodia, before ending up in December in Hong Kong. Farrow will attend the launch in Chad and will travel to Rwanda.
“It’s apparent now that there’s one thing that China holds more dear than its unfettered access to Sudanese oil,” Farrow said. “And that is their successful staging of the 2008 Olympic Games.”
After several months of delay, Sudan said Wednesday it would accept a joint United Nations-African Union force of between 17,000 and 19,000 troops.
As a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, Beijing has blocked efforts to send U.N. troops to Darfur without Sudanese consent.
Wenji Gao, the chief press officer at China’s Consulate in New York, said China had played a “positive and constructive role in solving the issue,” pointing to its participation in negotiations at the U.N. and the ongoing dialogue between Beijing and Khartoum.
“It’s totally groundless to connect the Olympics with Darfur,” Gao added. “The basic Olympic spirit is that the Olympic Games are not to be politicized.”
Sudanese officials in Khartoum did not return calls for comment on Wednesday.
In what appeared to be a response to international pressure, last month China appointed a special representative for Africa to focus on Darfur, and has publicly urged Khartoum to give the U.N. a greater role in trying to resolve the conflict.
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On the Net:
Dream for Darfur:
http://www.dreamfordarfur.org