Activists urge leaders not to look away from Darfur crisis
September 16, 2007 (LONDON) — Celebrities, activists and human rights groups across the globe joined demonstrations Sunday to urge world leaders gathering this week for the U.N. general assembly not to look away from the crisis in Darfur.
In London, scores of activists donned black blindfolds, symbolizing the international community’s failure to act since vowing to stop atrocities in Darfur two years ago.
Demonstrators in Rome wore white T-shirts with a bloodstained hand on the front and marched to the Italian city’s central Piazza Farnese. They carried a peace torch, which they said was lit in Chad where hundreds of thousands from Darfur now live in refugee camps.
Organizers, who planned protests in more than 30 countries, including Australia, Egypt, Germany, Japan, Mongolia, Nigeria, South Africa and the United States, said some in the international community had become complacent since the U.N. Security Council approved plans on July 31 for a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for the vast, war-battered region in western Sudan.
The deployment of the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force faces delays, however, due to a lack of aviation, transport and logistics units, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last month.
In the meantime Darfur’s violence has increased, organizers said. Campaigners are demanding that the force be deployed swiftly, and that the international community put pressure on all sides in the conflict until attack on civilians stop.
“The world has acknowledged the atrocities in Darfur. And its leaders have promised to end them. Now they must fulfill that promise,” said Colleen Connors from Globe for Darfur, a coalition of aid groups working in Darfur.
“The meeting of world leaders in the next two weeks is a critical juncture for the people of Darfur,” she said. “We simply cannot afford to look away now.”
In London, demonstrators carried signs reading “Stop genocide in Darfur” and “Rape, torture, murder. How much longer for Darfur?”
Actors Matt Damon, Don Cheedle, supermodel Elle MacPherson and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu are among the celebrities who appear in a video filmed for the day in which they hold up slogans demanding action.
“The people of Darfur need peace and they need it now. To make peace a possibility governments should push for an immediate ceasefire and supply the peacekeepers they have talked about for months,” Damon said.
Tutu called Darfur “the world’s largest concentration of human suffering,” adding “it’s also entirely avoidable if people speak out.”
Britain and China pledged new support Sunday for the hybrid peacekeeping force.
Britain would likely provide technical support for peacekeepers, as well as additional support for the African countries contributing to the force, said Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who helped push the British-French resolution on Darfur through the U.N. Security Council.
“I want to see the hybrid force in place before the end of the year,” Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp. “I want to see it there, if at all possible, earlier than that.”
Beijing, which is trying to counter criticism that it is reluctant to support international intervention in Darfur, said it would send 315 people.
The Chinese group, comprised of Chinese engineer platoons, a well-digging platoon, and a field hospital team, will build roads, bridges and dig wells before the larger U.N.-AU force arrives, China’s Defense Ministry said, according to state media.
Critics have attempted to shame China, one of Sudan’s major trading partners, into action by linking China’s failure to act in the Darfur crisis to calls for a boycott next year’s Summer Olympics in the Chinese capital.
More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been uprooted since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in 2003, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan’s government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed, a charge it denies.
Sunday’s events were being organized by a coalition of more than 50 organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Save Darfur Coalition.
Hopes of a cease-fire were boosted Saturday, when Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Khartoum was ready to call a cease-fire when peace talks get under way in Libya’s capital on Oct. 27.
(AP)