China’s Genocide Games
By Eric Reeves, The Boston Globe
March 22, 2008 — In preparing to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, China has engaged in a
massive campaign to dissemble its role in the Darfur genocide in western
Sudan, now entering its sixth year. Such a task was unexpected by
Beijing. The regime knew it would encounter strenuous protests over the
continuing destruction of Tibet, although the recent violent crackdown
in Lhasa suggests Beijing hadn’t anticipated how deeply Tibetan anger
runs. China’s leaders also knew they would draw fierce protests over
their callous support of the brutal Burmese junta. Condemnation of
Beijing’s own gross domestic human rights abuses was equally
predictable. But the effectiveness of Darfur advocacy in highlighting
China’s role in Sudan took Beijing by surprise. The resignation last
month by Steven Spielberg from his role as an artistic director for the
Games—a decision of conscience stressing China’s role in
Darfur—sharply intensified China’s dismay.
Thus recently Beijing has pulled out all the stops to counter advocacy
success in emphasizing China’s longstanding diplomatic protection and
economic support for the Islamist regime in Khartoum. Though
Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency campaign against Darfur’s
African tribes has been authoritatively documented for years, Beijing
seeks to obscure this grim reality through distortion, half-truths, and
outright mendacity. In turn, nothing encourages Khartoum more than
China’s refusal to speak honestly about violent human destruction in
Darfur, where growing insecurity has brought the world’s largest
humanitarian operation to the brink of collapse.
Why does China airbrush away Darfur’s genocidal realities? Why has
Beijing been Khartoum’s largest weapons supplier over the past decade?
Why has China repeatedly wielded a veto threat at the UN Security
Council as the world body vainly struggles to bring pressure to bear on
Khartoum? The answer lies in China’s thirst for Sudanese crude oil.
Since the beginning of serious oil development in the 1990s, China has
been the dominant player in oil production consortia located mainly in
southern Sudan. China was also complicit in the scorched-earth
clearances that were part of oil development until the north/south peace
agreement of 2005. What China got for its ruthlessness was prime access
to the 500,000 barrels of crude that Sudan now produces daily, and
production rights that help insulate China from the economically
debilitating costs of off-shore oil purchases. Given the voracious
growth in China’s oil consumption, Beijing has determined that
ignoring gross human rights abuses in Sudan is simply a cost of doing
business.
This is why China has offered unstinting diplomatic protection to
Khartoum, most consequentially at the UN Security Council. And now in
defense of this destructive protectionist policy, China offers up
deliberate distortions of Darfur’s terrible truths. Thus Khartoum’s
adamant refusal to accept desperately needed non-African troops and
specialists for a UN-authorized peace support operation becomes a mere
“technical” problem, according to Liu Guijin, China’s Darfur
envoy. But this is false. The regime’s refusal to accept the
UN-proposed roster of troop-contributing countries has largely paralyzed
deployment of the UN/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID),
authorized by the Security Council last July. Britain’s UN ambassador
spoke for many when he declared earlier this year that Khartoum had made
a “political decision” to obstruct deployment of UNAMID.
China blames the “international community” for not pressuring rebel
groups in Darfur to negotiate an end to the conflict. But while there
is some justification to this charge, the real problem lies in China’s
refusal to countenance any sanctions that might pressure Khartoum to
engage in good-faith diplomacy. Indeed, China will not allow even
targeted sanctions against regime officials most responsible for
flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.
Confident that China will block punitive actions, Khartoum recently
resumed savage civilian clearances in West Darfur, deploying regular
military forces and Arab militia proxies. Many tens of thousands of
African civilians were displaced by ground and air attacks, and hundreds
were killed; towns, villages, and camps for displaced persons were
destroyed; humanitarian aid to the victims was deliberately blocked.
Only immense confidence in China’s diplomatic protectionism emboldened
the regime to resume such large-scale genocidal destruction.
If China is to be a legitimate host of the 2008 Olympics, the
preeminent event in international sports, it cannot be complicit in the
ultimate international crime—genocide. The world community must
respond more forcefully to this intolerable contradiction.
* Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. He can be reached at [email protected]. www.sudanreeves.org