Activists plan to protest UN’s ‘inaction’ on Sudan violence
By Susan Jones
June 08, 2004(CNSNews.com) — U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will receive an honorary degree from Harvard University on Thursday, but he may hear some jeers amid the applause.
An anti-slavery group is planning to protest Annan’s “inaction” on what it calls the Sudanese government’s genocide in the western region of Darfur.
“Mr. Annan’s inaction is anything but honorable,” said the Rev. Dr. Gloria White Hammond, a director of the American Anti-Slavery Group. “The Secretary-General has failed to stand up to the Arab-dominated government of Sudan in its murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing.”
Thursday’s rally outside Harvard Yard will feature “an array of activists,” the American-Anti-Slavery Group said, including the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, founder of the Congressional Black Caucus and a former aide to Martin Luther King, Jr. and escaped slaves.
The American Anti-Slavery Group says the Sudanese government has waged its campaign of genocide against Sudan’s minority African population for many years.
“Despite participating in a peace process to end Sudan’s civil/religious war, the Khartoum regime is currently destroying the Shilluk Kingdom in Southern Sudan, holding thousands of South Sudanese Christians and animists in slavery, and launching devastating raids against African Muslims in the Western Sudanese region of Darfur,” the group said in a press release.
An estimated 30,000 people have been murdered in Darfur in the past few months alone, and as many as 1 million people may die by the end of 2004 as a result of Khartoum’s policy of forced starvation, the group added.
“Annan stood by in Rwanda in 1994, he stood by in Sebrenica in 1995, but we will not let him stand by today in Sudan,” said Dr. Charles Jacobs, president of the Anti-Slavery Group. “It’s ‘Kofi’s choice’ — be a bystander to genocide or take action to save lives.”
Hammond said the U.N.’s “pattern of ineptitude and practice of inaction” is disgraceful.
“The UN is an organization born from the ashes of the Holocaust to ensure that ‘never again’ would the international community tolerate genocide.”
The Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group describes itself as a “multi-ethnic, multi-religious” human rights group that is dedicated to abolishing modern day slavery worldwide.”
“Our coalition of supporters brings together leaders of all ideological backgrounds, including Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and former Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), attorneys Johnnie Cochrane and Kenneth Starr, and Reverends Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson,” the group says on its website.
Last month, Sudan was elected to a seat on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, despite its documented history of human rights abuses, including slavery. The decision prompted a walkout by U.S. delegates, with one U.S. representative calling the move an “absurdity.”
Human rights groups have accused the Sudanese government of “ethnic cleansing” and crimes against humanity in Darfur.