UK, US Holocaust centres to close in Darfur protest
By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON, June 23 (Reuters) – Two Holocaust memorial centres, in Britain and the United States, will close for one hour on Thursday to highlight the humanitarian crisis in west Sudan’s Darfur region. The United Nations estimates that fighting in the region has driven more than one million people from their homes, and has warned of the risk of genocide there.
Rebels who launched a revolt in Darfur last year accused the government of neglect and of arming Arab militias called Janjaweed which have systematically attacked black Africans living there, burning and looting their villages.
Khartoum denies the charges.
“We hope to draw attention to the fact that what we are seeing in Darfur is a serious threat of genocide,” a spokesman for the British centre told Reuters by telephone.
“As organisations which spend every day of the year dealing with the issue of the Holocaust and carrying the moral authority of the survivors, we feel that ours is an important voice to be heard,” he added.
The two centres, one in Washington and one near the central English city of Nottingham, commemorate the murder of millions of European Jews in World War Two.
“If our voice was not heard this time when a serious threat of genocide is present, it would be to our shame,” the British spokesman said. Aid officials have called the situation in Darfur the world’s most pressing humanitarian emergency and say that two million people in the region need aid.
Britain, a major aid donor to the area, says it holds Khartoum responsible for ending the catastrophe and has accused the United Nations of failing to get fully involved.
But the British Holocaust centre spokesman accused Britain itself of failing to back its words with actions.
“We feel that the U.N. Security Council does need to act much more firmly on Sudan. It requires a new Security Council motion to refer the issue to the International Criminal Court, but Britain has been sidestepping that question,” he said.
Rebels in southern Sudan recently made significant progress in talks with the government towards ending 21 years of civil war.