Wiesel urges swift action; Danny Glover arrested at Sudan embassy
WASHINGTON, Aug 25 (AFP) — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel urged the international community to take swift action to end the humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s embattled Darfur region.
While Wiesel made his plea in a conference call with reporters, US actor Danny Glover was arrested on the steps of Khartoum’s embassy in Washington during a protest against the Sudanese government’s role in the western Darfur region’s crisis.
The protest came five days before the expiration of the UN Security Council’s deadline demanding that Khartoum disarm government-backed Arab militia terrorizing Darfur’s black population.
Although the international community seems “to show a willingness to order the perpetrators to stop and desist … more is needed,” said Wiesel, an author and Holocaust survivor.
“And what has to be done must be done swiftly,” he said. “Every day of inaction produces more victims and helps the killer, the torturer and the victimizer in their inhuman activity.”
During the same conference call, John Prendergast, an African policy analyst in former US president Bill Clinton’s administration, said Sudan’s government has failed to meet UN demands.
“The evidence points very, very clearly … that the government has not fulfilled the commitments it has set for itself nor has it fulfilled the various actions that the (UN) Security Council has demanded of it,” Prendergast said.
“Especially in the arena of the protection of civilians, which is in fact the most important and urgent action that needs to be taken by the government now,” he said, adding that international sanctions should be imposed against Khartoum.
The United Nations estimates that up to 50,000 people have been killed since Sudan’s armed forces and the militias cracked down on non-Arab minorities supporting rebels who took up arms against the government early last year.
More than one million people have fled their homes, with up to 200,000 seeking refuge in neighboring Chad.
At the Sudanese embassy in Washington, about 200 people chanted “Stop the killing now” and held signs reading “Read my lips: it’s genocide” as Glover, who starred in films such as “The Color Purple” and the four “Lethal Weapon” films, was arrested with other activists in an act of civil disobedience.
“We must continue to put pressure on the Sudanese government,” Glover said before being handcuffed in front of the doors of the embassy, which was closed. “We must continue to demand justice and we must continue to demand peace for the people of Darfur.”