Wiesel asks world: ‘Why so late’ on Darfur?

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Too little has been done, too late, to end rape and killing in Sudan’s Darfur region, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said on Wednesday and urged a more vigorous international response.

“Why now? Why so late? … It seems the international community has begun to show a willingness to warn the perpetrators to stop and desist. But more is needed,” he said.

“What has to be done must be done swiftly. Every day of inaction produces more victims and helps the killer, the torturer, the victimizer, in their inhuman activity,” Wiesel told a telephone news conference organized by a coalition of more than 70 faith-based humanitarian groups.

The United Nations calls Darfur — an area the size of France — the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and says more than a million people have been driven from their homes, and as many as 50,000 killed from either violence or deprivation.

Darfur has been torn by conflict since a revolt broke out in early 2003 among African villagers who accused the government of official neglect. The government turned to Janjaweed militias, drawn from the area’s nomadic Arabs, as auxiliary forces to suppress the rebels.

U.S. and U.N. officials and human rights groups accuse the Janjaweed militias of a waging a scorched-earth campaign in Darfur, with the backing of the Sudanese government, killing and raping villagers, torching their homes and driving them from their land.

U.N. Security Council has given Sudan’s government until the end of the month to show it is making progress in reining in the Janjaweed fighters or face unspecified sanctions.

But diplomats say punitive measures are unlikely in the foreseeable future because of political differences in the 15-nation body.

John Prendergast, a former White House adviser on Africa who now works with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, warned world governments against issuing endless warnings and deadlines without action.

If the Security Council fails to act, the United States, Britain and others should consider forming a coalition of the willing that could act on its own to bar arms sales or impose a travel ban or asset freeze on Sudanese officials.

“The longer we wait and don’t do anything and just warn and threaten and issue deadlines, the more people are going to die,” Prendergast told reporters.