Senate leaders calls for Sudan’s removal from UN Human Rights Commission

WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (AFP) — Senate leaders on Wednesday introduced a bill calling for the suspension of Sudan from the UN Human Rights Commission, as a sanction for continued bloodshed in Darfur.

The Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who introduced the bipartisan resolution, expressed frustration that UN actions to pressure Sudan have been tepid so far.

“The government in Khartoum simply hasn’t responded. These atrocities — the rape, the pillaging the murder, the total destruction of the villages — has continued,” he said on the Senate floor.

“A government that is engaged in committing genocide simply should not have a seat on the commission of human rights,” Frist said.

The bill was cosponsored by Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

An estimated 50,000 people have died in Darfur, Sudan’s vast western desert region, and another 1.4 million have been displaced in what UN officials have called a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Arab militias against black Africans.

The Senate and the House earlier this year passed resolutions condemning the atrocities in Sudan as genocide.