Questions on Darfur for those who aren't helping by New York Times / Reuters Alertnet 8:50am 14th Sep, 2004   September 14, 2004    "Questions on Darfur for those who aren't helping", by Nicholas Kristof. (New York Times)    On my last visit to the Darfur area in Sudan, in June, I found a man groaning under a tree. He had been shot in the neck and jaw and left for dead in a pile of corpses. Seeking shelter under the very next tree were a pair of widows whose husbands had both been shot to death. Under the next tree I found a four-year-old orphan girl caring for her starving one-year-old brother. And under the tree next to that was a woman whose husband had been killed, along with her seven and four-year-old sons, before she was gang-raped and mutilated.    Those were the refugees sheltering under just four adjacent trees. Thousands of other victims with similar stories stretched as far as the eye could see.    So I salute the Bush Administration for formally declaring last Thursday that the slaughter is a genocide. But, three years after September 11, 2001, let's remember that almost as many people are still dying in Darfur every week as died in the World Trade Centre attack.    "There's kind of a reign of terror that exists," said Kenny Gluck, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders in the Netherlands. Even in the camps where Doctors Without Borders is present, he says, Janjaweed gunmen often rape women or execute men who go off to seek firewood. So now, he said, many families are making an agonising choice: they are sending their small children out at night to gather wood because small children are less likely to be murdered or raped.    So I've got some questions.    For President George Bush: why don't you turn up the heat on Sudan? How about consulting urgently with the leaders of America's allies about how to exert more pressure on Sudan? How about inviting victims to the White House and denouncing the genocide from the Rose Garden? How about threatening a flight exclusion zone in Darfur unless Sudan co-operates?    For France and Germany: I sympathised with your opposition to the war in Iraq. But are you really now so petty and anti-Bush that you refuse to stand with the United States against the slaughter in Darfur, or even to contribute significant sums to ease the suffering? Does the Chirac Government really want to show the moral blindness to Sudan's genocide that the Vichy regime did to Hitler's?    For the Islamic world: you're absolutely right to hold Israel's feet to the fire over its often brutal treatment of Palestinians, but why don't you also care about dead Sudanese? In August, according to a human rights monitoring group, Israel killed 42 Palestinians, including fighters. In the same period, according to the World Health Organisation, more than 10,000 people died in Darfur - virtually all of them Muslims. Islamic Relief is doing an excellent job, but the Muslim victims of Darfur are getting far more help from Jewish and Christian aid groups than from Islamic charities.    For the United Nations: agencies such as the UN World Food Program are working heroically to keep the victims alive, but the UN as a whole has failed to respond to Sudanese atrocities. Mostly that's because of the failure of member states, but I'm afraid that some of the responsibility has to be charged to a man I like and respect: Kofi Annan.    I hate to say it, but the way things are going, when he dies his obituary will begin: "Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general who at various points in his career presided ineffectually over the failure to stop genocide, first in Rwanda and then in Sudan, died today."    One of the people I met on my last trip to Darfur was Hatum Atraman Bashir, who was pregnant with the baby of one of the 20 Janjaweed raiders who murdered her husband and gang-raped her. A few days ago, I received an email note from an aid worker in the International Rescue Committee, which is assisting Bashir, saying that she had given birth but could not produce milk for the baby - a common problem because of malnutrition.    The lives of Bashir, her new baby and about 1 million others are at stake as the world dithers over how to respond to the genocide. And so far we've failed them.    (Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas Kristof is a columnist with The New York Times, where this article first appeared).    13 Sep 2004    EU to warn of Sanctions against Sudan over Darfur.    BRUSSELS, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The European Union could impose sanctions against Sudan for failing to take adequate steps to disarm pro-government militias, the bloc's foreign ministers were set to announce on Monday.    The U.N. Security Council threatened on July 30 to consider imposing unspecified sanctions on Sudan if it failed within 30 days to improve security in Darfur and disarm Janjaweed militias accused of atrocities in the vast region of western Sudan.    Foreign ministers meeting in Brussels were set to conclude that the government had not done enough.    "The Council (of foreign ministers) concludes that there is no indication that the government of Sudan has taken real and verifiable steps to disarm and neutralise these militia and the Janjaweed," said draft conclusions set to be approved by the ministers, according to an EU diplomat.    "Contrary to various announcements by the government of Sudan there are reports about continuing massive and severe human rights violations by the armed militia, including systematic rape of women."    Ministers were set to announce "appropriate measures, which could include sanctions, against the government of Sudan... if no tangible progress is achieved," the EU diplomat said.    Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said earlier this month that the EU was already drawing up a list of possible sanctions against Sudan to assess what impact they might have.    He added that these could include a boycott on Sudanese oil, although nothing concrete had been decided.    Sudan is a small oil producer, exporting about 200,000 barrels a day from its fields in the south of country, and plans to complete a new pipeline by August 2005 to double exports.    British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said security in Darfur had improved slightly since June, and that refugee camps were relatively safe when he visited in August.    "But the countryside as a whole and this vast territory of north, south and west Darfur remains unsafe for the refugees and their families, and we therefore look to the Sudanese government to take much more urgent action to secure Darfur for all the people there," he told reporters.
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