GENOCIDE OLYMPICS, sponsored by:
COCA COLA
Adidas
Anheuser-Busch
Atos Origin
BHP Billiton
Eastman Kodak
General Electric
Johnson & Johnson
Lenovo
Manulife Financial
McDonald's
Microsoft
Panasonic
Samsung
Staples
Swatch
UPS
Visa
Volkswagen
* and our apathy
I'd like to say a bit more about the sponsors -- just how rotten to the core they all are. We didn't ask much. We didn't ask them to quit. We asked so little of them. When we initially approached them, asking if they could use their positions of leverage with their host, they had ALL replied (in similar language) "this is not our job, it's the UN's job". So then we asked them to write a joint letter to the members of the UN Security Council urging them to make good on UN Resolution 1769 which they all signed in July -- when China headed the S. C. It authorized the deployment of 26,000 peacekeepers into Darfur. Although it stated that the force should be "predominantly"of African origin, the Government of Sudan, perpetrators of the crimes in the region, continue to insist that the troops be EXCLUSIVELY African.
July was a very long time ago for Darfurians. How many people in Darfur have died -- of violence, of hunger, of disease -- since July ? How many have been driven from their homes? How many women and girls have been raped?
"Genocide by Attrition in Sudan"
By Eric ReevesSunday, April 6, 2008; B07
Sudan's National Islamic Front regime has begun its sixth year of genocidal counterinsurgency warfare in the vast western region of Darfur, targeting African civilian populations perceived as the primary support for fractious rebel groups. Given the length of the conflict, news reports have inevitably taken on a grimly familiar and repetitive character that obscures the impending cataclysm of human destruction.
Without significant improvement in security on the ground -- for civilians and the humanitarians upon whom they increasingly depend -- deaths in the coming months will reach a staggering total. What Khartoum was unable to accomplish with the massive violence of 2003-04, entailing wholesale destruction of African villages, will be achieved through a "genocide by attrition." Civilians displaced into camps or surviving precariously in rural areas will face unprecedented shortfalls in humanitarian assistance, primarily food and potable water.
A recent U.N. map indicating aid access throughout Darfur shows that a large majority of people in the region are in areas with highly limited humanitarian access or none at all. The consensus among nongovernmental aid organizations is that they have access to only 40 percent of the population in need; 2.5 million of the 4.3 million Darfuris affected by conflict -- primarily women and children -- can't be securely reached by those attempting to provide food, clean water, shelter and primary medical care.
And things are poised to get much worse.
Paralyzing seasonal rains begin in earnest in June throughout the region. In eastern Chad, an obscenely underreported humanitarian crisis has put half a million Darfuri refugees and Chadian displaced persons at acute risk because of insecurity spilling over from Darfur. A European Union force deploying to eastern Chad may provide some of the protection necessary to halt the most threatening violence, but much depends on whether the force is perceived as an extension of a long-term French military presence that has supported Chadian President Idriss Déby.
In Darfur itself, however, the protection force authorized by the U.N. Security Council last July has stalled badly. Little more than a slightly augmented version of the African Union mission, it risks failing soon if it cannot do much better than its weak and undermanned predecessor. Khartoum refuses to accept key contingents from non-African countries and obstructs force deployment and operations in a range of ways. Indeed, nothing contributes more to what Human Rights Watch recently described as "chaos by design." While a variety of rebel groups, bandits and opportunistic armed elements contribute to the violence that threatens humanitarians, Khartoum has invested virtually nothing in providing security for Darfuris or humanitarians. On the contrary, reports from the field make clear that a climate of hostility, obstruction and abuse defines the working environment for all aid organizations. Khartoum still refuses to disarm its brutal Arab militia forces, the Janjaweed. Recently, in a campaign reminiscent of the worst military violence of the genocide's early years, Khartoum's regular ground and air forces coordinated with the Janjaweed in massive scorched-earth assaults against civilian villages in West Darfur.
But it is the onset of this year's heavy rains that may well mark the tipping point. A great many people weakened by five years of conflict and deprivation won't make it through the traditional "hunger gap" -- the period between spring planting and fall harvest. Last fall's harvests were disastrous, especially in North and South Darfur. Food reserves have never been lower, and because of insecurity the U.N. World Food Program has not been able to position adequate food stocks in the areas least accessible during the rainy season. Once the rains come -- severing road corridors, turning dry river beds into impassable torrents and creating a terrain of mud -- it will be almost impossible to move in many areas. The insecurity preventing humanitarian access will give way to sheer physical impossibility.
The international community has waited far too long to come to terms with the brutal motives behind Khartoum's simultaneous blocking of a U.N.-authorized protection force and its unconstrained harassment of humanitarian operations. Nothing short of the most urgent deployment of security forces will allow food to be moved into areas of greatest need. And nothing less than an equally urgent commitment to protect aid operations will permit an expanded humanitarian reach in the critical three months before the start of the rainy season. If Khartoum is not confronted over its deadly policies of fostering insecurity while obstructing humanitarian operations, then we may measure the consequences in hundreds of thousands of lives lost. The choice is before us now.
Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College, is the author of "A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide." He is a consultant to several human rights and humanitarian organizations in Sudan.
"Violence targeting civilians, including women and girls, continues at alarming levels with no accountability, or end, in sight..."
UN Chief Urges Action on DarfurBy EDITH M. LEDERER
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored "alarming levels" of violence in Darfur Friday, saying that the suffering of millions in the Sudanese region may have gotten worse in recent years.
Ban said the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force now being deployed in Darfur "can only be effective when there is a peace to keep." He urged the Sudanese government, rebel groups and other interested party to immediately focus on what can be done to end the hostilities, protect civilians and start negotiations.
Recalling the Security Council's first meeting on Darfur in April 2004, the secretary-general said "the situation remains grim today, as then, if not worse."
"Violence targeting civilians, including women and girls, continues at alarming levels with no accountability, or end, in sight," Ban said in a statement.
"Some 4.27 million civilians, including 2.45 million internally displaced, continue to suffer," he said. "As a result of ongoing attacks by armed forces and groups, more than 100,000 civilians have been forced to flee from violence this year alone, at a rate of 1,000 per day."
In a monthly report, Ban cited a dramatic deterioration in the security situation in some areas and increased hostilities, especially in Western Darfur which led to the displacement of thousands and civilian deaths. The situation is complicated by the presence of rebels from neighboring Chad in Western Darfur "who continue to regroup," it said.
In the report, Ban called for "all means possible" to be used to deploy the AU-U.N. force quickly to protect the people of Darfur. Only 9,200 troops and police of the 26,000 authorized are on the ground and earlier this week the United States said it wants 3,600 new African troops in Darfur by June.
He said the U.N. is accelerating deployment but the Sudanese government has not yet given a green light for Thai and Nepalese troops, insisting it wants all African forces on the ground first.
He called on all parties trying to end the fighting to "immediately focus on what can be achieved by ending the hostilities, protecting civilians and coming to the negotiating table."
The U.N. believes that far more than 200,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Fighting has raged in Darfur since 2003, when ethnic African tribesman took up arms, complaining of decades of neglect and discrimination by the Sudanese Arab-dominated government. Khartoum has been accused of unleashing janjaweed militia forces to commit atrocities against ethnic African communities in the fight with rebel groups.
All of the above, including the cocoa cola logo was found posted at www.miafarrow.org
* my words
When they come for us who will care?
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