Friday, February 29, 2008

HEADS TURN AWAY

Writing in The New Republic, Eric Reeves discusses here how recent events in West Darfur should "compel us to start calling things by their correct names again."

Earlier this month, Janjaweed militias, in coordination with the Sudanese military attacked rebel strongholds in West Darfur targeting ethnically African Masseleit and Erenga civilians and towns. Using militarily imprecise barrel bombs they have caused deaths and massive displacement of civilians. Khartoum has suspended all humanitarian flights to the region; cutting off 160,000 people from food, medical, and water assistance.

"Ominously, a large number of children aged 12 through 18 are missing, disproportionately boys. Both the Janjaweed and Khartoum's regular troops have a long history of executing young males from non-Arab ethnic groups."

"What we're seeing in Darfur now is a level of ethnically targeted violence that hasn't been approached since the terrifying days of 2004."

Yet nobody uses the "G" word any more. "Genocide" is off the table and the United Nations Human Rights people are nowhere in sight. They're too preoccupied with their phony posturing against another country further east that's defending itself from those who want to destroy it utterly.

Reeves sees one of the problems in bringing this situation to the world's attention as being one of the way people are looking at the situation: -

"Human destruction and displacement are no longer 'genocidal,' but rather a function of rebel fractiousness, opportunistic banditry, and a generalized 'insecurity'."

These days the whitewashing of the activities of Arab terrorist organisations bent on murder and destruction and the governments that support them is not news to us. That the Darfurians can’t buy publicity to cover their plight while the rest of the world turns its collective head away from these shocking atrocities is a sad sign of our times. This silence is shame!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

thanks for this tips