Stop the Genocide - Rally for Darfur (Norman Geras)

Norman Geras
August 26, 2004

Stop the genocide - rally for Darfur

From an editorial in the Washington Post on Tuesday:

Twenty-four days have elapsed since the U.N. Security Council gave the government of Sudan a month to stop a campaign of ethnic cleansing by militias and its own troops in the region of Darfur - and still the killing goes on. Monitors of the African Union and envoys of the United Nations report no substantial improvement.

From the Guardian:

"Maybe God knows why this happened," said Maryam Ayacoub Solomon, the mother of the murdered boys. "I don't know. I don't know what to say - I have no words left."

Every few days, more refugees from Darfur cross the border into eastern Chad. They all tell the same story; in recent days and weeks, there have been fresh attacks on black African villages involving Janjaweed fighters backed up by Sudanese government troops.

Despite a UN security council resolution demanding that Sudan disarms the Janjaweed, Khartoum's war against its own people goes on.

Jose Ramos Horta in the Melbourne Age:

Those who oppose the use of force under any circumstances have not been able to articulate a better strategy to deal with situations of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Patient diplomacy lasts as long as it lasts; it might bear fruits, and it might not. But genocide goes on, as in the case of Sudan right now where tens of thousands of our fellow human beings are dying.

Like the Washington Post editorial above, Ramos Horta (whose article is worth reading in full) urges support for an effective African Union intervention force.

Stop genocide in Sudan.

Noah Trugman for The American Anti-Slavery Group (email):

The American Anti-Slavery Group and other human rights groups are organizing a rally to protest the UN's inaction in Darfur and to stop the genocide in Sudan. The rally will be held outside the U.N. in New York City at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 12, which is just prior to the reconvening of the UN's General Assembly.

We are issuing a special call to action to the blogging community to publicize this rally on their sites. We hope to bring together a grassroots movement to hold world leaders accountable and force the UN at last to take strong action on genocide. [Emphasis added.]

The website for the rally is here:

Black people across Sudan are under threat of annihilation. The mass murder of Blacks in Darfur is the first genocide of the 21st century: 50,000 have been slaughtered, 2 million forced into the desert as refugees, and thousands raped and enslaved.

Stop genocide in Sudan.