Speech In French

Before getting into my prepared talk, permit me to repeat a few important points that were made about Darfur at last weekend's Health and Human Rights Conference at Queen's University. There were many excellent speakers, mostly medical practitioners talking about health issues in Africa, but I'll refer only to what was said by Sgt Debbie Bodkin and Major Brent Beardsley about Darfur.

Bodkin, a police detective with the Waterloo Police, has investigated victims in former Yugoslavia in 2000, Chad in 2004, and for the UN Commission of Inquiry for Darfur in 2004-2005. She described some of what she heard during her victim interviews on the UN inquiry, including a 10-year-old African Darfuri girl who was gang raped by the Janjaweed. One brave woman came forward and told her that about approximately fifty African Darfuri women and girls in their refugee camp alone had been raped. One of the insults used by the perpetrators was, "Slave, get out of my country". The UN Commission later found nonetheless that there was no genocide, but only crimes against humanity.   This politically-motivated adjudication (in my opinion-DK) adjudication meant in practical terms that nothing needed to be done by the Security Council under the Genocide Convention of 1948. Bodkin told us that she continues to suffer post-traumatic stress in part because the "killers are still running rampant".

In my judgement, the UN Commission bizarrely found no intent to commit genocide under the Convention and in doing so effectively ignored the victim statements obtained by Bodkin and other investigators in order to get the Security Council off the hook to do anything effective to stop the bombing, killing and raping. The Government of Sudan has clearly intended the genocide to continue from 2003 to the present .

Beardsley, who was Romeo Dallaire's personal staff officer during the events of April-July, 1994 in Rwanda, made it clear that he, doubtless like all of us in his audience, thinks the response to the the Darfur catastrophe continues to be "ineffective" after four nightmare years. He quoted from the Genocide Convention--"to destroy in whole or in part members of a racial, national, religious or ethnic group"--reminding us that rape is now a tool of genocide in the jurisprudence. He then took us through some of the major facts of the Rwandan genocide and the violations of the Genocide Convention in both situations seemed equally self-evident. He indicated, among other suggestions, that pressuring China to get the Sudanese government to stop the killing and raping is the most promising leverage for Canadian and other international concern. China, he indicated, is listening out of concern for a possible spectator or other shunning of its Olympic Games.  

New Peace Negotiations

Even as the new Darfur peace negotiations have begun this past weekend in Libya, the situation on the ground across Darfur continues to deteriorate. The diplomats involved with the Darfur catastrophe from the usually responsible governments in the international community have failed the African residents of Darfur egregiously, including the estimated 400,000-450,000 of them who are now dead from bullets, bombs, burning and related causes, such as starvation. I simply don't know how many of the ambassadors involved can sleep nights, including the diplomat who was quoted anonymously recently as saying that because the death rate has declined the genocide is over.

The diplomatic indifference on the talks has been breathtaking. Salim Salim of the AU evidently did not admit that the AU observers are powerless to protect civilians until Tidiane Gadio called him on it. At the Arusha talks last summer, diplomats attempted to ignore the absence of key SLA and JEM leaders.

Permit me to focus for a moment on a largely forgotten incident to illustrate how the governments of Sudan and China have long made fools of the rest of the world in Sudan.  

On 26th February, 2002, the Nuer town of Nahibloiu in central Sudan was wiped out to make way for a Chinese oil well that now operates in the nearby community of Leal.   According to James Kynge's award winning book China Shakes the World, 2006, sourcing Peter Goodman of the Washington Post ,"Mortar shells landed at dawn, followed by helicopter gun ships directing fire at the huts where the people lived.   Antonov aeroplanes dropped bombs and roughly 7000 (Sudanese) government troops with pro- government militias then swept through the area with rifles and more then twenty tanks, according to Goodman's report, which was based on numerous local sources. 'The Chinese want to drill for oil; that is why we are being pushed out', Goodman quoted a local, Rusthal Yackok, as saying. Yackok added that his wife and six children were killed in the operation. The chief of Leal, Tanguar Kuiyguong, told Goodman that around 3000 of the town's ten thousand inhabitants were killed and every home was burned to the ground."

The government of China since 1997 has been the largest supplier of arms to the Bashir government in Sudan. Tanks, fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades- all were paid for from oil revenues generated mostly by the government-run China National Petroleum Cooperation.   The deputy foreign minister of China, Zhou Wenzhong, even insisted during 2004, "Business is business. We try to separate politics from business".  

The Chinese diplomats at the UN Security Council and elsewhere have mixed business and politics in respect to Sudan continuously from at least 1997 until the present.   Mia Farrow is absolutely correct when she refers to the government of China's active and continuous role in Sudan's ongoing catastrophe. "Genocide Olympics" is her memorable and still-applicable phrase.

The most accurate chronicles of what has transpired in Sudan in recent years are probably maintained by Eric Reeves, a former English professor at Smith College, who writes with knowledge and complete independence. His most recent account is dated Oct. 19th and is entitled, "Darfur adrift: an assessment of resolution 1769" (You can find it under Darfur on my website: david-kilgour.com).

Let me stress some of the important and largely irrefutable points Reeves makes:

• Those who have for years opposed military deployment to protect Darfuri civilians, as well as the humanitarian operations upon which 4.2 million Darfuris now depend for survival, are especially fond of emphasizing the "complexity" of the Darfur catastrophe.

• Canada's "responsibility to protect" doctrine was adopted unanimously by the UN World Summit of September 2005 and was framed specifically so as to supersede claims of national sovereignty in the event of genocide, "ethnic cleansing" and crimes against humanity. A letter from eighteen international human rights, humanitarian and conflict-prevention organizations on 13 Sept. 2006 "condemn(ed) the recent violence launched by the Government of Sudan in North Darfur and call(ed) for stepped up diplomatic pressure and for the rapid deployment of a robust UN peacekeeping force."

• Mukesh Kapila, the former UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, had declared in March 2004: "The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers involved. (The slaughter in Darfur) is...an organized attempt to do away with a group of people. I was present in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, and I have seen many other situations around the world and I am totally shocked at what is going on in Darfur."

• The disastrous Darfur Peace Agreement (May 2006), far from bringing peace or security to Darfur, only ensured that the violence would escalate.

• Almost 100 days after the authorization of the hybrid UN/AU force authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1769, the Sudan government continues to resist and militarily capable Western governments, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries, are failing to provide essential force elements, to provide tactical and transport helicopters, as well as significant ground transport resources. The designated UNAMID force commander recently noted that "there would be at most 8000 troops in Darfur by January (2008)--only 1000 more than the current force."

• (DK comment : We all know that full deployment of UNAMID will not end the genocide for various reason, including the fact that it cannot arrest the janjaweed and will be unable to go anywhere the government of Sudan objects to. In terms of returning Darfuri victims to their villages, some 40-60,000 settlers from Mauritania, Mali and Niger have moved into African Darfuri farms with the encouragement of Khartoum .)

• The Libyan peace negotiations are not looking very promising. Having them in Muamar Ghadaffi's hometown, when he has played such a destructive role for decades in both Darfur and Chad, with little concern for Darfuri civilian lives, was probably not a prudent decision by UN Sec Gen Ban ki-moon.

Conclusion

In summary, the Bashir regime will be convinced that the international community is serious only if deployment of the force authorized by Resolution 1769 is under UN command and that obstructionism will be met with harshly punishing sanctions.

Second, the government of China must be convinced to stop protecting its client government in Khartoum from real diplomatic pressure. Advocacy focusing on Beijing's hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics has been much more effective to date than Western governments.

All principled governments must be prepared to suspend diplomatic relations in the event that Bashir holds to his obstructionist ways. They should all be prepared to impose robust sanctions on Bashir's government.

Thank you.