The EU is claiming that the ongoing massacre in Darfur does not rise up to the level of genocide.
Of course, anyone with a clue can see differently.
Genocide is defined in a 1948 UN Convention as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by “killing members of the group”; “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”; or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
With this in mind consider just a fraction of the chilling evidence that continues to trickle in from Darfur. Amnesty International recently released a report that documents the experiences of hundreds of women who have been systematically raped (for no reason other than they are black African women) or sold as sex slaves.
Monitors from the African Union said that in an incident three weeks ago, militiamen killed villagers by chaining them up and then burning them alive.
The Washington Post published an interview with Musa Hilal, a sheikh who along with six other individuals is accused of organising the Janjaweed militia’s terror tactics in Darfur. In 1997 Hilal was jailed for killing 17 Africans in Darfur; when the region erupted in rebellion in early 2003 the Arab-led government in Khartoum released Hilal on instruction to organise his militia.
To date 1.5 million people have been displaced, 2.2 million are in desperate need of food and medicine, and it is (conservatively) estimated that 350 000 might die before the end of this year. The list of government-sponsored crimes against humanity could go on and on. The point worth stressing is this: on the charge of genocide there is no fear of crying wolf in Darfur.
It is beyond intolerable that the EU cannot recognize a genocide when it is staring the world in the face. The rapes of black Africans by janjaweed militias are acts of genocide. The burning of black African village by these Arab extremists are acts of genocide. The mass murder of black Africans by these militias are acts of genocide. The systematic terrorization of black Africans with the tacit support of Khartoum directly implicates the Sudanese government in these acts of genocide.
The EU claims to be a “moral superpower” and a force for democracy and human rights in the world.
It’s time that their action started matching their noble rhetoric, or those words will have proven once again to be utterly empty.
To be fair, our regime didn’t recognize what happened in Rwanda. How many acts of genocide did it take to constitute genocide? The EU has been morally bankrupt for sometime. Bt they by no means have a stranglehold on moral bankruptcy.