A year ago it was a collection of straw huts, hastily thrown together in the aftermath of battle, hard by the razor-wire edge of a small African Union peacekeeper base.
Today it is a tangle of sewage-choked lanes snaking among thousands of squalid shacks, an endless sprawl that dwarfs the base at its heart. Pounding rainstorms gather fetid pools that swarm with mosquitoes and flies spreading death in their filthy wake. All but one of the aid groups working here have pulled out.
From Lydia Polygreen NY Times.
Why can’t the so-called security council act? Because Russia and China want to keep cozy with Islam-Opec. Islamic states (read Opec) in turn oppose any international attention on the brutal muslim dictatorship of Sudan. Just anotherday in geopolitik, and the cynical abuse of power. Maybe if we started demonstrating in front of Walmarts, with pictures of dying Darfur refugees…Any other ideas for creative activism? Another year has gone by and what have I really done about Darfur?
Don’t forget the money China is set to lose if other countries reinvest in Sudan were it to stop the genocide.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12501039/ :
“In oil-rich Sudan, China is by far the largest investor — indeed, it is almost alone in the field owing to bilateral sanctions observed by other countries. Since 1997, China has invested billions of dollars in Sudan, despite the emerging evidence that Khartoum government supports janjaweed militias that have massacred tens of thousands of people in the Darfur region in recent years. Critics point out that even the weapons used by the military and the militia are Chinese models made under license in local factories.
“When it comes to human rights, China’s foreign policy is deliberately agnostic,” Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth wrote in a recent commentary slamming China for its role in Sudan. In doing so, he said, China is basically adhering to the principle of “noninterference” it wants foreigners to observe in doing business with China, “without regard to whether its partner is a democratic visionary or a tyrant.”
In the case of Sudan, China rejects the notion that it is complicit in the genocide and argues that it supports peacekeeping forces in Sudan. But Beijing, which generally opposes the use of sanctions, also has used its Security Council clout to avert pressure on Khartoum.”