A A Gill’s harrowing account of life in Sudan is heart rending. Mothers obliged to watch their newborn children die, withholding milk because they know all too well that they would be incapable of supporting their newborns.
Meanwhile, the UN steeples its fingers, sucks its teeth and equivocates, hinting that perhaps maybe this might be the worst humanitarian crisis in the world at the moment. Maybe perhaps 100,000 people are dead, and perhaps maybe a million more are on the pending list, waiting to get across the border before the rains come.
This is a disgrace.
Anyone who doubts that this conflict is either genocidal or ethnically motivated only has to visit these camps. All the refugees are black; there are no Arabs here. And even more shocking, 90% of them are women and children. The children up to the age of five are about 50-50 girls and boys, as you’d expect. From 5 to 15 they are 70% girls. Some of the men would have stayed to fight or hide with their livestock but, as Sherlock Holmes used to say, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains… must be the truth”. It is impossible to imagine any other explanation for this disappeared generation of men than systematic murder. The women tell of deaths, terrified flight, lost children, missing husbands. “We will never go back” says one. “Unless the UN have soldiers, and only if they are white soldiers,” adds another.
When I was a secondary school student, filled with Liberal values I considered the UN as one of man’s greatest achievements and yet the more I have learned and watched the further I’ve come from that naivety. Principled yes, but naive nonetheless.
In my lifetime alone the UN has stood by and allowed Genocide to be perpetrated in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and now in Sudan, by virtue of France’s intransigent anti-americanism and oil interests there shall be no international intervention. Either by financial sanctions or any further action.
A million to die. What a crock.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at July 11, 2004 11:48 PM | TrackBack