..DAR..FUR...tantalizing diplomacy...

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thankyou for your concern...are you an indigo, holly?

Since most of the people here are law students, it means you're all good students.  To understand Darfur, you must study the history of this regime.  It's worse than what you hear on the news.  MUCH.

I'm disabled, living now in Mexico on SS Disability.  Before I came here, I learned (in 1994) about the Sudanese genocide, while doing research in the library for a book I was writing.   I stumbled upon the information entirely by accident.  What I learned stood my hair on end, and not just because of the genocide, but because our entire freeworld governments and media were keeping the public from knowing about it, through the simple expedient of calling it a "civil war."

Here's what that "civil war" often consisted of.  Government troops would enter a native village in Southern Sudan, herd all the people into their own thatched cattle-byres, then set them to the torch.  After burning their homes, livestock and crops, it was on to the next village.

Civil war?  If that isn't genocide, what is?  Now you know that words really CAN kill.

It was only because the southern black people formed militias and tried to protect themselves that the term "civil war" was slapped on this genocide.  I guess they were supposed to lie down and open their veins.  But there are indigenous militias in Darfur, too, but nobody is calling that a civil war.  Mainly because they can't.  It has gotten too much publicity.  Otherwise, the world and its media would ignore this genocide, too.  Had the first genocide gotten this publicity long ago, Darfur wouldn't have happened.  And maybe - just maybe - neither would Bosnia, Rwanda, and others.  A successful genocide always breeds more of the same.  Which is exactly what the world GOT.

You'll want to know the basis for these statements.  All you need do is check with Amnesty International.  They kept volumes of documentary evidence of these and many other atrocities.  More than enough to lay charges of genocide against the regime as long ago as '94, probably earlier.

This genocide began in the mid-80's (probably before that) and only ended with a "peace agreement" a few years ago.  They then turned their attentions to Darfur.  It had lasted for 20 years, and it appears they're gearing up to start it all over again, particularly if the pressure they're under about Darfur forces them to tone it down for a while.

I have much to say, from the years I've spent researching the Sudanese regime, too much to put down here.  I have established a yahoo account called stop genocide.  Put an underscore between those two words, and you've got it.  Use the word "Sudan" in the subject line, to distinguish from spam.  I'll send you information that I've gleaned over the years.  I am selling exactly nothing.

The world knows, but refuses to acknowledge, that no genocidal regime has ever been stopped with diplomacy.  People capable of genocide have no regard for diplomacy, except as a way of confusing opponents and gaining time.  They are people who have voluntarily chosen to disengage themselves from their humanitarian moorings, and now can never go back.  The only thing they understand is force.  Though I am a dove, I have no choice but to accept that force is the only way to rid the Sudan of this obscene regime.  If there is ONE single reason for war, it is to stop genocides.  Yet every other kind of war is engaged in except that kind.

You may also wish to inquire why it is that not ONE Islamic State has spoken out against the Sudan.  In fact, several of them are protesting the indictment against Bashir, claiming it trespasses on Sudanese sovereignty.  It might inspire you to study why it is that Islam appears to condone genocide.

No nation is entitled to sovreignty when it preys on the people whose job it is to protect.  When the "sanctity of international borders" is of greater importance than the sanctity of the human lives within them, we, too, have parted from our own humanitarian moorings.

The people in Darfur are black and indigenous - the government wants them all dead.  But they're Muslims.  To offset any grousing among the northern Arabs in Khartoum and Omdurman, the government uses the janjaweed as their surrogate.  In the earlier genocide, such subtleties were not needed.  Yet we call Darfur a genocide and don't even recognize the FIRST GENOCIDE.  Darfur is treated, worldwide, as though it was something that occurred "in a vacuum," when, in reality, it is only Chapter 2 of a larger - and much more horrific - genocide.

In the first genocide, 2 1/2 MILLION indigenous, non-Muslim blacks were slaughtered, over a period of 20 YEARS, during which the entire free world said nothing.  To our everlasting shame.

Now, they're stuck.  They can't make any references to the first genocide that would help them in considering or dealing with the Darfur situation.  Awkward indeed.  To do so would be to admit the two decades in which genocide went on, unimpeded and with total impunity, while our governments and media knew full-well what was going on, but kept us in the dark about it.

What you don't know is that Darfur, an acknowledged genocide, is actually the "gentler" of the two.

This bears on much more than just two genocides perpetrated by the Sudan.  It bears - heavily - on the question of just how free our own nations really are, and how free and objective our news media really are.  To keep secret something that ought to have been headline news - internationally - is something that ought to scare you to bits.

You all know how to do research.  I urge you to do it.  Look up such things as "Arabization," "Islamization," and names from the first genocide, such as Hasan al Turabi and John Garang.  "Arabization" will tell you exactly HOW rape can be used as part of a genocide.  Check out the slavery, too, which occurred in the first genocide - and note that slavery is NOT on the list of charges against Bashir.  It can't be; it happened in that "other genocide," the one that "didn't happen."  Research the atrocities of the first genocide, starting with Amnesty Int'l.  The information is all there; it simply isn't something the public is guided to at all.

The world in which you intend to work, and your chosen field of the law, make it imperative that you learn something about how even the best democracies can fail in their basic duties to their own citizens.  And you ought to learn how this silence came about, how all of the freeworld nations participated, how it is that all political parties are equally complicit in this silence.  How could such a thing happen?  If it happened, and if nothing is done, it can and will happen again.  We ignore this matter very much at our OWN peril.

If you would seek to work in the legal field, you must gain some knowledge about how the law, and the public trust vested in governments and media, can be so heinously compromised, while we citizens remain ignorant of it all for decades.

You cannot begin to understand Darfur until you have studied the first Sudanese genocide.  That puts Darfur in perspective rather eloquently.

You have more resources available to you than I do.  Learn of this first genocide, then use your resources to make this information available to the entire free world public.  We can't fix a problem we don't know exists.  If you do your studying well enough, you'll have AMPLE chapter and verse to support that publicity effort.  You can make the knowledge available for the average world citizen to learn about.

Maybe then something can be done to clean up whatever rot it was that caused our governments and media to betray their public trust by collectively hiding a horrible truth from us all.

Holly Bergeim
Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico

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The case for international justice as seen from Darfur
As told to Susan Elderkin

Published: July 26 2008 02:00 | Last updated: July 26 2008 02:00

Ahmed – not his real name – is a Sudanese interpreter for the International Criminal Court, working on its investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

I’m pleased they’ve issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir. I’ve been to refugee camps in Chad three times as an interpreter for the ICC. I know exactly what evidence they’ve got, and it’s strong. But it’ll take time. For now it’s just talking.

My first trip to Chad was in 2006. It was the first time I’d been back to Africa since I fled to the UK as an asylum-seeker in 2001. I had been tortured, and members of my family were killed. Stepping off the plane in Enjamina, I had mixed emotions. I had never been to Chad before, but it looks pretty much like Darfur – flat and dry. It smelt of my childhood – dry grass, the smoke from cooking fires. And the people look the same – the men in long white djallabas, the women dressed in reds and oranges and yellows.

I’m from Darfur in western Sudan. The ICC needed people who speak the local languages in Darfur – Zagawa, Fur and Massaliet. I was travelling with a group of investigators – six or seven of them. They were from all over: Australia, Canada, France, Nigeria, Uganda. We never discussed the political situation, or what had happened to me. We had to remain strictly neutral. We talked about football.

We would set up a table and chairs in a temporary building in the refugee camps, or under a tree in the shade. Then we’d collect personal testimonies. We’d work from 11am until 4pm, the hot part of the day. Some of the investigators suffered in the heat, but I didn’t. Some had stomach trouble and had to be flown home. People were telling us things – many bad things. Villages being burnt, people being burned alive, buried alive, women and girls raped in front of their fathers. People being shot.

I could imagine it all because I had seen these things myself. Having to repeat everything I heard, word for word, was almost like experiencing it again. It was very hard. As an interpreter you can’t allow yourself to get emotional. Sometimes I had to ask for a break.

One day, one of the men from my father’s village came. I couldn’t believe how changed he was. The last time I saw him he was strong, upbeat. Now he was thin, grey, quiet; suffering on his face.

He didn’t know who I was. I said: “What happened to you that you can’t even remember my father?” When he remembered, he wept. “Life,” he said. “Life did this to me.”

The second time I was there, I found my mother in one of the camps. I hadn’t even known that she was alive. I gave her money and arranged for her to go back home. Now I speak to her every week on the phone.

Being an asylum-seeker in England was tough – the poverty, the isolation, the constant fear of being sent home. It taught me how to keep strong, not to let my anger come out. If I hadn’t been through this, I wouldn’t have been able to cope in Chad.

If the perpetrators are not brought to justice, it will be a complete failure on the part of the international community. Because so many crimes were committed, and the international community already failed once to protect innocent people.

The ICC gives hope to my people back home.

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8 Darfur rebels sentenced to death by Sudan court
By SARAH EL DEEB – 5 hours ago

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Eight Darfur rebels were found guilty and sentenced to death Tuesday for their roles in a bold assault on government soldiers near the Sudanese capital that killed more than 200 people, including dozens of civilians.

Another defendant was acquitted and a 10th was referred to a juvenile court because he was under age, said al-Dukhri Ali Morkaz, the head of the rebels' defense team. Morkaz said he would appeal the guilty verdicts handed down by a specially convened terrorism court in Khartoum.

Hundreds of fighters from the Justice and Equality Movement, which has emerged as one of the most powerful Darfur rebel groups, staged the attack on Khartoum's twin city, Omdurman, on May 10.

The rebels were repelled, but Sudanese were shocked by the assault, which happened hundreds of miles from rebel bases in the west. The raid was the closest that Darfur's rebels have gotten to the seat of the government.

Sudan's defense minister said after the attack that 93 soldiers and 13 policemen died in the fighting along with 30 civilians. The bodies of at least 90 rebel also were found.

The verdicts Tuesday were the first since around 40 people went on trial in June on charges of waging war against the state, inciting hatred, possessing guns and belonging to an outlawed group. They are also accused of using official military uniforms and terrorizing civilians, Morkaz said.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has pardoned about 90 juveniles arrested after the attack. They are due to be released within two weeks. It is not clear how many more remain in detention.

JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussain denied the children were enrolled as fighters in the rebel group, and he described the four specially convened terrorism courts conducting the trials as unconstitutional.

The verdicts came two weeks after al-Bashir was charged by an international prosecutor with genocide and war crimes for his alleged role in the Darfur crisis.

Thirty other suspects in the May attack, including a senior JEM member, remain on trial. When the proceedings began in June, defense lawyers walked out, saying they were denied access to their defendants. The court then assigned a legal defense team.

JEM has emerged as the most effective rebel group in Darfur, where ethnic Africans took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in 2003 to fight discrimination.

Al-Bashir's government is accused of launching a punishing response and unleashing militia fighters who have carried out atrocities.

The United Nations estimates up to 300,000 people have died from the war and more than 2.7 million have been displaced. A U.N. peacekeeping force is trying to deploy in Darfur, but it has only about 9,500 soldiers and has been unable to improve the situation.

JEM said in a May statement said the attack on Omdurman was meant to draw attention to the bloody stalemate and encourage negotiations to resolve the crisis.

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http://www.africanecho.co.uk/africanechonews8_july29.shtml



Court Accuses Al-Bashir of Darfur War Crimes
  THE prosecutor of the n e w l y - e s t a b l i s h e d International Criminal Court (ICC) today accused Sudanese President Omar al- Bashir of genocide and war crimes arising out of the war in Darfur.

In a case which puts into sharp focus the sometimes competing demands of international humanitarian law and the political compromises into which states enter to secure peace, the ICC's prosecutor, Luis Moreno- Ocampo. presented evidence to the court at its seat in The Hague. An ICC press release said Moreno-Ocampo had decided after a three-year investigation that "there are reasonable grounds to believe that... [al-Bashir] bears criminal responsibility in relation to 10 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes."

He charged that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups, on account of their ethnicity." When the groups, which were resisting the marginalization of Darfur, rebelled and the government failed to defeat them, the Sudanese president "went after the people."

The ICC quoted Moreno- Ocampo as saying of al- Bashir: "His motives were largely political. His alibi was a 'counterinsurgency.' His intent was genocide." The prosecution said the Sudanese armed forces and the Janjaweed militia were acting on al-Bashir's orders in their five-year-long campaign of attacking and destroying villages. Moreno-Ocampo added: "By preventing the truth about the crimes from being revealed; concealing his crimes under the guise of a 'counterinsurgency strategy', or 'inter tribal clashes', or the 'actions of lawless autonomous militia', al- Bashir made possible the commission of further crimes. He promoted and provided impunity to his subordinates in order to secure their willingness to commit genocide." The prosecutor has asked a pre-trial chamber of the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir.
 
 
 

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http://www.africanecho.co.uk/africanechonews8_july29.shtml



Court Accuses Al-Bashir of Darfur War Crimes
  THE prosecutor of the n e w l y - e s t a b l i s h e d International Criminal Court (ICC) today accused Sudanese President Omar al- Bashir of genocide and war crimes arising out of the war in Darfur.

In a case which puts into sharp focus the sometimes competing demands of international humanitarian law and the political compromises into which states enter to secure peace, the ICC's prosecutor, Luis Moreno- Ocampo. presented evidence to the court at its seat in The Hague. An ICC press release said Moreno-Ocampo had decided after a three-year investigation that "there are reasonable grounds to believe that... [al-Bashir] bears criminal responsibility in relation to 10 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes."

He charged that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups, on account of their ethnicity." When the groups, which were resisting the marginalization of Darfur, rebelled and the government failed to defeat them, the Sudanese president "went after the people."

The ICC quoted Moreno- Ocampo as saying of al- Bashir: "His motives were largely political. His alibi was a 'counterinsurgency.' His intent was genocide." The prosecution said the Sudanese armed forces and the Janjaweed militia were acting on al-Bashir's orders in their five-year-long campaign of attacking and destroying villages. Moreno-Ocampo added: "By preventing the truth about the crimes from being revealed; concealing his crimes under the guise of a 'counterinsurgency strategy', or 'inter tribal clashes', or the 'actions of lawless autonomous militia', al- Bashir made possible the commission of further crimes. He promoted and provided impunity to his subordinates in order to secure their willingness to commit genocide." The prosecutor has asked a pre-trial chamber of the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir.
 
 
 

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02/08/2008 14:57 ENTEBBE, Uganda, Aug 2 (AFP)
Ugandan president says AU should probe Beshir over Darfur
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Saturday argued that the African Union (AU) should carry out its own probe into war crimes allegations against Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir.

"The correct position of the AU should be to investigate ourselves. We don't condemn the indictments but the AU should conduct investigations itself so that we decide on our own," Museveni told reporters in Entebbe.

"You may get people misbehaving. Is it Beshir who ordered them to do so?" Museveni asked, replying to a journalist's question.

"Suppose he made those mistakes," he added, warning against "ignoring the rights of the victims, the ones who have suffered."

International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo last month requested an arrest warrant be issued against Beshir over charges of war crimes in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur.

If accepted by the judges, the request would result in the first ever arrest warrant issued by the world tribunal against a sitting head of state.

The move drew an uneasy reaction from the African Union, which urged ICC judges to give Beshir more time and warned against the risks of further chaos in the conflict-ridden country.

Museveni added he believed that Sudan had also "committed war crimes by supporting the Lord's Resistance Army", the Ugandan rebel group Museveni's regime has been battling for two decades.

"The Lord's Resistance Army -- led by Joseph Kony, using bases in Sudan and with the backing of Khartoum government -- has caused untold suffering to millions of people in northern Uganda," he said.

LRA leader Kony and four of his top commanders were slapped with ICC arrest warrants in 2005 for raping and mutilating civilians, enlisting child soldiers and massacring thousands.

Museveni took power through a military coup in 1986, three years before Beshir seized power in Khartoum.

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"The world knows, but refuses to acknowledge, that no genocidal regime has ever been stopped with diplomacy.  People capable of genocide have no regard for diplomacy, except as a way of confusing opponents and gaining time.  They are people who have voluntarily chosen to disengage themselves from their humanitarian moorings, and now can never go back.  The only thing they understand is force.  Though I am a dove, I have no choice but to accept that force is the only way to rid the Sudan of this obscene regime."

This all applied to Iraq as well, of course, but yet many criticize its liberation from a murderous regime. People are idiots.

thank you...and this quote is not from one "selling doves" much like the cowards who objected to the removal of hussein...many of those folks were "selling doves" in gods house...those "dove sellers" tables have been turned over...where are they now??? this quote is from one who embraces those whose bodies and culture and families are thrown into mass graves...and says that those who dug the mass graves have to go...hitler...mihilosovic...s addam hussein and his sons...and now...bashir...

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August 5th, 2008
Turn of the screwdriver - genocide, justice or peace for Darfur?
Post a comment (1)Posted by: Louis Charbonneau
Tags: Global News, Bashir, Darfur, genocide, ICC, international criminal court, Sudan, The Hague, U.N., United Nations Security Council, war crimes


Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem says Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, is “a screwdriver in the workshop of double standards” for seeking to prosecute the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for genocide in Darfur.  He rejects the term genocide and says the prosecutor is unfairly picking on Africa’s largest country and ignoring war crimes elsewhere.

Moreno-Ocampo accuses Bashir of launching a genocide campaign in 2003 that was intended to wipe out three ethnic groups in Darfur, a desolate and remote region of western Sudan where oil was discovered in 2005. He says the Sudanese leader used mass murder, rape, deportation and “slow death” by starvation and disease to kill tens of thousands in Darfur.  Moreno-Ocampo wants the ICC judges to issue an international arrest warrant for Bashir.

Khartoum rejects the charges and says it will never hand over any of its citizens to The Hague, where the ICC is based. Like the United States, Russia and China, Sudan is not a party to the ICC, though the Security Council referred the issue of Darfur to the court in 2005.

Abdalhaleem says that if the judges decide to indict Bashir it will ignite a “curtain of fire” that will engulf all of Sudan and the region. He has yet to provide details, but U.N. peacekeeping officials say they are worried.

China, Russia, South Africa and others fear an indictment of Bashir would shatter the fragile peace process in Darfur and have vowed to push the Security Council to freeze the ICC investigation of Bashir. The United States, Britain, France and other Western powers say they do not want to tamper with the independence of the ICC and oppose intervening.

The African Union, the Arab League and non-aligned nations have also urged the council to suspend any ICC indictment of Bashir. Russia’s U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin has said that the countries calling for a suspension comprise roughly two-thirds of the earth’s population.

Those arguing for a suspension say the top priority should be the full deployment of all 26,000 U.N.-African Union peacekeepers (only 9,500 are there now) and a swift end to the 5-year-old conflict in Darfur, in which international experts believe at least 200,000 have died, with another 2.5 million left hungry and homeless.

Richard Dicker, an international justice expert at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, says the opposite is true — nothing could be better for peace in Darfur than to indict, arrest and try the man believed to be responsible for orchestrating the genocide.

What do you think?  Is the West guilty of applying double standards for justice in the developing world?  Do you fear a “curtain of fire” in Africa if Bashir is indicted? Should the world push for peace in Darfur now and worry about indictments later?  Or should justice come first for the victims of war crimes in Darfur, whatever the cost?

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Sudan army in 'Darfur operation' 
 
 
The UN says fighting has displaced up to two million people since 2003 [File: EPA]
 
The Sudanese army has begun a massive operation to destroy rebel bases in northern Darfur, according to two factions based in the area.

The army is said to have launched the offensive in the town of Wadi Atron, near the Sudanese-Libyan border, on Tuesday and took control of areas which had for years been under the control of rebels who want more autonomy for the region.

Al-Sayyid Sherif, of the Sudan Liberation Army (Unity) faction, said: "They attacked our areas in Wadi Atron with a massive force.

"We consider this a new declaration of war."

SLA (Unity) is one of the largest Darfur rebel groups and was one of the few factions to say they were ready to go to peace talks.

A Sudanese army spokesman declined to immediately comment, but one army source confirmed there were operations under way.

Suleiman Marajan, a commander from the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction, said: "They came with more than 200 vehicles and killed seven people."

The SLA was founded and is currently led by Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur.

The oil factor

Marajan also said that the government had moved in Chinese workers who were looking for oil in the remote area.

The Dow Jones newswire news agency reported last month that state-owned Chinese oil service companies were in talks to help Sudan exploit crude reserves in North Darfur where security would be provided by the Sudanese army.
   
North Darfur is part of the so-called Block12A, a site where oil is said to have been found, and is operated by Sudan's state-owned Sudapet, Ansan, an independent firm, and Saudi Arabia's Al-Qahtani group,  the article said.
   
The Sudanese oil ministry would not immediately confirm whether any exploration has begun in Block 12A.

Chinese companies dominate Sudan's budding oil sector which produces more than 500,000 barrels per day of crude.

Ocampo 'evidence'

In a related development, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told Al Jazeera that the ICC maintains its right to investigate human-rights violations in Darfur despite Sudan not recognising the ICC's jurisdiction.

He said that he had clear evidence of abuses committed in Darfur, including certificates for more than a hundred people, and a clear map of villages and regions that were exposed to attacks.

Ocampo described the violations that took place in Darfur as a "scandal".

According to the UN, up to 300,000 people have died  and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since the conflict erupted in February 2003.

Sudan says 10,000 people have been killed.

The war began when African ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-led Khartoum government and state-backed Arab militias.
 

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Home / News / World / Asia   
Bush urges China to use clout with Sudan on Darfur
 President George W. Bush and the China's President Hu Jintao shake hands in The Great Hall of the People before a reception in honor of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, August 8, 2008. (REUTERS/Larry Downing)
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By Matt Spetalnick
August 11, 2008
BEIJING (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Monday he used talks with China's leaders during the Beijing Olympics to press them to use their influence with Sudan to help end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Wrapping up his Olympics tour, Bush said that in Sunday's meetings with President Hu Jintao and other officials he raised U.S. concerns, including human rights and religious freedoms in China and the situation in Sudan's troubled Darfur region.

"My attitude is if you've got relations with (Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir), think about helping to solve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur," Bush said in an interview with NBC Sports. "That was my message to the Chinese government."

Support for Sudan -- China is a key investor in its oil industry and Khartoum's biggest arms supplier -- has been among the sources of international criticism of Beijing as the world's spotlight has fallen on it for the Olympic games.

Bush has denounced the Sudanese government for its policies in the Darfur region, where conflict has taken some 200,000 lives and displaced some 2.5 million people since rebels took up arms against the government in 2003.

Bush has called it genocide, a charge the Sudanese government has rejected.

The United States protested to China over its decision before the Games' opening ceremonies to revoke the visa of Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek, an activist for Darfur.

"Joey Cheek has just got to know that I took the Sudanese message for him (to the Chinese government)," Bush said.

Bush said he also made his case for more religious freedom in China in private talks with the Communist leadership after worshipping at a state-sanctioned Beijing church, and said Hu "listened politely."

"It gave me a chance to say to the Chinese people, religion won't hurt you," Bush said.

"And it gave me a chance to say to the government, why don't you register the underground churches and give them a chance to flourish?"

Bush's four-day visit to Beijing was a balancing act, taking in the Olympic games and praising China on a variety of issues while publicly nudging China to improve its internationally criticized record on human rights.

(Editing by Jerry Norton)