NOW YOU KNOW WHO AYE AM...

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

indigos sign on...us going there aye think...get ready...or are we there already.

see about dar fur...

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

So you're a Kurd.  That's cool but explains the promotion of the Iraq war.

aye am an american-trini...aye support the kurdish people...victims of genocide who are now thriving in north mesopoetamia...aye support the furs who need help in sudan.

aye am disgusted by the dove-sellers who only consider body counts and do not see that when mass graves are dug that those who perpetrate genocidal acts must go.

aye am one of a group called the indigos...and we get things done...our agenda is moving along plumb and square.

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

Halima Bashir, a young Sudanese woman who has been a victim of and witness to numerous barbaric acts in Darfur, has spoken out against the government in Khartoum with a hard-hitting account of the tragedy.

A member of the Zaghawa tribe, Bashir puts a human face on a situation where the number of casualties is so large as to be incomprehensible. The conflict between the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum and black Africans in Darfur, in western Sudan, has left about 300,000 dead and created as many as 2.5 million refugees, according to the UN.

Bashir, 29, said Tears of the Desert, written with the journalist Damien Lewis, who won an award for his reporting from Darfur last year, was her chance to speak out about the atrocities perpetrated by the Sudanese government against black Africans in Darfur.

"My story is not the only one," she said in London, where she lives with her husband and young son after a long battle to win asylum. "There are hundreds of thousands of other stories more painful than mine. With this book it is as if I'm telling this story for Darfuri women. I will keep on talking – it is the only thing I can give my people."

In Bashir, the victims of what the international criminal court has described as a policy of genocide by Sudan's leaders have found a soft-spoken but iron-willed representative.

Bashir arrived for our interview at a hotel in central London with her round, youthful face uncovered. But she was firm about not revealing her face to the world, particularly to the Sudanese authorities. While she remains safe in Britain, she fears for the safety of her mother, sister and two brothers, who joined the rebels in Darfur.

She still does not know what happened to her family after they fled their village when government troops and the notorious Janjaweed militia attacked. The men of the village stood and fought to buy time for the women and children to flee to the forest. Her father died in the attack. Bashir does not want the Khartoum government to use the knowledge of what she looks like to track down her family – if they are still alive.

Because of fears for her family, Bashir talked to us with her face covered by headgear, hastily purchased around the corner from John Lewis. Only her eyes were visible during the interview.

Tears of the Desert is not just an account of the atrocities committed by the government-backed Janjaweed – or devils on horseback – against black Africans. The first half of the book describes a happy childhood in a close-knit Darfur village, although it does not gloss over Bashir's hideous circumcision at the age of eight.

For the most part, however, growing up was a happy time for Bashir. Family scenes that feature her much-loved grandmother and her best friend, Kadiga, are vividly brought to life. Like little girls anywhere, Bashir played with dolls, although these were rag dolls made from old clothes stuffed with straw.

Her father had big plans for Bashir and she was the first girl from her village to go away to school. Eventually she became a doctor, but she ran into trouble with the authorities for telling a reporter that the government should help all Darfuri people regardless of their tribe.

As punishment she was transferred to Mazkhabad, a village in the remote north of Darfur, and put in charge of a clinic. This is where she saw and experienced at first hand the atrocities of the Darfur conflict. Not even in her darkest nightmare had she imagined she would witness such horror, she wrote, as she treated girls as young as eight who had been repeatedly raped.

Bashir had to care for more than 40 girls who were sexually assaulted at their school while government soldiers cordoned off the premises. Parents were kept standing outside the school as their daughters' screaming pierced the air.

A rape victim who was a teacher told Bashir: "They were shouting and screaming at us. You know what they were saying? 'We have come here to kill you! To finish you all! You are black slaves! You are worse than dogs. The worst was that they were laughing and yelping with joy as they did those terrible things."

The Janjaweed eventually came for Bashir herself. Three men in khaki uniforms took her from the clinic to a military camp, where she was beaten and repeatedly raped. The ordeal went on into a second day with Bashir retreating in her head "to a faraway place where my God had taken me, a place where they couldn't reach me".

One of her captors told her: "We're going to let you live because we know you'd prefer to die. Isn't that clever of us? Aren't we clever, doctor? We may not have your education, but we're damn smart, wouldn't you agree?"

Hard as it was for her to go over such painful memories, Bashir said the process of writing her memoir help her come to terms with her terrible ordeal. More importantly, she wanted to tell the whole world about what was going on, especially the atrocities committed against young girls.

"These men were not normal," she said. "No normal people would do such a thing to children. I wanted to tell the whole world what was happening."

She could only explain the actions of the aggressors as an extremely virulent form of racism.

"It is because of the colour of our skin, it is because we are black," she said. "Even at school they give us nicknames and make jokes about us. It is something that has gone on a long time."

Bashir cited her experience at medical school where she had a reputation as a swot. The corpses students worked on were exclusively black. One of her friends said: "Arabs do not give a damn about us when we're alive, and even less when we're dead".

Some foreign policy commentators have criticised the international criminal court's decision to charge Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, with genocide and crimes against humanity. They say it will make a peace deal between the Sudanese government and the rebels harder to achieve and warn it could jeopardise the already troubled deployment of a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

Bashir, however, has no reservations about the court's decision. She told an audience at the Royal Festival Hall: "I can't explain how happy I am for the ICC case," she said. "It is now more than five years this has been going on and very little has been done. It's as if we've been talking to deaf people. For me this is a step for justice."

· Tears of the Desert, by Halima Bashir, written with Damien Lewis, is published by Hodder & Stoughton.

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

So you're a Kurd.  That's cool but explains the promotion of the Iraq war.

aye am an american-trini...aye support the kurdish people...victims of genocide who are now thriving in north mesopoetamia...aye support the furs who need help in sudan.

aye am disgusted by the dove-sellers who only consider body counts and do not see that when mass graves are dug that those who perpetrate genocidal acts must go.

aye am one of a group called the indigos...and we get things done...our agenda is moving along plumb and square.

The issue isnt whether or not removing Sadam was a good thing. Of course getting rid of him was good.

The issue is whether or not it was worth the cost to the American taxpayer.  I think it wasnt and so does Bill O'Riley at least as of two days ago.

If the world made America the global police, then the world needs to chip in and pay for it.

was it worth it for the us to enter ww2 and stop hitler and the nazis from digging graves and burying jews and gypsys in mass graves?  was it worth it for us to take out slobodan milosevic and those digging graves outside of belgrade to fill with bosnian and kosovar muslims? we are not the global police?   aye think so, but that is what you call it.   genocide is evil and the greatest sin against humanity...if we do not stop it and stand idly by...why not let the whole world burn?

who said anything about being a global police?  putting an end to genocide if we can is not only prudent and a work of mercy...it is our human duty, my friend.


people like bill oreilly and keith oldberman have sit coms on so called tv news channels...

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

So you're a Kurd.  That's cool but explains the promotion of the Iraq war.

aye am an american-trini...aye support the kurdish people...victims of genocide who are now thriving in north mesopoetamia...aye support the furs who need help in sudan.

aye am disgusted by the dove-sellers who only consider body counts and do not see that when mass graves are dug that those who perpetrate genocidal acts must go.

aye am one of a group called the indigos...and we get things done...our agenda is moving along plumb and square.

The issue isnt whether or not removing Sadam was a good thing. Of course getting rid of him was good.

The issue is whether or not it was worth the cost to the American taxpayer.  I think it wasnt and so does Bill O'Riley at least as of two days ago.

If the world made America the global police, then the world needs to chip in and pay for it.

was it worth it for the us to enter ww2 and stop hitler and the nazis from digging graves and burying jews and gypsys in mass graves?  was it worth it for us to take out slobodan milosevic and those digging graves outside of belgrade to fill with bosnian and kosovar muslims? we are not the global police?   aye think so, but that is what you call it.   genocide is evil and the greatest sin against humanity...if we do not stop it and stand idly by...why not let the whole world burn?

who said anything about being a global police?  putting an end to genocide if we can is not only prudent and a work of mercy...it is our human duty, my friend.


people like bill oreilly and keith oldberman have sit coms on so called tv news channels...

Hey, I'm all for it if everyone chips in.

We didnt enter WWII to stop genocide.

We helped out in Bosnia, but werent alone.

Senseless acts of violence are detestable no matter where they happen, but we should start by making the United State more safe and spend our resources here instead of everywhere else.

but we did stop genocide in ww2...that is the point...it is our greatest wrong against humanity.

if we didn't stop hitler and the nazis...who knows what may have happened.

we were not alone in iraq, my friend...remember the british?

we should make the us safe...but when there is mass genocide it MUST be stopped and those responsible punished...sorry...you cannot lose touch with the basics...human existence is a gift and genocide is the HIGHEST crime...no getting around genocide, bro...sorry

the focus is on darfur and afghanistan now.

[Julie Fern]

[crickets chirp]

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South Africa tells ICC: "Give peace a chance" in Darfur
Wed Jul 30, 2008 2:50am BST  Email | Print | Share| Single Page| Recommend (0) [-] Text

•    

1 of 1Full SizeBy Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - South Africa said on Tuesday that an increasing number of countries want the International Criminal Court, in the interest of peace in Darfur, to halt any genocide indictment of Sudan's president.

The U.N. Security Council is split on a South African and Libyan proposal that it call on the ICC's judges to refrain from taking any action on a request by their chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, for an arrest warrant against Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur.

Moreno-Ocampo accused Bashir of orchestrating a campaign of genocide during the 5-year-old conflict that has killed 35,000 people outright and at least 100,000 through starvation and disease, and forced 2.5 million from their homes.

"We are not saying 'stop doing it' to the prosecutor of the ICC," South Africa's ambassador to the United Nations, Dumisani Kumalo, told reporters. "We are saying, give peace a chance, can you just give it a year, let's see UNAMID deployed."

The current mandate for UNAMID -- the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur -- expires on Thursday, which means the Security Council has until then to approve an extension. A British-drafted resolution council members hope to vote on would extend the mandate until July 31, 2009.

The vote was originally scheduled for Wednesday. But council diplomats say it might be delayed until Thursday due to disagreement over the South African and Libyan proposal to insert a paragraph calling for a suspension of any ICC moves.

British Deputy Ambassador Karen Pierce told reporters there was no chance of breaking the deadlock on the ICC by Thursday. She said the resolution should focus solely on UNAMID and the could deal with the issue of Bashir and the ICC later.

"We hope the council members will be able to rally to that," she said.  Continued...


http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKN2932449320080730

[Julie Fern]

what wrong, you ignoring turds these days?

[Julie Fern]

kurds = turds.

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

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.

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