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Hannah Weisfeld, bogeret of HDUK asks, Darfur:

What’s it got to do with us?

Darfur, the region in the west of Sudan has, for the past four years, been
the site of atrocities and unspeakable horrors, labelled as ‘genocide’ by
nearly all major advocacy organisations and the government of the USA.
400,000 people have been killed, 2.5 million are now refugees and 4 million
people are reliant on the international community and humanitarian
organisations to feed them and provide their basic needs. At the start of
the conflict 6 million people lived in this region. Those that are subject to
attack are black African Muslims. The Arab Muslim government of Sudan,
based in Khartoum is the perpetrator. It sends planes over Darfur to bomb
villages. Then the Janjaweed militia come in – these are mainly men on
horses, camels and in jeeps who are paid by the government to clear out the
village – they kill anyone left behind and poison wells by putting dead bodies
and cattle down them so if by any slim chance anyone should remain they will
die of thirst. They are notorious for their gang raping. They capture the
women and then rape them in front of their families before killing them all.
It is not uncommon to read testimonies from survivors who have seen women
have their breasts cut off and children set on fire. Those that manage to
escape try to make what can be a long walk across the region to one of the
Internally Displaced Persons Camp (IDP) in Darfur or cross into Chad into a
refugee camp. A lucky few get further to Europe, the USA and Israel. In
order to cook the grain provided by the World Food Programme those inside
camps need firewood and have to search for it outside of the camps. If the
men or boys go and are captured by the Janjaweed that circle the camps
they will be killed. If the women go they will ‘only’ be raped. So the women
go.

What are the motivations? Access to resources, a racist ideology that does not recognise those
of African tribal descent as being a real Muslims, alongside a flawed peace agreement that ended
the twenty year civil war that destroyed much of Sudan and killed 2 million people have all
contributed to what we see in Darfur today. We
better than anyone know that genocide does not
happen overnight. It happens over many years
and this has been the case for the black
Africans who have been denied political access
and expression of culture for thirty years. As a
result they formed 2 rebel groups in 2003, the
Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and The
Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). When they
attacked a government target in April 2003 the
response from the government was the
situation we see today.

The UN and the major powers have not protected the people. They agreed to send in UN troops
last year but only if Al-Bashir the Sudanese president agreed. He didn’t. Hardly surprising.
There are 7000 African Union troops and a minimum of 23000 troops are needed to protect the
people. China has massive oil interests in Sudan and is a permanent member of the UN security
council. It abstains or threatens veto every time Darfur is brought up. Meanwhile 4 years on the
people continue to be murdered and raped.