Archive for May 2008
ENOUGH – Report and Activist Briefs
The latest release from Enough Project.
The town of Abyei no longer exists. In a paper released today, ENOUGH consultant Roger Winter reports from the field about the attack by the Khartoum-controlled Sudanese Armed Forces in Abyei. The clash displaced the town’s entire civilian population and left its buildings in ashes. As this report goes to the press, the United States has not made a single public statement regarding Khartoum’s instigation of violence in Abyei, the resulting humanitarian emergency, the damage done to the implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA, or prospects for peace in Sudan.
Read the report here
“Abyei should matter to all who care about peace and democratic transformation in Sudan,” says report author Roger Winter. According to most Sudan experts, Abyei is a unique bellwether of war or peace between Khartoum and Sudan’s South. And now that direct combat between the military wings of the CPA signatories has occurred, the country faces a serious threat of a return to full-scale war throughout the country. The Bush administration and other interested parties must step up and make sure the international community is doing all it can to bring peace to all of Sudan.
Read the report here
Death of a Peacekeeper
We usually post news on the sidebar, but for today I’m posting this here.
Content of this post from AFP and PR-inside.com
Peacekeeper from joint U.N.-African Union force killed in Darfur for first time
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) – A peacekeeper for the joint U.N.-African Union force in Sudan’s Darfur region has been killed for the first time since the troops deployed five months ago, the U.N. mission said Thursday.
A Ugandan policeman identified as John Kennedy Okecha was found dead in a vehicle for the UNAMID force in North Darfur Wednesday, UNAMID said in a statement. He had been shot three times in the neck, chest and stomach.
UNAMID described the killing as «an act of cold blooded murder» and appealed to all those with any knowledge of what happened to share it with the appropriate authorities so the perpetrators can be brought to justice.
Darfur peacekeeper found riddled with bullets
A Ugandan policeman serving with the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Sudan’s western Darfur region has been found dead riddled with bullets, a spokesman for the force said Thursday.
“Yesterday (Wednesday) evening, unfortunately we found one of our police officers dead in his vehicle. We are investigating the circumstances of his death,” said Noureddine Mezni, spokesman for the UN-AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID).
“He was killed on duty. He was found with bullet wounds all over the body.”
Mezni said the policeman’s body was found near the Zamzam market in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state and the region’s largest town.
He was the first UNAMID peacekeeper to be killed since the joint force took over from an overstretched AU mission at the beginning of the year.
“We had three natural deaths before,” said Mezni.
The UN Security Council authorised the new force in July last year but nearly a year on it still has only a fraction of its planned full complement.
Of a projected staffing of 26,000 — 19,500 soldiers and 6,500 policemen — the force so far has just 9,200 peacekeepers backed up by 1,300 civilian administrators.
The preceding African Union Mission in Sudan lost some 60 of its personnel from its deployment in 2004 until it replacement by UNAMID earlier this year.
The United Nations says that more than 2.2 million people are believed to have fled their homes in Darfur since ethnic minority rebels rose up in early 2003, meeting a scorched earth response from the Khartoum government and allied militias.
In April, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said up to 300,000 people may have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease.
Sudan puts the number of deaths from fighting at 10,000.
China and the Olympics – Debate Series, The Economist
From a Media Release sent to me today:
The Economist will kick-off a two-week, online debate on the Olympics in Beijing. With all of the controversy ranging from China’s policies on Darfur and Tibet to athletes concerned about Beijing’s air pollution, we’d like to hear yourThis house believes it was a mistake to award the Olympics to Beijing. Do you think that awarding the games to Beijing will help or harm the relevance and prestige of the Olympics? thoughts and invite you to voice your opinion. The proposition states:
Daniel Franklin, executive editor of The Economist, will moderate the debate between Gordon Chang author of The Coming Collapse of China (2001) and Charles Freeman, Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In addition to the two debaters, the following expert Guest Participants will lend insightful commentary to the lively discussion.
- Victor Cha, Director of the Asian Studies program at Georgetown University, former Director for Asian Affairs in the White House National Security Council
- Alfred Senn, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and author of Power, Politics and the Olympic Games
- Daoud Hari, Darfurian tribesman and translator for major news organizations including The New York Times, NBC, and BBC, as well as the United Nations. Author of The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur
- Cheng Li, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center in Washington, DC
We invite you and your readers to check out the debate. It is certain to be lively and contentious, and it’s free to vote and comment — just register for a complimentary pen name. Please let me know if you have any questions.
If you prefer to follow the debate on Facebook you may do so here.
You will have to register and then sign up for a forum pen name, takes a few seconds, and is free.
Darfur Now Available on DVD
If Not Now, Then When?
Joey Cheek’s Essay in WAPO.
My New Olympic Dream
Some say now is not the time. If not now then when?
With China feeling the pain of their great loss of human life, and with the world suffering with them, surely the pain of others, those who are DYING IN DARFUR, can be understood. Maybe with greater clarity than before.
