U.N. Darfur report does not see genocide - Sudan

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story.jsp?id=2005013111280002720623&dt=20050131112800&w=RTR&coview=


ABUJA, Jan 31 (Reuters) - A keenly awaited United Nations investigation into human rights abuse in Sudan's Darfur region does not describe violence against villagers there as "genocide," said Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail.

Pro-government militia are accused of a two-year campaign of raping civilians, and burning and pillaging villages in the vast, arid region where tens of thousands have died and 1.8 million have been driven from their homes.

The United Nations report is currently in the hands of Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Sudanese government, and is expected to be made public this week after being presented to the Security Council.

"We have a copy of that report and they didn't say there is a genocide," Ismail told reporters on Monday on the sidelines of an African Union summit in the Nigerian capital.

So what is the magic number of murders which make it genocide?

It's not the numbers - it's the intent. If it was a tribe of 100 people and the aim was to kill everyone in the tribe, it would be genocide.

But the victims are black and they don't have any oil, while the Sudanese Arabs do. That's enough to keep the UN from doing anything. Disgracefull.

:wtf: :puke: :grr: :nuke:

And, as I said in the other thread, nobody wants it to be called "genocide". It's a conflict of interest: the countries whose reps determine it's genocide are the ones that would be forced to intervene or take action under treaty obligations to stop the genocide.

Countries want Sudanese oil or good relations with Arab countries. Compared those "needs" with the deaths of a few hundred thousand non-conservative non-white non-Arab-speaking Africans. France, China, Russia, Britain ... nobody's going to make that call.

gripping movie about genocide going down in a country and the outside world doing nada. It is also a tribute to a very amazing man, who risked everything to save lives. He is quite ingenious and intelligent and inventive, a real fly-by-the-seater, who outsmarts a whole gaggle of powerful men. It is also a very sad page from the history of the world community, which could have easily stopped machete-weilding fanatics.