Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

United States, Canada And Africa: Obama'S Empty Promises To Halt Gen

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • United States, Canada And Africa: Obama'S Empty Promises To Halt Gen

    UNITED STATES, CANADA AND AFRICA: OBAMA'S EMPTY PROMISES TO HALT GENOCIDE LEAVES IT TO US TO ACT

    Africa News
    June 28, 2012 Thursday

    Three months ago, in late March, the Obama Administration was toying
    with the idea of supporting the establishment of a humanitarian
    corridor in order to transport food to hundreds of thousands of people
    in the Nuba Mountains who are now facing imminent starvation.

    Unfortunately, "toyed" is the mot juste. In other words, talk, talk,
    and more talk, along with indecisiveness and wavering, has lorded it
    over action. Indeed, thus far, realpolitk has won out yet again over
    the moral imperative to help our brothers and sisters in critical need.

    Instead of acting on the Biblical injunction of being our brothers'
    (and sisters') keepers, the plight of the Nuba Mountains people has
    largely been swept under the proverbial rug. The result has been fatal,
    as an untold number of people have already starved to death.

    Unlike the innocent in Syria who are being killed with bullets and tank
    shells, the Nuba Mountains people are facing a much quieter death - but
    one that is no less deadly. As the victims' muscles atrophy and their
    skin becomes frighteningly taut due to a lack of adequate nutrition,
    each movement of their body results in intense pain.

    Groaning and quietly weeping as they die a slow and excruciatingly
    painful death, all their family members can do is look on in sorrow
    and wonder who among them might be next in line for a similar death.

    The Sudanese Government's (GoS) ongoing onslaught against the Nuba
    Mountains people -- constant aerial bombing, forced evacuation of
    hundreds of thousands from their villages and homes, and now the forced
    starvation of mothers, infants, children and elderly - has not gone
    unnoticed, just ignored. Indeed, neither the international community
    nor the Obama Administration can claim, "We weren't aware of the
    tragedy," as President Clinton did during the height of 1994 genocide
    in Rwanda." In fact, the Obama Administration has been apprised time
    and again of the crisis by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), various human
    rights organizations, and, indirectly, by the media, ranging from The
    New York Times (most notably NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof), The
    Washington Times (most notably,Franklin Graham, Founder and Director
    of Samaritan's Purse), National Public Radio, and the PBS NewsHour.

    Since the Obama Administration insists on doing nothing - while,
    ironically, touting itself as the first presidential administration in
    the history of the United States to take genocide seriously ("Last year
    in the first ever presidential directive on this challenge," Obama said
    recently in announcing the establishment of the Atrocities Prevention
    Board, "I made it clear that preventing mass atrocities and genocide
    is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility
    of the United States of America"), we, the citizens of the world who
    deeply care about the plight of the Nuba Mountains people, cannot, and
    must not, stand by and do nothing as generations in the past have in
    the face of genocide (i.e., the 1915-1919 Ottoman Turk genocide of the
    Armenians, the Holocaust, the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge slaughter of their
    fellow Cambodians, the 1994 Hutu slaughter of the Tutsi in Rwanda,
    and the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica).

    Now is the time to stand up; and if not now, when? (It will be
    interesting to see if Ms. Samantha Power, President Obama's Special
    Assistant and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human
    Rights and Chair of the newly minted Atrocities Prevention Board,
    will step up and be counted in this regard. After all, she is the one
    who coined the term "Upstander" (which she defined as one who speaks
    out in the face of mass atrocities, thus avoiding being a bystander),
    and who has gotten a lot of mileage out of it as she's been praised
    by one anti-genocide group after another for having done so. We all
    know that it is much easier to talk the talk versus stepping up and
    walking the walk. If anyone should walk the walk, it is Ms. Power,
    an individual who vociferously criticized one U.S. president and
    presidential administration after another in her Pulitzer Prize winning
    book, "The Problem from Hell" (as well as a slew of editorials) for
    not stepping up when potential genocide was on the horizon. Now that
    she is in a position of power, one has to wonder why her voice has
    gone silent.)

    Since private citizens do not have the wherewithal to use military
    force to establish a no fly zone over the Nuba Mountains to halt
    the attacks by the Antonovs and MIGs, the means to bomb the runways
    from which the bombers and MIGS take off from, or the forces needed
    to arrest Omar al Bashir and turn him over to the International
    Criminal Court, which has charged him with crimes against humanity,
    genocide and war crimes due to the atrocities perpetrated in Darfur,
    we must take a different tact.

    Among the options I believe we, citizens of the world, should consider
    (in no particular order, but solely with an eye to demanding and
    seeing to it that effective action is carried out to save the Nuba
    Mountains people from certain death) are as follows:

    Organize and commit sustained civil disobedience in front of the White
    House, U.S. State Department and/or the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum;

    Organize and conduct a sustained hunger strike in front of the White
    House, State Department and/or the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum;

    Commit daily acts of civil disobedience over a significantly sustained
    period of time in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C.,
    blocking entrance into the embassy.

    Organize and drive five to ten lorries loaded with food and water from
    South Sudan into the Nuba Mountains, thus leading the way and hopefully
    prodding (cum embarrassing) the international community to follow suit.

    If others have different and/or better ideas/approaches then they
    should suggest them.

    I fully realize that each of the above options appear radical; however,
    for eleven long months not a single effort by human rights and various
    anti-genocide organizations has been effective in prodding, cajoling
    or embarrassing the Obama Administration or the UN into action (and
    here I do not necessarily mean military action by U.S. forces, but
    rather the Administration's application of pressure on the UN to act
    and to act decisively). Enough is enough! This is not a game! Tens
    of thousands of people's lives are at risk.

    Over the past forty years or so, Holocaust survivors, scholars of
    the Holocaust and genocide, and educators have spoken and written at
    length about those individuals who failed to speak out on the behalf
    of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, as well as those who did (such
    as the Righteous Gentiles who have long been honored by the Yad Vashem
    Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem). Those same speakers, authors, and
    educators have frequently encouraged, prodded, and cajoled all those
    who live in free societies to take a stand when others are brutally
    being denied their basic rights and/or face potential, if not actual,
    crimes against humanity and genocide. In making such speeches and
    writing such papers among the most common admonitions issued are
    "Never Again," and "Remember!"

    In light of the silence of the world in the face of the imminent
    starvation of the Nuba Mountains people today, one has to wonder:
    are such speeches, such articles and books, such lessons in schools,
    all for naught? Are such admonitions meaningless? Are such words simply
    uttered, and accepted by those who hear and read them, something that
    simply sounds good in the moment but then are quickly forgotten? Is
    such counsel only going to be acted upon when it suits the powers
    that be that action is in their interests (and, if it is not, then
    the hell with those thousands, tens thousand and millions or more
    who are facing imminent death)?

    One has to really wonder what lessons the world - leaders and ordinary
    citizens alike - has really learned from the Holocaust. Even those who
    espouse such heartfelt sentiments/words/phrases are among those who
    look away when such tragedies break out -- and here I mean Holocaust
    survivors, survivors of other genocides, scholars, and educators at
    all levels. And if they don't look away, then far too often they
    stand slack jawed and silent. Neither is admirable; and, in fact,
    both are unconscionable.

    Not one to suggest that others should pursue an avenue I am not
    willing to undertake, I shall place my name at the top of the list
    to take part in any of the above actions that gain traction.

    Those willing to step up and be counted and thus avoid the tag of
    being a bystander in the face of certain crimes against humanity and
    potential genocide by attrition can contact me at

    Samuel Totten, a genocide scholar at the University of Arkansas,
    Fayetteville, has conducted research in the Nuba Mountains. His latest
    book, Genocide by Attrition: The Nuba Mountains, Sudan (New Brunswick,
    NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012).

Working...
X