Posted on 07/26/2004 9:28:08 AM PDT by knighthawk
When it learned of the obscenities of the Holocaust, the world said, "Never again." It lied. Ten years ago, 800,000 people died in Rwanda while the world looked the other way. Oh, the after-the-bloody-fact posturing and the offering of new resolve. All of it, again, lies. History is repeating itself, this time with Khartoum-backed Arab militias butchering and raping black Sudanese. By conservative estimates, 10,000 to 30,000 have already died. The projected death toll is 300,000 to 1 million. Already 2 million are suffering from starvation and sickness. What the government-backed militias began, microbes may finish. The situation is indescribable.
The U.S. has stepped up aid, and the Senate and House unanimously passed resolutions Thursday urging the President to call what's happening in Sudan "by its rightful name - genocide." Officially applying such a label is anathema to the UN Security Council because doing so would require taking action.
A U.S.-sponsored resolution, expected this week, threatens sanctions against Khartoum and asks the international community to help block arms shipments and to provide humanitarian aid. Its chances are slim to none. Sanctions against mass murderers? Intervention? Heaven forbid.
Our good ami France is one of those going blithely about its own selfish business while multitudes suffer. The French have a military base in Sudan's neighbor Chad. There sit a bunch of helicopters. Months ago, UN workers asked France to provide six choppers for relief runs. France said, "Non." Hey, Michael Moore! Why don't you do a documentary on the French? Non? Figured.
What is happening in Darfur is an obscenity, and you can be certain that when the U.S. acts - which it must - obscenities will be hurled in America's direction. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't, so we might as well do.
Ping
What the good people of Sudan need is a visitation from Bill Clinton's personal spiritual advisor, Jesse Jackson.
Name one instance of genocide the United Nations has stopped.
Ditto.
As one who has been sending support for the persecuted church in the Sudan for a number of years now, I am really quite annoyed that the Sudan Islamic government's campaign of genocide, slavery, and ethnic cleansing against the Chrsitians and tribal peoples of the South and the Blue Nile region continues to be ignored by media types like the article's author. He also forgot to not Pol Pot's slaughter of a couple of miliion in Cambodia. (Oh, I fogot - that's permissible since it was done to usher in the Marxist utopia.)
The Sudanese government, who occupies a chair on the UN Human Rights Commission, has been persuing this policy for twenty years. Over 2 million are already dead in the South and Blue Nile (where the Sudanese have assistance from the Chinese military guarding oil facilities) plus another 2-3 million who've been forced off their lands, raped and enslaved.
Now that they are attacking black Muslim tribes in the Western part of the country - the Dafur region - it's a big news event. This is not news. It's standard operating procedure for the Sudanese government. The Dafur Muslims were apperently not showing proper respect to their Arab overlords. According to the leftists who run the media, Islam is the perfect rainbow religion of peace and multiculturalism where St. Rodney King's dictum of evryone just all getting along is followed. Maybe this little event is dsplaying a side of Islam they would prefer to remain hidden.
August 25, 2004
TO: REVEREND JESSE JACKSON, SR.
Rev. Jackson:
In the Tuesday, August 24th edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, you correctly said: “The worst humanitarian crisis in the world is taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan.” You also correctly said: “The world cannot turn its back on this crisis. President Bush should be denouncing the genocide and leading the effort to mobilize an international peace keeping force to intervene, enforce a shaky cease-fire and protect humanitarian efforts.” You also correctly said: “African leadership is essential, and African forces should make up the great bulk of the peacekeeping force. But the Sudan regime will not easily accept an international force. It will require international pressure for this to happen.”
In October 1997, you were appointed by President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as "Special Envoy of the President and Secretary of State for the Promotion of Democracy in Africa,” so I know you have intimate knowledge of the social and political climate on the African continent, especially in Sudan.
I agree with your points in the first paragraph. However, Rev. Jackson, with all due respect, you are a “Johnny-Come-Lately” on this Sudan crisis. You did not mention that this crisis in Sudan has been going on for 22 years and over 2 million Black Sudanese have died not only by starvation and disease but thousands have been murdered, i.e., genocide. You are many years and many thousand people late in talking about this whole situation. And many people, such as Black pastors, have spoken out openly and have been publicized about it a long time before you talked about it.
Study the following quotes:
The Boston Globe, Charles Jacobs (July 7, 1996): “Now there are eight, mostly black-led grass roots groups across the country who count thousands of ordinary African-Americans as supporters. But black leaders are AWOL... or worse. The NAACP resolved to ‘come to the front of this battle’ but has not. The CBC encouraged us, but then went mute. Jesse Jackson’s office told us he wouldn’t touch the issue because it sounded ‘anti-Arab.’ Jackson’s friend, the Reverend Singleton from California, now heads one of our groups. He says Jesse knows about slavery; he’s just ‘too busy.’ More than a few black Congresspeople signed on. But no black leader has raised the issue with his constituency. Imagine.”
The News Tribune, John Carlson (August 5, 1998): “The president's unofficial envoy to Africa, Jesse Jackson, has been all over the African continent over the past two years. Has he spoken out? No.”
Village Voice, Nat Hentoff (August 12, 1998): “These fifth-graders have become very knowledgeable about the horrifying chattel slavery in the Sudan. And when Clinton acted as if it didn't exist, they were furious, and one of the students wrote him, ‘Why aren't you doing anything about this?’ There was, of course, no answer. As for Jesse Jackson's continued silence, he knows about the slavery in the Sudan. I have left him several messages, as have others.”
In 1998 in a letter to the editor of the Daily Star in Oneonta, New York: “Charles Jacobs, director of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group, said that the Rev. Jesse Jackson, when asked to make a simple anti-slavery statement, ‘returned our document packages unopened.’ Jackson's spokesman would later state the unthinkable, that he was ‘too busy with affirmative action’ to bother. How's that for a profile in courage?”
Village Voice, Nat Hentoff (March 29-April 4, 2000): “Jesse Jackson has not joined this new abolitionist movement, although he was instrumental in gathering public support for the divestment campaigns, insisting that governments, cities, and institutions stop doing business with South Africa under apartheid. Jackson knows about slavery in Sudan. I have left messages for him with his staff, but my calls have not been returned. We know each other…I spoke to a close friend of Jesse Jackson—the Reverend Chuck Singleton, pastor of the 10,000-member interdenominational Loveland Church in Cucamonga, near Los Angeles… I asked Singleton why his friend remains silent about the genocide and slavery of blacks in Sudan. ‘I have asked Jesse,’ Singleton told me, ‘and he says his plate is too full.’ Too full to even say something? When he has weeks available to spend in Decatur, Illinois, working to get a few expelled black students back in school?”
Village Voice, Nat Hentoff (May 22, 2001): “It is largely because of (radio talk show host Joe) Madison that Jesse Jackson has finally broken his long silence on Sudan. On April 20, Jackson said, “Our continued ignorance [of slavery in Sudan] is immoral, and our government must stop paying lip service to this crisis and instead take realistic and meaningful action to end the human suffering.’ George W. Bush's condemnation of Sudan is also partly due to Madison's momentum.”
The November 8, 2002 edition of the Village Voice repeated: “Joe also prodded Jesse Jackson to break his long silence on slavery in Sudan.” After that prodding, you issued a two-page press release, April 23, 2001, that included: “Our continued ignorance is immoral, and our government must stop paying lip-service to this crisis and instead take realistic and meaningful action to end the human suffering. People everywhere should be outraged that in the new millennium human trafficking and enslavement continues. Slavery is unacceptable and immoral and I call on the government of Sudan to immediately take all the necessary actions to help end this inhumane practice.” Sir, was that press release the sum total of your protest, because I have not heard you address the situation anymore after that.
It is good that finally you talked about it, but why was not slavery and genocide not important enough to take direct action, i.e., to rally and to protest against it as you urged us to rally and to protest against apartheid in South Africa? The website http://www.helpthebishops.com/ (http://helpthebishops.com/Muslim%20Sudan.htm) said: “This (Sudanese) regime even provides special rewards to its most vicious perpetrators against Christianity. For example, one of the most celebrated and decorated of their military men is a Commander Musba, whose forces have killed tens of thousands of unarmed, civilian, ethnic Christians, often either by running them over with tanks, shooting them pointblank, or driving large nails through their heads should they happen to run out of ammunition. Part of the mission that Muslim Sudan sees for itself is to demoralize Christians in order to simplify the job of forced conversion or genocide of the remainder of the population. For example, Sudanese government helicopters swoop down to fire rockets at the thousands of starving Christians, who gather here and there to receive food at the few areas of southern Sudan where charitable organizations have been able to smuggle in some meager provisions. When government forces attack a Christian village to ethnically cleanse it, they kill everyone that they catch on the spot.” They even bombed schools and hospitals. Many children were maimed and killed. People have the impression that what is going on in Darfur is something that started recently. This senseless slaughter has been going on in Sudan for two decades.
I don’t understand what took you so long to bring attention to this situation since it has been going on for years. I was present when your wife was arrested at the South African consulate as part of an apartheid protest Why do I not see massive rallies and protests like there were for apartheid? Does not slavery and genocide qualify to be tragedies? Congressman Bobby Rush thinks so. He recently proved where he stood on these issues when he was arrested at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Rev. Jackson, you accused the Bush Administration at the last Democratic National Convention: “they ignored the genocide in the Sudan.” I’m sorry, the pot is calling the kettle black, no pun intended. Here is a quote from The Center for Religious Freedom (http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/sudan): “President Clinton never raised his voice publicly to decry the genocide in Sudan and failed to rally our allies to press the regime. In testimony before Congress on September 28, 2000, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted it was "struck by the huge disparity between the genocidal scale of atrocities being committed by the government of Sudan and the muted response of the President and Secretary of State of the United States (Madeline Albright)." Clinton ignored the strong appeals for U.S. non-military leadership by Congressmen Frank Wolf, Chris Smith, Don Payne, and Tom Tancredo, by Senators Sam Brownback, Bill Frist, and (surprise, surprise) Jesse Helms and by the Congressional Black Caucus. (Even those danged Republicans even cared.) Clinton deferred the request of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust poet Elie Wiesel to meet over U.S. policies on Sudan, ‘site of the world's most long-lasting religious persecution and genocide" which Wiesel wrote ‘haunted’ him.” Rev, Jackson, did President Clinton give slavery and genocide of Blacks in Sudan a high priority or a low priority on his to-do list? Even (surprise, surprise) Jesse Helms weighed in on Sudan.
You were quoted by BET.com (August 10, 2004) as saying: “’The Secretary of State [Colin Powell] must take a lead role in the Sudan,' the Rev. Jesse Jackson told BET.com, adding that the secretary’s recent trip to the region amounted to little more than a photo opportunity.’” Nearly two years ago, Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice, (November 8, 2002) said: “After the signing of the Sudan Peace Act, (radio talk show host) Joe Madison told me that Colin Powell had played a major role in moving Congress and the White House to finally take action. (But as reported on the Fox Television News Channel on October 21, Jesse Jackson said, ‘Colin Powell is not on our team.’ Many former slaves in Sudan would not agree with the reverend, who traveled through Africa with President Bill Clinton without mentioning slavery in Sudan.)” Why did you not mention the slavery there? You recently called the situation in Sudan the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” Colin Powell is on record as publicly saying long ago: “the worst human rights nightmare on the planet.”
Rev. Jackson, this is not a campaign for President Bush. I’m independent politically, but I believe in giving credit where credit is due, don't you?. You charge that the Bush administration ignored Sudan. I showed you that the Clinton administration, under which you were appointed Special Envoy to Africa, ignored Sudan. Yet the Village Voice (May 7, 2001) reported: “In a speech to the American Jewish Committee last Thursday, May 3, George W. Bush made the first step in directly involving this country in stopping the slavery and genocide in Sudan, which he accurately described as ‘a disaster area for all human rights.’ This follows what Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress's International Relations Committee on March 7: ‘I do know there is no greater tragedy on the face of the earth than the one unfolding in Sudan.’ Bush has been pushed hard by a coalition of human rights organizations—particularly the American Anti-Slavery Group and Christian Solidarity International, along with Amnesty International, black pastors across the country, the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas—and Joe Madison, 'the Black Eagle…' What Bush has finally done, and this is just a beginning, has been described in the May 4 Washington Post: ‘Bush said he has appointed the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios, as a special humanitarian coordinator to ensure that U.S. aid to Sudan 'goes to the needy, without manipulation by those ravaging that troubled land.'" On October 21, 2002, President Bush signed into law HR 5531, commonly called “The Sudan Peace Act,” which condemns genocide, aims at ending the civil war in Sudan, and directs the President to empose economic sanctions if he determines that the Sudanese government does not negotiate in good faith. And an escaped Black Sudanese slave named Francis Bok was present when Bush signed that bill into law. Bok was enslaved by an Arab family for 10 years. Mr. Bok told President Bush: "On behalf of the people of Southern Sudan and on behalf of those still in bondage, I thank you. If the boys and girls still in slavery could know that today you signed a law to help set them free, their faces would light up in hope." President Bush replied: "It is an honor to help." (Reference: http://www.iabolish.com/news/global/2003/signing02-14-03.htm .) When did Mr. Bok thank President Clinton?
On April 7, 2004, President Bush said, “The Sudanese Government must immediately stop local militias from committing atrocities against the local population and must provide unrestricted access to humanitarian aid agencies. I condemn these atrocities, which are displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and I have expressed my views directly to President Bashir of Sudan. For more than two and one half years, the United States has been working closely with the Government of Sudan and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) to bring peace to Sudan. This civil war is one of the worst humanitarian tragedies of our time, responsible for the deaths of two million people over two decades. Achieving peace, and reaching a just and comprehensive agreement, must be an urgent priority for both sides.”
Say what you may about President Bush, but his initiatives toward Sudan are boxcars more than what President Clinton has done toward Sudan, don’t you agree?
Robert Oliver
August 30, 2004
TO: REVEREND JESSE JACKSON, SR.
Rev. Jackson:
When I wrote you last week concerning your Sun-Times commentary, I had no idea you planned to go to Sudan. I saw the photos of you with Colonel Gadaffi in Libya and with the elderly Black woman in Sudan.
I read in the Defender that you said that there should be protests at the State Department. I recall that you opined that Secretary of State Colin Powell’s recent trip to Sudan amounted to no more than a photo opportunity. If you feel that for the last three years Mr. Powell could have done more than he has done, perhaps there should be protests at the State Department.
Rev. Jackson, I have not seen any reports of you publicly protesting the crisis in Sudan. Yet I read about you and 2000 people marching through Decatur, Illinois on behalf of six expelled Black high school students. If you can get that many people together for them, I believe you can get that many to protest the genocide going on in Sudan, in Darfur and in southern Sudan as well. As I said before, I have been following this crisis for a year and a half.
Since you have not protested the genocide in Sudan yet, I would like to see you go to Washington, D.C. and get at least 2000 people to join you at a protest at the Sudanese Embassy or at the State Department. I remember when you strongly protested apartheid (I photographed your wife being arrested at the South African consulate). I remember 2 days ago when you strongly protested President Bush and other times you protested him. Can you protest as strongly in behalf of many thousands of dead and dying of Black Africans in Sudan as you protested in Decatur?
Robert Oliver
I have to correct myself as hard as I do others. I discovered a letter from Bill Clinton to Elie Wiesel:
Dear Elie:
Once again your eloquent voice has captured the compelling tragedy we are now witnessing in Sudan. I share your concern and am conscious of our responsibility to provide leadership in responding to the unparalleled cruelty of the regime in Khartoum.
Although we are actively engaged on Sudan, the political situation there makes our job very difficult. We have invested a billion dollars in humanitarian relief over the past ten years attempting to alleviate the suffering in Sudan, carefully channeling none of it through the government. The United States Government has spent $110 million in the last year alone on programs to improve economic and social conditions in areas controlled by opposition forces. We are also actively supporting the regional peace effort led by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, which aims not only to end the war, but also to bring about peace with justice.
Together, we all must continue to make clear to the regime and the international community that Khartoum's human rights abuses will not be tolerated. And we are stepping up our efforts. I recently named a Special Envoy to Sudan, former Congressman Harry Johnston, who will focus on the humanitarian situation, the human rights problems, and the regional peace process. I know you are planning to come to Washington in the near future to help with an important humanitarian program. While you're here, I'd like to invite you to meet with Sandy Berger, who can bring you up to date on what we are doing.
Again, thank you for writing and for your continued support.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
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