Crimes Against Humanity (Updated)

With UN Security Council discussions on Darfur coming up, Human Rights Watch have produced a report proposing that Sudanese President Omar El Bashir and other senior officials should be investigated for crimes against humanity.

“The Sudanese government’s systematic attacks on civilians in Darfur have been accompanied by a policy of impunity for all those responsible for the crimes,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Senior Sudanese officials—including President Omar El Bashir—must be held accountable for the campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.”

The...report describes the process, replicated across Darfur, in which militia leaders collaborated with regional administrators and military commanders, usually meeting to co-ordinate strategy prior to attacks on rural villages and towns. By early 2004 it was clear, even to some soldiers, that civilians were the targets. One former soldier told Human Rights Watch that when he protested to his commander, he was told, “You have to attack the civilians.”

Human Rights Watch said that the looting and destruction of villages was not just condoned by government officials, it was methodically organized, with troops and militia members permitted to take land, livestock and other civilian property. Senior Sudanese officials played a direct role coordinating the offensives—and particularly the aerial bombing campaign—from Khartoum. [...]

The report is based on hundreds of eyewitness accounts, more than ten investigations by Human Rights Watch in Chad and Darfur, and Sudanese government documents, as well as secondary sources. It reveals the strategy and network behind the Sudanese government’s massive counter-insurgency campaign against rebel groups in Darfur in early 2003, when government forces and government-backed militias known as the “Janjaweed” killed, raped and tortured tens of thousands of people, mainly those sharing the ethnicity of the rebel movements, forcibly displaced more than two million people, and looted or destroyed all their property.

The U.N. Security Council will receive three reports on Darfur in December: the final report and recommendations of the Panel of Experts of the Sanctions Committee; the monthly report of the U.N. Secretary General; and the ICC Prosecutor’s briefing. In March the Council referred Darfur to the ICC and the Prosecutor opened an investigation on June 6.

Although the U.N. Security Council established a mechanism in March 2005 to enforce a partial arms embargo and to impose sanctions on individuals committing abuses, not a single person has yet been sanctioned by the U.N.

“Nine months ago the Security Council set up a Sanctions Committee to penalize individuals responsible for abuses in Darfur but it has yet to act against anyone,” said Takirambudde. “If the Security Council wants to see real progress in Darfur it must act now.”

There's also this:

The African Union is not only providing troops in Darfur; it is negotiating a peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the Darfur rebel groups. Despite the Sudanese government’s involvement in ongoing crimes in Darfur, the A.U. is allowing Sudan to host January’s A.U. summit in the capital, Khartoum. A new A.U. president is also due to be elected, and there are indications that President Bashir might obtain the post.

Update: Eric Reeves writes about this, under the heading "Darfur Betrayed":

Without public objection from any African leader, the next African Union summit is scheduled to be held in Khartoum, January 23-24, 2006. The countries of the AU have evidently concluded that a regime guilty of massive, ongoing genocidal destruction can serve as an appropriate host for the business of Africa. Such a conclusion is wholly remarkable, since presumably the business of Africa includes the vast human catastrophe in Darfur that has been engineered by this very same regime of genocidaires. [...]

It is a profound scandal that not a single African leader has publicly objected to this travesty, even as not a single African country has dared to declare the realities of Darfur to be genocide, despite overwhelming evidence of the ultimate human crime. Tragically, this moral cowardice and political perversity are reflected everywhere in AU policy toward Darfur, a policy that is increasingly defined not merely by inadequacy and incompetence, but by shameful expediency.

Comments

[P. Froward]

"The countries of the AU have evidently concluded that a regime guilty of massive, ongoing genocidal destruction can serve as an appropriate host for the business of Africa."

And why should they not?

"Such a conclusion is wholly remarkable..."

For values of "remarkable" equal to "resoundingly ordinary".