Madam, - John O'Shea of GOAL's unambiguous call, in a radio interview from Darfur, for peacekeeping or peace enforcement troops to be sent there in order to protect the civilian population, must be supported. The Sudanese government is continuing to fail to honour its promises to stop its Janjaweed militias from killing, raping and destroying the very way of life of the African peoples of the region.
Minister of State Tom Kitt is also in Darfur at present, like John O'Shea, and must have access to the same evidence. We would urge him and the Irish Government to press home this demand in every appropriate international forum.
The most effective way to force the world to act would be to invoke the Genocide Convention. Failing to do so will only allow the Sudanese regime to complete its own final solution through engineered famine and disease, as well as its ongoing "Janjaweed campaign" of murder and rape with over two million people now in real danger.
Many of these defenceless people are still in camps, some of which have no or very little humanitarian assistance and continue to be terrorised by the Janjaweed. In short, if they do not starve to death they will easily contract disease and perish in appalling conditions, with numerous reports of men being murdered and women raped when they try to leave in search of food for their families.
As we found first-hand in Rwanda ten years ago, the world only called it genocide when over 800,000 men, women and children were butchered. In Darfur the reports from the region are very clear that the Sudanese regime has no intention of fulfilling commitments it made recently to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and US Secretary of State Colin Powell on separate visits to the capital Khartoum that their Janjaweed militia would be disarmed and large-scale humanitarian assistance and security made possible for the hundreds of thousands of people are risk.
Tom Kitt and the Irish Government can now play a decisive role if they call these crimes against humanity by their proper name - genocide - and seek an emergency Security Council resolution to ensure that all appropriate measures are taken to stop it. There is growing awareness around the world that Darfur today is Rwanda in slow motion, except this time nobody can claim they do not know what is going on.
Against that background the Irish Government can exert real influence and help save potentially hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian lives. -
Yours, etc.,
RONAN TYNAN, ANNE DALY, Esperanza Productions, Carysfort Avenue, Blackrock ,Co Dublin.