Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin scolds UN for failure to act on Sudan and crimes against humanity

NEW YORK -- [Canadian] Prime Minister Paul Martin chastised the United Nations yesterday for its dithering approach to crimes against humanity and called on its members to radically reform the organization. Martin used unusually strong and blunt language during his 15-minute address to the UN General Assembly to criticize its members for failing to get tough with human-rights abusers.

Martin had harsh words for the UN Security Council, scolding it for getting bogged down in debating the conflict in Sudan..

Martin's speech was crafted to influence a high panel preparing a report for December on reforming the organization. He called on the panel to provide the UN with the tools that will allow its members to take quick action against offending nations such as Sudan where 50,000 are dead and 1.2 million displaced...

Countries such as Russia, China and some African nations are cool to the idea of giving the UN the tools to intervene quickly when its members deem it necessary. [more]

Comments

[Wikus]

Here is a quote and a link from the HRW website to a video that clearly proves the GoS is attacking rebel-held areas and that the people being killed are in actual fact rebel supporters if not rebels themselves:

"Human Rights Watch recently sent an investigative team on a more than three-week mission deep into rebel-held areas of North Darfur. Its new video, made up of footage shot in July and August 2004 by a Human Rights Watch researcher, shows regions of Darfur that no journalists or aid workers have reached."

http://hrw.org/video/2004/sudan/

[Wikus]

One might be tempted to take Mr Martin seriously if he proposed to institute sanctions against China for its human rights violations. Until then my opinion remains firmly that all the "humanitarian outrage" is just so much grandstanding and geo-political opportunism.

[GWB]

Here, here.
I second that emotion -
and yet,
this could be the start of something....

[Jim Moore]

Actually, Wikus makes a good point about China. Sudan is sort of an outsourced version of Tibet...
China does need to be taken to account for its human rights policies and for refusing to use its leverage in Sudan to help settle the crisis (see an earlier post to a piece by reporter French, interviewing the Chinese FM about oil and Sudan).

[gottaB]

China. If it's all just business for them, I wonder about the course of negotiations over 1564. I would have thought an arms embargo and a no-fly zone, in addition to an expanded AU force, would have been the most effective way of dealing with the crisis. Would it have been possible to drop the threat of sanctions targetting the oil revenues first, in order to bring China on board, and then go to work on Russia? Perhaps not.

We should continue to be critical of China, let them know that peace is in their interests, and that peace cannot be achieved through decimation. (Sorry, Wikus, for excluding you from "we." I certainly don't mean to imply that you oppose Sudan's efforts to achieve peace through genocide.)

Some contact info for the Chinese Embassy in the US:

http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/sgxx/dfzygy/t44338.htm

Contact info for China's UN mission:

http://www.china-un.org/eng/gywm/lxwm/t40763.htm

I reckon Wang Guangya is the person to contact. I don't know the proper honorifics. Excellency? Probably "Ambassador Wang" will do.

[Jim Moore]

thanks gottaB. Do you know that China is meeting next week with the G7 nations for the first time, as a mutual expression of interest at having China in the club. This should be a good time for the US and other G7 nations, including the UK and Canada, to put pressure on China to help solve the Sudan problem, rather than simply backing the government's sovereignty and currying favor with other authoritarians. By the way, there is precident for working together--the US, China and Russia are working on North Korea together. Why not Sudan?

[Wikus]

Gottab:(Sorry, Wikus, for excluding you from "we." I certainly don't mean to imply that you oppose Sudan's efforts to achieve peace through genocide.)

I guess the rebels are trying to achieve peace through rebellion then? By the way, why don't we ever read about the rebel forces' atrocities?

[Janeesh]

howareyou