"As I stood in the El Fasher hospital looking at the blood-soaked cots, I had a feeling of foreboding. The two Darfurian insurgent groups had splintered, and we were bearing witness to their banditry," wrote Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj in his article, "Hell is Darfur," following a self-financed fact-finding mission to Darfur in September 2005.
Wrzesnewskyj was the first Canadian MP to visit the strife-torn region in western Sudan since then-Prime Minister Paul Martin announced $192 million of aid to the region in May 2005.
At that time, it had been more than two years since two rebel groups attacked army outposts in Darfur in February 2003; they accused the government of long-time neglect of the region. Besides being excluded from political power, Darfurians—nomadic Arab herders and non-Arab farmers—were facing creeping desertification, growing competition for scarce resources, and a lack of such basic infrastructure as water, roads, and schools.
The Sudanese government reacted ruthlessly. Air force planes bombed villages as Arab militias—known as Janjaweed and widely said to be mobilized by the government—burned villages to the ground and carried out widespread killing, rape, and pillaging.
The conflict, marked by severe ethnic tensions, has claimed more than 200,000 lives, according to U.N. estimates. In addition, over 2 million people have been driven from their homes and placed in "internally displaced persons" camps.
At the same time, Sudan was amidst a north-south civil war which began in 1983, the second since independence from the U.K. and Egypt in 1956. The Arab Islamic-oriented government, based in Khartoum in the north, was fighting the largely non-Muslim, non-Arab Sudanese in the south, comprised of African animists and Christian Sudanese.
The Epoch Times recently interviewed Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.
Current Situation
The crisis must be solved on three levels, said Wrzesnewskyj: humanitarian, military, and political. The international community has taken a multilateral political, diplomatic approach that he supports, but he said some of the components—especially the military, security one—"could have been somewhat more forceful."
This is because, with "over 200,000 slaughtered at the point where the central government realized there just wouldn't be enough bullets, you had the preconditions put in place for a genocide by attrition."
The international community helped put in place the African Union (A.U.) Mission in Sudan, but even within the internally displaced persons camps, there is "not perfect security," said Wrznesnewskyj. And once outside the camps' perimeters, "you're basically entering a death zone."
The A.U. brokered a peace agreement between the government and two insurgent groups in the spring of 2005, ending the two-decade long north-south civil war. It established an appointed representative parliament, Wrzesnewskyj explained, that has allowed some degree of debate among the different groups. But the violence hasn't abated.
On July 31, the U.N. Security Council authorized a joint 26,000-strong U.N.-A.U. peacekeeping mission to Darfur. However, Wrzesenewskyj said, the Sudanese government has a track record of finding excuses to delay and prevent the deployment of humanitarian peacekeeping missions and troops on the ground in Darfur.
Meanwhile, the chaos, brutal violence and killing continue. Peace talks between the government and Darfur rebel groups are scheduled in Libya on October 27. However, with reports of ongoing atrocities, a boycott of the talks by some rebel leaders, and conflicts within some rebel groups and among different tribes, there is much concern that the peace process is unraveling.
Connecting Darfur to the Beijing Olympics
China has major business and oil interests in Sudan, and also supplies arms to the country. With veto power on the U.N. Security Council, China for the past two years has continued to protect the Sudanese government and refused to support the international community's push to deploy U.N. peacekeepers to assist in Darfur.
However, when activists worldwide began linking the 2008 Beijing Olympics to China's economic interests in Sudan and its unwillingness to help stop the crisis in Darfur, China appeared to shift its position. In April, a senior Chinese official went to Sudan to press the government to accept a U.N. peacekeeping mission.
Among the most prominent activists is Hollywood actor Mia Farrow, a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Children's Fund, who spearheads the "Olympic Dream for Darfur" campaign.
The New York-based group labeled the Beijing Olympics the "Genocide Olympics" and has launched an awareness-raising Olympic Torch Relay from Darfur to Beijing that began in August 2007.
Wrzesnewskyj commended Farrow. "She's done a tremendous service for humanity. Raising the issue of Darfur and directly connecting it to Chinese oil policy has shamed the Chinese government into reconsidering their unquestioning relationship with Darfur," he said. "And the Chinese are somewhat vulnerable to world opinion these days because of the upcoming Olympics."
Olympic Boycott
While the "Olympic Dream for Darfur" does not support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, there is another global relay—called the Human Rights Torch Relay —that is calling for a boycott if the Chinese regime doesn't improve human rights in China—something it promised to do when awarded the Olympics in 2001.
Wrzesnewskyj noted that the Games provide a "tremendous opportunity" for China to take its rightful place on the world stage. However, that opportunity will be jeopardized if China doesn't take make an effort to improve its human rights record.
"It would be horrific for us to be celebrating the human spirit during the Olympic Games and the human body's ability to go beyond its physical constraints . . . if at the same time the Olympics were just used in a Potemkin manner to camouflage and hide a horrific reality," he said.
He pointed out that thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have "suffered terribly" under the current persecution, with well-documented reports showing "that their human spirit is not at all valued and their bodies are strictly looked upon as a sum of parts to be sold for organ transplants. And it would be untenable that we would celebrate the human body and human spirit during the Olympics while these sorts of atrocities continue to take place in China."
He asked the Chinese to "take note that many people will be watching carefully."
"If China does not move, not just in places like Darfur, but internally, and does not show that they are entering . . . onto the world stage as a country to be respected for its past history, [while] acknowledging a past history that at times has had dark episodes, and a past history which in fact includes episodes of horrific destruction of the human spirit, then there will be those that will say no, this is not the right time, because China has not fully readied herself to step forward and take her rightful spot on the world stage."
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