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Rival Sudans tensions continue despite recent agreement to AU road map
6 April 2012
Earlier this week both Sudan and South Sudan accepted the African Union's seven-point roadmap, that called for a cessation of hostilities, in order to avert an all-out war. 'The UN Security Council on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution threatening Khartoum and Juba with sanctions if they failed to silence the guns and resume talks within two weeks, endorsing the AU's deadline of May 8.' (Read More)
However, Sudan's army accused South Sudan on Saturday, 5 May, of having troops on its territory, a sign tensions between the former civil war foes were unlikely to cool despite an international ultimatum to end fighting. (Read More)
Pod-cast of Greg Stanton's appearance on Public Radio San Francisco, KQED, Monday, April 30, 2012
Why Do We Look the Other Way?
By Dr. Gregory Stanton
President, Genocide Watch
Speech on the the Bay Area Walk Against Genocide, 29 April 2012
I spent three days at the University of Oregon a couple of weeks ago with Dr. Paul Slovic, a social psychologist who has conducted path-breaking experiments asking why we cannot sympathize with the suffering or even the murder of large numbers of people in Sudan, or Rwanda, or Bosnia, or Cambodia.
In one experiment, psychologists asked ordinary Americans to contribute five dollars to feed Rokia, a starving seven year old girl in Mali. About half would donate the five dollars. The same percentage would donate to save Moussa, a little boy from Mali.
But when photos of both Rokia and Moussa were shown, the percent who would donate dropped to thirty percent. And when the photo of Rokia was shown representing 21 million hungry Africans who could be fed by a group of trusted relief organizations, the percentage who would donate dropped to less than ten percent.
Professor Slovic calls this phenomenon “psychic numbing.” He believes human beings are usually unable to feel compassion for large numbers of people. The more victims, the less compassion.
Genocide Watch has developed an early warning system using our understanding of the genocidal process to predict and recommend policies to prevent genocide. Through the International Alliance to End Genocide, the first anti-genocide coalition (founded in 1999), we maintain close relations with policy makers who can take preventive action. Rapid response by regional alliances has prevented or stopped several genocides: in East Timor, Kosovo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia , and Sierra Leone.
We have created international tribunals to try genocidists in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, East Timor, and Cambodia. And we finally have an International Criminal Court (the ICC). The UN Security Council has referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC. It has indicted President Omar al-Bashir, Abdul Rahim, and Ahmed Harun for crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur. But al-Bashir has just laughed. He even appointed Harun (one of those indicted) to be Governor of South Kordofan where he is leading another genocide against the people of the Nuba Mountains.
South Sudan president says Sudan has ‘declared war’ after Sudanese jets drop bombs on S. Sudan
By The Associated Press
24 April 2012
South Sudan’s president said its northern neighbor has “declared war” on the world’s newest nation, just hours after Sudanese jets dropped eight bombs on his country.
President Salva Kiir’s comments, made Tuesday during a trip to China, signal a rise in rhetoric between the rival nations, who spent decades at war with each other. Neither side has officially declared war.
Sudan and South Sudan have been drawing closer to a full-scale war in recent weeks over the unresolved issues of oil revenues and their disputed border. The violence has drawn alarm and condemnation from the international community, including from U.S. President Barack Obama. (Read More)
Smoke rises from the Al Qusoor district of Homs (Photo: Reuters)
UN has bleak outlook for Syria ceasefire as violence continues in Homs
25 April 2012
Government forces have followed the pattern established since the cease-fire, resuming attacks where the United Nations had just visited, while soldiers remained largely quiet in the places where the unarmed monitors were walking around. The Damascus suburb of Douma, which staged a massive antigovernment protest when the observers visited Monday, was shelled heavily on Wednesday morning, activists said.
Only about a dozen monitors have deployed in the country so far, but Syrians have already soured on the experience, blaming the monitors for being powerless in the face of further violent attacks despite the cease-fire technically in effect since April 12. The United Nations Security Council continues to back the peace plan, however, with the full contingent of 300 inspectors expected to deploy over the next couple months. Read more
(Photo: NYDailyNews)
President Obama Announces Formation of the Atrocity Prevention Board
23 April 2012
During a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, President Obama confirmed that atrocity prevention is "a core national security interest and core moral responsibility." The President's speech outlined an unprecedented effort to institutionalize normative commitments to atrocity prevention by creating a high-level interagency Atrocities Prevention Board, the APB, under the chairmanship of the National Security Council’s Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, Samantha Power. (USIP)
Click hereto read the official press release from the White House Office of the Press Secretary.
How We Can Prevent Genocide
Dr. Gregory Stanton, Genocide Watch Founder, President, and Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, provides pragmatic tools for prevention of genocide at the individual, community, policy, and government levels. This lecture is part of an interdisciplinary University of Oregon initiative entitled "Genocide and Mass Atrocities: Responsibility to Prevent," which strives to harness the rich scholarship and experience of academics, policymakers, and advocates around the world. It is spearheaded by the Oregon Law Appropriate Dispute Resolution Center in partnership with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
“The situation in South Kordofan is even worse than Darfur.”
In a special show, Al Jazeera investigates a hidden war, in Sudan’s remote state of South Kordofan. In the heart of South Kordofan are the Nuba Mountains, home to fifty Nuba tribes. Many Nuba people fought on the side of the southern Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA) during the twenty-year North-South civil war. Now that South Sudan gained its independence, the people of South Kordofan, face brutal retaliation by the northern government. Al Jazeera’s correspondent, Peter Greste travels to the Nuba Mountains where he finds entire communities hiding in caves from a bombing campaign that Khartoum says is aimed only at putting down an armed insurrection. In a footage shown by Al Jazeera, Ahmed Haroun openly announces his intent to commit genocide, encouraging the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) to wipe out entire Nuba villages. The genocidal role played by al-Bashir and Ahmed Haroun in South Kordofan is identical to their role in Darfur. They are serial genocidists. President Bashir and Ahmed Haroun have both publicly announced their orders and support of the SAF’s military actions in South Kordofan. As the crisis in the Nuba Mountains worsens, the decimation of the Nuba people continues unabated. (Read More)
(SFBADC)
ETHNIC CLEANSING X3 BY INDICTED GENOCIDAIRE
WHILE THE WESTERN WORLD STAYS SILENT, THE BAY AREA DOES NOT
UPCOMING EVENT:
Protests against Sudan and The Congo, and recognition of past genocides.
Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA
29 April 2012
Join Genocide Watch President Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, along with hundreds of genocide refugees, victims and their supporters in the Bay Area, and take a stand against genocide by marching against mass atrocities taking place in Sudan and The Congo. The event will include a 1.5 mile walk around Oakland’s Lake Merritt, followed by a program to demand U.S. action. READ MORE
Speakers will include:
Dr. Gregory H. Stanton: President and Founder of both Genocide Watch and the Cambodian Genocide Project, founder and Chair of the International Campaign to End Genocide, the world’s first anti-genocide coalition, and former President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Carl Wilkens: The only American who stayed in Rwanda during the genocide. Wilkens was directly responsible for saving the lives of 400 children of an orphanage.
Yassir A. Kori: Exiled from the Nuba Mountains in Sudan due being severely persecuted for his Christian beliefs. Kori is an activist for the people Nuba Mountains and is the founder and Director of the Nuba Vision Coalition.
Former Syrian soldiers who've escaped to northern Iraq are telling grisly stories of how their units executed unarmed civilians for demonstrating against the Assad regime and staged mass reprisals when residents shot back, on one occasion lining up and shooting 30 defenseless civilians.
The former soldiers — Syrian Kurds who've crossed the mountainous border into Iraq's Kurdistan region in small groups over the past three months, a group that now totals well more than 400 — also brought tales of colleagues being shot for not firing on civilians. One former special-forces noncommissioned officer even said he suspected that other government troops had orchestrated an ambush his unit endured, in an effort to motivate the unit to kill civilians.
Isa Hussein, 20, a Syrian army soldier of Kurdish ethnicity who was killed for refusing to shoot civilians during the Syrian uprising. (MCT)
Syria agrees to UN peace plan, but makes no moves toward implementation
28 March 2012
President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government accepted a UN-backed peace plan to 'forge a political solution to the bloody uprising engulfing the country' on Tuesday, but activist groups report that there is no evidence that the regime is carrying out the plan and violence is persisting.
"So far we haven't seen anything concrete to indicate the regime is implementing anything of the sort," LCC spokeswoman Rafif Jouejati told CNN. "As of 7:40 this morning, regime forces were still shelling Idlib, and it looks like the military deployment in parts of Aleppo is growing." Read more
(Reuters)
The Roles and Challenges of Women in the Syrian Revolution By Kristi Scogna, Genocide Watch 13 March 2012
“We are all fighting for dignity, freedom and human rights. That’s it.”
On Friday, March 9, 2012, the U.S. Institute of Peace hosted a moderated discussion panel, co-sponsored with United for Free Syria and the Syrian Emergency Task, to address the critical role of women in Syria’s current revolution and what this means for women in a potential post-Assad Syria. The program included four Syrian female panelists, all of whom are active supporters of the opposition movement by various means. The panelists discussed the monumental contributions women have made to the progress of Syria’s political revolution, which have been largely overshadowed and unrecognized in the media. They also answered audience questions concerning the role of the international community, accusations of disunity among the opposition, and their predictions for a post-Assad Syria. This discussion was part of the Institute’s commitment to conflict management, training and peacebuilding in Syria and around the world. Read More
Syrian hospital patients being tortured by medical staff and security forces
Britain’s Channel 4 News has obtained video said to have been recorded secretly in a military hospital in the Syrian city of Homs, showing patients shackled to their beds and bearing marks consistent with reports of torture at state-run medical facilities.
According to the French photographer who smuggled the video out of Syria, it was provided to him by an employee of the hospital who said he witnessed wounded civilians and rebel fighters being tortured there by medical staff and members of the security forces. (Mackey) Read more
South Kordofan a growing concern
The situation in the Nuba Mountains is dire. The government in Khartoum continues to launch aerial attacks on civilians, humanitarian aid is restricted, and the number of wounded and killed is growing by the hour. Hundreds and thousands of civilians are fleeing to South Sudan and Ethiopia. The influx of refugees is creating yet another humanitarian catastrophe. Inadequate food supplies are causing famine like conditions. Read More
“I came because I was starving,” said Muhasin Kuwa, a 24-year-old woman who just arrived at the refugee camp. Both of her parents had starved to death, along with seven small children in her small village, she said. Click here
United to End Genocide is Making All the Same Mistakes
By Prof. Gregory Stanton
March 2012
In 2003, Humanity United (HU) called a national conference of people its staff identified as potential activists for an anti-genocide movement. Notably missing were any members of the Republican party, most of the heads of member organizations of the International Campaign to End Genocide and any leaders of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. At the conference, Humanity United announced that Pierre and Pam Omidiyar, HU’s funders, intended to donate $100 million over the next seven years to support activism against genocide, human trafficking, and a few other causes. They also announced that unsolicited applications for grants would not be accepted. Most of the money they pledged has now been spent. (Read More)
Enough!
A Fourth Genocide by Sudanese President al-Bashir:
Why is America and the West Indifferent to African Genocides?
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times says the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir has presided over the killing of “perhaps 300 times as many people as President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.”
After al-Bashir’s well publicized genocide in Darfur, which killed 300,000 to 450,000 people; after earlier genocides in the Nuba mountains and South Sudan that cost two million lives; despite al-Bashir’s indictment by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity, almost no media attention is being paid to the Sudanese government’s latest genocide against the Nuba. Daily bombing by the Sudanese Air Force, attacks by helicopter gunships, and raids by Arab militias all repeat al-Bashir’s previous genocides.
We are witnessing al-Bashir’s fourth genocide, and his second attempt to wipe out the black Nuba people of Sudan. All the same tactics of genocide are being used -- bombings of villages, killing of civilians, including children, mass rapes of women, encirclement, starvation, and forced displacement.
The Western world is doing nothing to stop Bashir’s new atrocities.
Genocide is a powerful word. But there’s resistance to use it, especially among American and western leaders, who don’t want to do anything about it.
On April 29, hundreds of genocide refugees and victims in the San Francisco Bay Area will take a stand by marching against al-Bashir’s mass atrocities. It’s a 1.5 mile walk around Oakland’s Lake Merritt followed by a program to demand U.S. action. Enough is enough!
U.N. Human Rights Council adopts resolution on Syria's deteriorating humanitarian crisis
1 March 2012
By a vote of 37 to 3, the Human Rights Council concluded its urgent debate on the human rights and humanitarian situation in Syria and adopted a resolution on the escalating grave human rights violations and deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country.
In the resolution, the Council strongly condemned the continued widespread and systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities, such as the use of force against civilians, arbitrary executions, the killing and persecution of protestors, human rights defenders and journalists, including the recent deaths of Syrian and foreign journalists, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, interference with access to medical treatment, torture, sexual violence and ill-treatment, including against children.
It called upon the Government of Syria to immediately put an end to all human rights violations and attacks against civilians, to cease all violence, to allow free and unimpeded access by the United Nations and humanitarian agencies to carry out a full assessment of needs in Homs and other areas, and to permit humanitarian agencies to deliver vital relief goods and services to all civilians affected by the violence. The Council stressed the importance of ensuring accountability and the need to end impunity and hold to account those responsible for human rights violations. (OHCHR)
Click here to read the official U.N. Human Rights Council resolution document.
UN General Assembly passes resolution calling for the resignation of Syrian President al-Assad
16 February 2012
"Today, the UN General Assembly sent a clear message to the people of Syria: the world is with you," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said in a statement. "An overwhelming majority of UN member states have backed the plan put forward by the Arab League to end the suffering of Syrians. Bashar al-Assad has never been more isolated. A rapid transition to democracy in Syria has garnered the resounding support of the international community. Change must now come." (The CNN Newswire)
A still from a video filmed in Homs shows bodies wrapped in white sheets outside a hospital in the Bab al-Amr neighbourhood. (The Guardian, AP)
Syrian siege of Homs is genocidal, say trapped residents By Harding, Mahmood and Weaver, The Guardian 7 February 2012
Residents inside the besieged city of Homs claim they are under "genocidal attack" from a Syrian regime apparently deaf to international opinion and determined to "bomb, starve and shoot" them into submission.
"The regime didn't expect us to continue our struggle against them," activist Karam Abu Rabea said via Skype. "They didn't think we would persist. So now it is using its last card. It is the genocide card."
3,000 Deaths in Ethnic Violence in South
Sudan by Jeffrey
Gettleman, The New
York Times 5 January 2012
In the
past two weeks, United Nations aircraft had been tracking an unusually large
column of 6,000 to 8,000 heavily armed fighters from the Lou Nuer ethnic group
as it advanced toward the town of Pibor, cutting a swath of destruction across
the savanna. Pibor is the hometown of the Lou Nuer’s traditional rival, the
Murle, and the two groups have been locked in a tit-for-tat cattle rustling
feud for years, with the death toll steadily rising each round.
According
to Joshua Konyi, the commissioner of Pibor County and a Murle, 2,182 women and
children and 959 men were killed, 1,293 children were abducted and 375,186 cows
were stolen.
“We’ve
been counting the bodies,” Mr. Konyi said by telephone from Pibor on Thursday
night. “It’s really a genocide. If you come, you will see.” (Read More).
Please click the following links for updates from member groups:
Genocide Watch is the Coordinator of the
International Alliance to End Genocide.
Please
click here to view a
report on the Campaign's first ten years or here to
view a timeline of key events.
Genocide Watch is the Coordinator of the International Alliance to End Genocide P.O. Box 809, Washington, D.C. 20044 USA. Phone: 1-202-643-1405 E-mail:communications@genocidewatch.org
