In this week’s issue: the Sudanese government drops bombs in Chad, Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial comes to a close amid controversy, and LRA attacks continue in DRC

Featured: During a major address to the Muslim world today, President Obama made a very brief mention of the Darfur conflict that many argue "fell short". Check out this joint statement from Genocide Intervention Network, the ENOUGH Project, and the Save Darfur Coalition about the speech.

Questions? Feedback? Email education@standnow.org.

Sudan

The Sudanese Air Force bombed the Chadian towns of Bahai and Karyare on Sunday, in an attempt to strike JEM fighters.

The ICC is looking closer at allegations of child soldier use by militia groups in Darfur, in what could be a move to investigate more rebel offenses. The Court also expects a decision on whether the charges of genocide will be added to President al-Bashir’s case.

Physicians for Human Rights released a report detailing the long-term effects of sexual violence on Darfuri women. The report also highlights the prevalence of rapes occurring in Chadian refugee camps.

The New Republic published an editorial calling for Obama to increase pressure on the government of Sudan to bring an end to the conflict in Darfur, arguing that Obama could use increased engagement in the Arab world to encourage neighboring countries to change their foreign policy towards Sudan.

Burma

The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to end soon, with closing arguments beginning on June 4. In an apparent effort to appease critics, the Burmese junta has opened the trial to foreign diplomats.

Several Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states are considering suspending Burma from body if the country continues to detain or imprison pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The trial has prompted a number of editorial pieces denouncing the miscarriage of justice, as well as several pieces, including one by Pedro Nikken and Geoffrey Nice in the Washington Post, publicizing the crimes against humanity committed in eastern Burma and calling for an international investigation.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Lords Resistance Army attacks continue in the Dungu area of the DR Congo, displacing more than 12,000 civilians in May. LRA attacks appear to have shifted back to resupplying the force, in contrast with the civilian massacres seen during the winter, which appeared to be retributive attacks in response to the joint Ugandan-Sudanese-Congolese offensive.

For years now, we have been letting the genocide in Darfur slip from crisis into a state of permanent chaos, we have waited as the camps for the displaced settle silently into the sand and transform into villages, and we have allowed children to be born, raised, and sometimes die in states of malnourishment and fear.

For some of us who have been talking about the Darfur genocide for 5 years now, it is almost as if this has become normal.

Personally, I can even admit desensitization. After 5 years of reading article after article on atrocity after atrocity, report after report of rape after rape, going to sleep saturated with the statistics of suffering, it got to the point where I could write up a Weekly News Brief on all the displacements and deaths and barely blink.  

It happens to all of us, and it happened to the world. In fact, as activists we were so good at pushing the destruction into the public’s eye that Darfur became synonymous with destruction.

But this shouldn’t be seen as normal. Because death and disease and displacement are not normal.

In Southern Sudan, life is rebuilding to what may be normal after 4 decades of civil war. And as positive as the reconstruction is, it is times like these that you understand how easily destruction becomes normal. And it makes you realize how fragile everything is: disabled war veterans threatening to shoot in the middle of town today sent children running home from the school I was working at  – days worth of valuable education erased in a flash of firearms. It made me try to imagine what this beautiful bustling town was like during the war, when days like this one were normal. And in the time it took for the international community to respond here, decades had passed and the destruction became daily, almost accepted.

And yet again, somehow the world acts as if Darfur has always been burning.

And if the international community does not act swiftly and strongly, this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy – Darfur will suffer the same drawn-out destruction the South suffered, until no one remembers what life was like before the villages started burning…

And it may be that the expulsion of the aid groups from Darfur will remind the international community of how fragile life is in Darfur. It may shake them out of the dullness that the years of conflict have gradually worn them into. It may remind them that no, the displaced Darfuris don’t survive on media soundbites issues on their behalf but that they live on food aid being provided by aid organizations, that they are not protected by the words issued by UN Resolutions but by true human force, and that their children don’t get cured of meningitis by waves of sympathy but by medicine being trucked in on dusty LandCruisers.

And yet today, there were reports that “The UN Security Council will not likely vote on any resolution this week regarding the expulsion of 16 aid organizations from Darfur”. 

I ask: if not this week, then when?

If not after the announcement of the expulsion of life-saving aid groups from providing a people already just barely clinging onto life, then when? What in fact is the international community waiting for? For all the aid workers to be expelled? For food aid to be burned on international television? For genocidal violence with the pace and ferocity of Rwanda? Or for the genocidal war to last four decades as it was with the war Southern Sudan? Is that what we are waiting for before the Security Council even bothers to vote on another resolution?

And so I am here in Southern Sudan, standing on soil that displaced families had to wait for decades to come home to, asking: 

If not now, then when?

And what in God’s name are you waiting for?

After the New York Times reported that the ICC had decided to issue an arrest warrant for President Bashir, and before the announcement – less than 24 hours later – that the warrant is still pending (at least for the moment), Sabina Carlson, STAND’s former National Education Coordinator, discussed the news with her friends and colleagues at the Crops Training Center in Yei, South Sudan.

The generators switched on, the internet slowly booted up, and in my inbox was suddenly a flood of letters about the ICC deciding to issue an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, at long last. Instantly there were friends g-chatting me, asking excitedly, “what is the reaction over there?”

To be honest, no one here had even heard the news yet. Things move slowly in South Sudan – including the news. Internet is a rare blessing that I have access to for a couple hours a day, and it’s the local radio that gives us the quickest news.

So, interestingly, I was the one to break the news to my Sudanese friends that their President was the subject of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court.

The reactions were incredibly calm – perhaps from a combination of being unconvinced that this was actually happening (and not just something the little American girl was making up), and being numb to yet another empty promise by the international community (a great deal of folks said that Bashir would just buy his way out of the indictment with oil deals).

But more likely, I believe the calmness came from a sense of confidence and validation.

Simply, the Southern Sudanese do not need a drawn-out judicial process to tell them that Omar al-Bashir is guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and multiple, multiple counts of genocide. Against the loud hum of a fan, a director of the center I am at and I both rattled off the names of places where Omar al-Bashir has waged spouts of ethnic cleansing against outspoken tribes: the Nuba Mountains, Abyei, Beja, Southern Kordofan, even some northern Arab tribes, and of course, the 4 decade-long civil war with the South. Bashir’s guilty sentence has been given in many Sudanese languages by all the people he has marginalized and targeted: Nuer, Kakuwa, simple Arabic, Bari, Dinka…

And so when I asked people’s thoughts on the indictment, everyone simply turned to me and said, “This is a good thing,” and then continued with life.

Even when I asked about military reprisals, people here said, “Of course Bashir will respond with the military” without batting an eye, with some even laughing.

However, no one I have spoken to here shares the worries of the international community that the indictment would upset the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the decades long Civil War. Several friends of mine and I discussed the upcoming elections scheduled for July and the referendum on Southern independence in 2011 – if the CPA was disrupted, my friend said, “Independence will just come earlier for us – we won’t have to wait until 2011 to secede from the North.”

In fact, the issue of concern in regards to the indictment was about who would succeed Omar al-Bashir once he was out of power, and what that would mean for the CPA. The two front-runners jockeying for Bashir’s place are his Vice President, Ali Osman Taha, and his top advisor, Nafie ali Nafie. Without exception, the Southern Sudanese I spoke to admitted that both of them were undesirable, but that Nafie is the worst of the worst. Nafie is directly responsible for mass atrocities in both the South and Darfur, whereas Taha has been involved in and thus more likely to be committed to the CPA.

If anything, again, the Southern Sudanese I spoke to seemed calm and validated – they are intent on putting one foot in front of the other towards a self-sufficient South Sudan, and this is simply the world starting to walk the path to justice that the Southerners had begun long ago…

**It would later turn out that this was just a leak by diplomats close to the Court and the arrest warrant had not yet been issued – more information to come when the warrant is officially issued.

This is Sabina Carlson, your former Education Coordinator, writing in from Southern Sudan. I am here at the Crops Training Center in Yei, Central Equatoria State, which is one of 6 agricultural training centers established by the Government of Southern Sudan after the war to help its rural citizens build and rebuild. The whole of Southern Sudan is in the process of rebuilding after more than 40 years of civil war with the Government of Sudan in Khartoum – a war in which a million Southern Sudanese were killed and millions more displaced, countless children taken into slavery and countless women subject to rape. A measure of peace came to the struggling South in 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

The Agreement seems to be the source of hope here, the same way Obama has become synonymous with hope in the United States. Many people I have spoken to here say that, "peace came with the CPA, and hope returned with the CPA". After the CPA was signed, families started to return from exile in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and beyond, farms were started (sometimes from scratch) and lives began to be rebuilt.

And yet – just as many in America say about Obama – while the CPA promises hope, Southern Sudanese will believe it when they see it. The CPA provides for several important milestones: a national census in 2008, a national election in 2009, and a referendum in the South on secession from the North in 2011. These are the landmarks on which many Southern Sudanese are pinning their hopes. Still, they have no illusions about the Government of Sudan in Khartoum, and are prepared that Khartoum may try and sabotage the CPA every step of the way.

The CPA is vital for peace across Sudan, including in Darfur. Again, the problems in Sudan stem from systematic marginalization of periphery populations by the central government in Khartoum; every time a marginalized people has tried to revolt, Khartoum has moved to suppress the revolt by bringing militias and the army to attack the ethnic group connected to the rebellion. Its campaign against civilians in the South was the most intense instance of this, and the fact that this war ended in a negotiated settlement is an example for other marginalized people across Sudan. If the CPA is to succeed, it will be a sign that Khartoum can no longer use ethnic cleansing as a policy of domestic security, nor can it use marginalization as a policy of governance. If the CPA is left to fail, it will be disaster.

The United States was instrumental in bringing the CPA to reality – it must be invested in its implementation. Without the watchful eye and constant support of the United States and the international community, the CPA and the peace it stands for will be undermined.

And to the farmers who I have spoken with who told me that the stability the CPA has brought has allowed them to rebuild their lives, their families, and their farms – that would be an unimaginable tragedy.

The Bush Administration declared the conflict in Darfur to be a genocide in 2004; since that very day, Darfur activist have been calling on the Bush Administration to follow through those words with concrete action. In fact, the anti-genocide movement has been calling for the executive branch to follow through on its promises for so long and were met with such silence that last May, a group of STAND student activists (this author included) staged an act of civil disobedience in front of the White House as part of STAND’s Executive Legacy campaign to highlight those failures.

This failure to act has resulted in widespread criticism by many, including New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof, who wrote an op-ed December 28th outlining the multitude of steps left on the policy table for Sudan that the Bush Administration has been ignoring. In fact, it has been the incoming Obama Administration which has voiced the strongest intention for concrete action.

In an interesting move, the Bush Administration, with just 15 days left in office, ordered a US military airlift of vital equipment from Rwanda to the over-extended UN Peacekeeping force in Darfur, UNAMID. Specifically, AFRICOM and the State Department will coordinate 75 tons of heavy equipment being transported from Rwanda to Darfur and to contract out the transportation of 240 other supplies containers currently stranded at Port Sudan. It will be the first large-scale operation of the newly-formed AFRICOM.

The measure was also introduced in an interesting manner: the Bush Administration waived a requirement that he notify Congress 15 days before undertaking such a mission, because waiting would “pose a substantial risk to human health and welfare,” said the White House national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley.

The reactions have been varied but positive: the measure has been welcomed emphatically by the United Nations and even cautiously accepted by the Government of Sudan. The reaction among the activist community has been of course welcoming of the measure, but contains a great amount of questions like “why now?” and “why did this take so long?” and “why haven’t they done this before?”

In addition, cautions Eric Reeves, the US needs to understand that it will take a much more sustained and diverse set of military actions to truly protect the people of Darfur. And one set of military support initiatives does not necessarily automatically lead to a full-fledged American military commitment.

The step is significant and has many potential ramifications for the road ahead, and also prompts questions about the road that led President Bush to make this shifts in direction. Jerry Fowler, executive director of Save Darfur, an advocacy group, adding that the airlift “might be a little bit of last-minute legacy shopping by the administration.”

Interestingly, this is exactly what STAND student activists were calling for last May: for the Bush Administration to make its legacy one of doing everything it could do end a genocide. While that debate will be left to history, what is left to us as activists is to look ahead to ensure that the Obama Administration makes ending the genocide in Darfur and mass atrocities across the world its legacy from Day One.

Darfur:

Burma:

Congo:

"Darfur" by Sabina Carlson
"Burma" by Joshua Groll
"Congo" by Nina McMurry

Sudan

In a critical news break, the rebel group JEM warned of imminent attacks against key government positions, although it is not clear if they mean to attack Khartoum again like they did this summer or other government positions… So far there is no news of attack.

Several great reports and articles were released this week:

• Human Rights First released a report on how to stop weapons flow to Sudan
• The New York Times released a strong article highlighting the role of youths in the IDP camps in Darfur.
• The Darfur consortium released a report on slavery in Darfur as a result of forced abductions by the Janjweed and Sudanese army, which drew strong condemnation. UNICEF and the Sudanese Army signed an agreement about Child soldiers

Several great op-eds were written this week:

• Nicholas Kristof on the potential for peace in Darfur and the steps the new administration can take to get there.
• Madeleine Albright and William Cohen on preventing genocide and mass atrocities
• The San Fransisco Chronicle on 5 Steps to bring peace to Darfur
• Voice of America on pressing for peace in Darfur

In some good news for the holiday season, Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Thursday ordered the setting up of a health centre in Darfur. Also, Pakistani troops including many doctors and engineers and Ethiopian troops arrived in Darfur to boost UNAMID’s numbers.

Burma

The UN General Assembly voted on Wednsday in favor of a resolution that called for the release of Burma’s over 2,100 political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi and condemend the countries human rights record.  The vote was four to one, with Burma’s allies like China and Indonesia voting against the measure.

In a welcome change new Thailand’s new Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, promises a more proactive stance on international human rights, specificaly citing Burma.

Burmese officials are worried about stepped up Security Council pressure when memebers Indonesia and South Africa are replaced by Uganda and Japan in January. 

Congo

The UN Security Council voted last week to renew MONUC’s peacekeeping mandate for another year. The new mandate gives priority to civilian protection in eastern Congo and calls for MONUC to cooperate with the Congolese army, instead of providing "support." UNSC also strengthen the existing sanctions regime targeting the illicit flow of weapons in DRC.

MONUC, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in DRC, announced Wednesday that it has asked the UN to initiate an inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse and other bad conduct by peacekeepers in North Kivu province. MONUC personnel have been involved in several sexual abuse and smuggling scandals since the force was first deployed in 2001.

Actress and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow published an account of a recent visit to DRC’s North Kivu province and appealed for intervention from the international community.

Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) soldiers, Ugandan rebels commanded by Joseph Kony, raided a Congolese village last week as they fled from a multinational offensive made up of troops from Uganda, DRC, and southern Sudan. MONUC condemned the attacks and has deployed additional peacekeepers to the area. A Congolese army spokesperson estimated on Saturday that a total of 35 Congolese civilians have been killed by the LRA in recent attacks.

 When slavery is brought up, images are often conjured of African civilians being forced to work the cotton fields of America, or the cane fields of Haiti. The backbreaking agricultural work on no pay with no freedom to come and go, the physical coercion – these are all not things of the past:

1. Urge the Government of Sudan to acknowledge the issue of abduction and slavery in Darfur and take immediate action to protect civilians, prosecute those responsible, and provide victims with support and assistance.
2. Ensure the effect protection of civilians through supporting a full deployment of UNAMID with an expanded mandate to protect civilians
3. Establish an independent body to investigate abductions and identify, assist, and compensate victims.
4. Ensure that victims are given psycho-social and medical assistance, rehabilitation, and compensation.
5. Provide more assistance to IDP camps, particularly in relation to food and fuel security so that they do not have to leave the camps to search for these items.
6. Strengthen the international monitoring presence in Darfur and instigate further investigation into abductions
7. Work with the Government of Sudan to enhance the capacity of the Sudanese justice system to deal with abduction and related violations.
8. Strengthen the capacity of the Sudanese civil society organizations so that they can better monitor and document cases of abduction, trace and assist victims and advocate for policies which will help to eradicate this practice.

The New York Times released a powerful article the other day on the changing role of militarized youth in the camps for displaced Darfuris.

Since the days of colonialism, politics in Darfur has been very closed. A few tribal elders are allowed to enter into a three-tiered political structure of tribal administration, which youth and women are largely barred from. These leaders are often co-opted and bribed by the Government of Sudan to maintain power and control over the region.

When communities of Darfuris are displaced by violence, they more or less reform in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. However, their tribal leaders or sheikhs many times use the connections they have with the Government of Sudan to flee to different, safer areas, abandoning their tribes. In this new power vacuum, the youth have stepped in to take their place.

This politicizes the youth, who watch the international scene and are largely against any form of negotiation with the Government of Sudan.

This also militarizes the youth, who are not only providing security for their camps, but have become more and more closely tied to the rebel movements. Rebel movements get many of their willing recruits from the youth in the camps to the point where the rebellion itself is seen as a youth rebellion. In fact, many youth see themselves as the political wing of the armed groups.

This complicates negotiations greatly as the rebel movements want to be responsive to what their "constituents", the IDP youths, want to see or don’t want to see. In this case, the IDPs don’t want peace talks with the Government of Sudan.

These youths are not to be disregarded as a powerful force currently in the camps, and an even more powerful force on the front lines of peace as well as the front lines of war in the days to come.

Darfur 

Burma

Congo