U.S. and European media

April 1, 2023

Voice of America: Advocates Launch April Genocide Prevention Month Activities. The month of April is Genocide Prevention month here in the United States. It marks the anniversaries of six major genocides around the world, including Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, the Holocaust and Armenia. Jill Savitt, organizer of "Genocide Prevention Month" told VOA the groups hope their advocacy would prevent future genocides. "What we want the month to show is that there is a support among genocide survivors to try and prevent such crimes from happening by rallying support from the international community," she said. Tuesday, the groups pre-screened "The Last Survivor", a new documentary which tells the story of four survivors including from Rwanda, Sudan, and Congo.

Agence France-Presse: Obama envoy visits Sudan amid pressure on Beshir. US envoy Scott Gration heads for Sudan Wednesday as President Barack Obama turns up the heat on his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Beshir to allow aid groups back into war-torn Darfur. Gordon Duguid, a State Department spokesman, said Gration will visit Khartoum, Darfur, the main southern city of Juba and the flashpoint oil town of Abyei before returning to Khartoum to meet with government officials. Gration was to meet with a "wide range of interlocutors, particularly those who are empowered to make policy decisions that can try and put Sudan on the path to a peace," Duguid said without naming them. Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition who was at Obama's meeting with Gration and congressmen, said he felt reassured by the president's commitment to Darfur. "We think it's an important step that he has been appointed and that it is someone who has this close relationship with the president and the confidence of the president," Fowler told AFP. He hoped that the Obama administration -- which boasts a multilateral approach to foreign policy -- will recruit the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, South Africa, Nigeria and Uganda to get Beshir to change course. "The diplomatic pressure would really be good. I think so far all of the public messaging from those countries has been pretty supportive of Khartoum," Fowler said.

Reuters: ANALYSIS-Sudan's Bashir vulnerable despite defiant front. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's defiant response to international efforts to arrest him for war crimes in Darfur hides vulnerabilities that could embolden his enemies. On Wednesday, Bashir travelled to Saudi Arabia in another challenge to the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court on March 4 over seven charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bashir's visits -- he has now made five trips abroad in just over a week, showing the court's inability to arrest him -- have won expressions of support from Arab countries and a measure of public admiration back home. But his stance has done nothing to resolve major issues that could eventually loosen his hold on power. Those include the festering conflict in Darfur, oil-dependent Sudan's sinking economy, fears over a fragile peace deal between north and south Sudan, and relations with the United States and United Nations that have worsened since the aid expulsions.

The following editorial appeared in today's Washington Post. 

In Defense of Genocide
An Arab summit embraces the butcher of Darfur.

FOR DECADES, summit meetings of the Arab League have resounded with rhetoric about the alleged "double standards" of the West in enforcing U.N. resolutions or respecting international law. No communique of the group -- including the one issued from its summit this week in Doha, Qatar -- has been complete without a demand that conflicts be resolved "within the framework of international legitimacy."

So it was interesting to see what else was in the latest statement issued by the kings, princes and authoritarian presidents of the Middle East and North Africa. First there was a call on "the international community to prosecute those responsible" for alleged "war crimes" committed by Israel in its recent offensive in Gaza. Then came an ardent defense of Sudanese dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir -- who was welcomed to the Doha summit despite an outstanding arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court on multiple war crimes charges.

"We stress our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the decision" of the ICC, said the communique, which Mr. Bashir welcomed in a bombastic address to the summit plenary. Leader after leader declared fealty. "We must also take a decisive stance of solidarity alongside fraternal Sudan and President Omar al-Bashir," said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Abbas is hoping that the Obama administration will pressure Israel to stop building "illegal" settlements in the West Bank; the next time he utters the phrase "double standard" in the presence of a U.S. diplomat, we suggest a query about Mr. Bashir.

To be sure, some human rights groups have alleged crimes by Israeli forces in Gaza. But, according to Palestinian accounts, 1,409 people were killed during the offensive, of whom a substantial number were armed Hamas fighters. In contrast, the United Nations has reported more than 300,000 civilian deaths in Darfur as a result of the genocidal campaign sponsored by Mr. Bashir. Scores of villages have been systematically burned, and thousands of women systematically raped. Mr. Bashir responded to the ICC's arrest warrant last month by expelling international aid groups from Darfur. The result has been growing food and water shortages and new epidemics, according to the Enough Project.

To their credit, a coalition of Middle East human rights groups urged the summit leaders not to protect Mr. Bashir. "There should be no immunity for those who have committed crimes," said the Arab Coalition for Darfur. Predictably, the unelected rulers -- several of whom could themselves be vulnerable to charges of crimes against humanity -- ignored the appeal. If the Obama administration and the rest of the civilized world needed further demonstration of why the promotion of democracy and human rights must be central to any policy for the Middle East, Omar Bashir's reception in Doha ought to suffice.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].