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CIGI EXPERTS DISCUSS DARFUR
Yousuf Sajjad
The Cord Weekly
http://www.cordweekly.com/cordweekly/myweb. php?hls=10034&news_id=1631
March 19 2008
Canada
The event started with a screening of Darfur: On Our Watch, followed
by talks by Sgt. Debbie Bodkin and Dr. Rich Hichens, who spoke of
their investigations and efforts in the war-torn region of Sudan,
where a genocide has been on-going since 2003
On Thursday, March 13, the Centre for International Governance
Innovation (CIGI), along with the University of Waterloo Genocide
Action Group screened a movie and held a talk about the on-going
crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.
The movie was a CBC production called Darfur: On Our Watch. It was an
examination of the Darfur crisis year-by-year as a virtual apocalypse
dawned on the people of western Sudan.
The movie listed the powerful agencies, governments and organizations,
including the United Nations, the five member nations of the Security
Council, and the various power brokers in each of these centres
of power.
Furthermore, it added that many, such as President George W. Bush and
former Prime Minister Tony Blair, were distracted by the war in Iraq.
Also, France, in its unwillingness to go alone and its opposition
to the major Anglo-American bloc and their Iraq war, didn't make any
concessions against Sudan. Russian weapon sales to Sudan and Chinese
oil purchases also blocked out any hope of a UN force intervening
into Darfur.
The result was a "slow motion massacre," as described by Professor
Eric Reeves in the film, a massacre that continued over four years,
unlike Rwanda, which was over in a matter of months.
The lack of institutional response led to the United Nation's
Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, to go beyond his
superiors, behaving as a whistleblower for the press because of what
he was hearing in Khartoum.
The breaking of this story was not in vain, as it led people like Eric
Reeves, actress Mia Farrow and Waterloo's own Sergeant Debbie Bodkin
to step up and spread the word of the atrocities being committed in
Western Sudan.
On Our Watch features the police officer from Ontario, who went as an
investigator for both the US State Department and the United Nations.
Both her and Dr. Rich Hichens, a University of Western Ontario history
and political science professor, spoke after the screening of the film.
Professor Hichens gave an excellent overview of the twentieth century,
a time referred to as the bloodiest of centuries.
He began with the genocide of Armenians, went on to the destruction
by famine of the Ukrainians as a separate nation by Stalin, and then
continued on to the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.
He then touched on the most well known cases of genocide, the Holocaust
and the Rwandan genocide, rounding off in the nineties what he said
can be called the "Century of Genocide."
Sergeant Debbie Bodkin spoke next, filling in the specifics of what
she had seen and heard in Chad and Darfur as an investigator for the
UN and the State Department, and how it had shocked her.
The tales of rape, pillage and murder angered her, especially in the
similar method of attack that the government of Sudan employed for
every village.
The modus operandi was the use of morning air raids, followed by men
in army fatigues and machine-gun mounted flat-bed trucks shooting
indiscriminately, followed by the Janjaweed coming in to eliminate
any people left.
Bodkin was met with a standing ovation.
Later on, speaking one-on-one to smaller groups, both Bodkin and
Hichens explained that the combination of revulsion to the Iraq
War, distrust for international law and intervention, and a fear of
upsetting the emerging peace between North and South Sudan, allowed
international inertia to take 200,000 to 400,000 lives at the hand
of a power mad Khartoum elite.
If international forces do not intervene to stop the bloodbath, both
speakers concurred that the Khartoum elite surrounding Omar Al-Bashir,
president of Sudan since 1989, would turn violent attention to the
Sudanese south, but could be defeated if the south is aided.
Yousuf Sajjad
The Cord Weekly
http://www.cordweekly.com/cordweekly/myweb. php?hls=10034&news_id=1631
March 19 2008
Canada
The event started with a screening of Darfur: On Our Watch, followed
by talks by Sgt. Debbie Bodkin and Dr. Rich Hichens, who spoke of
their investigations and efforts in the war-torn region of Sudan,
where a genocide has been on-going since 2003
On Thursday, March 13, the Centre for International Governance
Innovation (CIGI), along with the University of Waterloo Genocide
Action Group screened a movie and held a talk about the on-going
crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.
The movie was a CBC production called Darfur: On Our Watch. It was an
examination of the Darfur crisis year-by-year as a virtual apocalypse
dawned on the people of western Sudan.
The movie listed the powerful agencies, governments and organizations,
including the United Nations, the five member nations of the Security
Council, and the various power brokers in each of these centres
of power.
Furthermore, it added that many, such as President George W. Bush and
former Prime Minister Tony Blair, were distracted by the war in Iraq.
Also, France, in its unwillingness to go alone and its opposition
to the major Anglo-American bloc and their Iraq war, didn't make any
concessions against Sudan. Russian weapon sales to Sudan and Chinese
oil purchases also blocked out any hope of a UN force intervening
into Darfur.
The result was a "slow motion massacre," as described by Professor
Eric Reeves in the film, a massacre that continued over four years,
unlike Rwanda, which was over in a matter of months.
The lack of institutional response led to the United Nation's
Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, to go beyond his
superiors, behaving as a whistleblower for the press because of what
he was hearing in Khartoum.
The breaking of this story was not in vain, as it led people like Eric
Reeves, actress Mia Farrow and Waterloo's own Sergeant Debbie Bodkin
to step up and spread the word of the atrocities being committed in
Western Sudan.
On Our Watch features the police officer from Ontario, who went as an
investigator for both the US State Department and the United Nations.
Both her and Dr. Rich Hichens, a University of Western Ontario history
and political science professor, spoke after the screening of the film.
Professor Hichens gave an excellent overview of the twentieth century,
a time referred to as the bloodiest of centuries.
He began with the genocide of Armenians, went on to the destruction
by famine of the Ukrainians as a separate nation by Stalin, and then
continued on to the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.
He then touched on the most well known cases of genocide, the Holocaust
and the Rwandan genocide, rounding off in the nineties what he said
can be called the "Century of Genocide."
Sergeant Debbie Bodkin spoke next, filling in the specifics of what
she had seen and heard in Chad and Darfur as an investigator for the
UN and the State Department, and how it had shocked her.
The tales of rape, pillage and murder angered her, especially in the
similar method of attack that the government of Sudan employed for
every village.
The modus operandi was the use of morning air raids, followed by men
in army fatigues and machine-gun mounted flat-bed trucks shooting
indiscriminately, followed by the Janjaweed coming in to eliminate
any people left.
Bodkin was met with a standing ovation.
Later on, speaking one-on-one to smaller groups, both Bodkin and
Hichens explained that the combination of revulsion to the Iraq
War, distrust for international law and intervention, and a fear of
upsetting the emerging peace between North and South Sudan, allowed
international inertia to take 200,000 to 400,000 lives at the hand
of a power mad Khartoum elite.
If international forces do not intervene to stop the bloodbath, both
speakers concurred that the Khartoum elite surrounding Omar Al-Bashir,
president of Sudan since 1989, would turn violent attention to the
Sudanese south, but could be defeated if the south is aided.