| Congressional Testimony by Eric Reeves, ¡°Darfur and the Olympics:
A Call for International Action¡± (June 7, 2007)
Testimony by Eric Reeves, Sudan Adviser to the ¡°Olympic Dream for
Darfur Campaign¡± [ ]
Presented to the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign
Affairs,
House of Representatives, Washington, DC
June 7, 2007
Chairman Tierney and other distinguished Members of this Subcommittee:
As human security in Darfur and eastern Chad continues to deteriorate;
as 4.5 million conflict-affected human beings face ongoing threats of
violence, malnutrition, and disease; and as the world¡¯s largest and
most endangered humanitarian operation continues its critical work
amidst intolerable levels of insecurity, we need to be asking with all
possible urgency why there is no meaningful protection on the ground for
these acutely vulnerable populations. Why is it that in the face of
obdurate defiance by the National Islamic Front (National Congress
Party) regime in Khartoum, the international community continues to
accept a weak, demoralized, and crumbling African Union observer mission
as the only source of civilian and humanitarian protection for Darfur?
How can it be that as this brutalized region enters a fifth year of
genocidal counter-insurgency warfare, the UN Security Council has failed
so badly in its ¡°responsibility to protect¡± civilians in Darfur and
eastern Chad?
The past four years offer all too many answers, all too many instances
of moral and political failure by a wide range of international actors.
But no country has done more to support Khartoum than China; no country
has offered more unstinting diplomatic support; no country has done more
to provide the weaponry that fuels the engine of genocidal destruction;
no country has done more to insulate Khartoum from economic pressure or
human rights accountability.
That China is also poised to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games gives
to this hearing an extraordinary timeliness, and I hope in this extended
testimony to suggest both a sense of the recent history of China¡¯s
role in Sudan as well as an outline of the opportunities presented for
compelling China to accept the responsibilities that are incumbent upon
any appropriate host of the Olympic Games.
CONTEXT
On August 31, 2006, the UN Security Council belatedly passed Resolution
1706, authorizing a peace support operation for Darfur consisting of
22,500 UN troops, civilian police, and Formed Police Units. The force
was to deploy ¡°rapidly¡± under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (which
confers enforcement authority), with an explicit mandate to protect
civilians as well as humanitarians and humanitarian operations. The
force was also to establish a ¡°multidimensional presence¡± to
¡°improve the security situation in the neighboring regions along
the borders between the Sudan and Chad and between the Sudan and the
Central African Republic.¡± Urgently and robustly deployed, such a
force could have done much to avert massive human displacement and
destruction.
On the occasion of this resolution, one vote was of particular note:
the abstention by the Permanent Representative of the People¡¯s
Republic of China. To be sure, there were abstentions by Qatar,
representing the Arab League¡¯s indifference to Darfur¡¯s agony, and
Russia, which has a highly lucrative arms trade with the Khartoum
regime. But it was China¡¯s vote that signaled to Khartoum that it
would face no prospect of urgent or forceful implementation of
Resolution 1706, that diplomatic protection would be afforded to the
most destructive intransigence.
If we wish to understand why more than nine months after passage of
Resolution 1706 fewer than 200 UN personnel have been deployed to
Darfur, even as security continues to deteriorate and the African Union
performs less and less effectively, then we must confront squarely the
complicity of China in sustaining genocide by attrition in Darfur. For
while China has learned the trick of mouthing meaningless words of
concern, it presently holds fast to a course of rapacious indifference
in Sudan. As host of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, China must confront
a clear and decisive choice: for it cannot legitimately host the
premiere event in international sports while at the same time remaining
complicit in the ultimate international crime.
WEAPONS TRANSFERS
China has over the past decade and more between the chief supplier of
weapons, military supplies, and weapons technology to the Khartoum
regime. The latter has enabled Khartoum to develop production capacity
on a scale such that it is now largely self-sufficient in small and
medium-sized weapons, of the sort produced at facilities like the vast
GIAD industrial complex outside of Khartoum. But Chinese transfers of
helicopter gunships, MiG fighter aircraft, tanks, armored personnel
carriers, heavy militar |
