Atrocities documented on 8,500 pages – Yet Europe takes no action!

For the sixth anniversary of the beginning of the genocide in Darfur the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) presented in Berlin on Wednesday during a human rights campaign 804 Darfur reports by human rights and aid organisations and the United Nations. In the reports there is documentation on 8,500 pages of atrocities which have been committed in the west of Sudan since February 2003. The reports were piled high and disregarded in front of the Brandenburger Tor on the bedside-tables of a double bed, in which doubles of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, were lying. „400,000 dead in Darfur wish you sweet dreams” said a banner unrolled by Sudanese.

„There is in Europe no lack of knowledge concerning the genocide in Darfur, but the political will to really put a stop to it”, said the GfbV Sudan expert, Ulrich Delius. „It is true that the EU Council of Foreign Ministers have passed 29 statements on Darfur since February 2003, but the promise of protection for the civilian population has remained an empty promise.” The EU is behaving like a toothless tiger towards Sudan and is using its influence neither on the Arab world nor on the neighbouring countries like Chad to stop the genocide. Europe is just looking on without taking any action, while inadequately equipped peace-keeping forces of the United Nations and the African Union have been failing for 18 months to provide proper protection for the civilian population.

„The Blue Helmets have been asking for helicopters for 14 months, but Europe just does nothing”, said Delius. „If the EU cannot provide any helicopters of its own, it must at least bring in third countries to do so if the peace-keeping force is not just to be a cover-up.”

The situation in Darfur is disastrous. More than 300,000 people have been driven out since January 2008. 2.7 million in the west of Sudan are seeking refuge and hundreds of thousands cannot be fed by the aid-workers. There is not even any real protection for them in the refugee camps. In the past six weeks the military conflicts have escalated further.

The EU must also do decidedly more if there is to be lasting peace. „If the peace treaty signed in January 2005 for South Sudan fails, the prospects of peace for Darfur become remote”, said Delius. „In recent weeks the danger of a new war in South Sudan has steadily increased. It is essential that the EU presses for the peace treaty between South and North Sudan to be put into practice at last.”