WASHINGTON (Talon News) — Even while the United Nations is recommending sending 10,000 troops to Sudan to quell genocidal violence there, the African nation begins a third consecutive term on the world body’s Human Rights Commission. Last year, Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to the region and reported that numerous atrocities are being committed by Muslim militias and government forces against non-Arabs.
Fred Gedrich, a former U.S. State and Defense Department official who has traveled extensively throughout Africa and the Middle East, explained to Talon News that politics is at the center of the incongruity.
“The global body — particularly its general assembly — is controlled by a majority of states that do not have truly free and democratic governments,” Gedrich said. “Sudan happens to be a member of three powerful voting blocs in the institution: 56-nation Islamic Conference, 53-nation African Union, and the 22 members of the League of Arab States. Such alliances serve to protect ruthless regimes like Sudan from criticism and get them promoted to prestigious positions within the U.N. system — often to the detriment of their citizens and mankind.”
The State Department has labeled Sudan a terrorist state, and many human rights groups classify its regime as being one of the worst human rights abusers. It had been the home of such notorious terrorists as Abu Nidal, Carlos the Jackal, and Usama bin Laden, and a supporter of terror groups such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
Gedrich recounted Sudan’s bloody past saying, “Sudan has remained in almost a perpetual state of civil warfare since it achieved independence, with British and Egyptian consent, in 1956. The Sunni Arab majority — which represents about 70 percent of the population — controls the government apparatus and the military. Human rights groups like Freedom House and Amnesty International as well as the U.S. Department of State and others have accused Sudan’s rulers of committing genocide against millions of Black Africans that occupy the southern part of the nation.”
He is critical of the U.N.’s response to the situation, creating a commission of inquiry that recently concluded that the Arab controlled government has not pursued a policy of genocide despite compelling evidence to the contrary.
Gedrich said, “These U.N. actions offer little comfort to the 2 billion people in the world who live under oppression and who would like to look to the U.N. Human Rights Commission for hope and help – or millions of Black African Sudanese currently suffering under the tight-fisted rule of their Arab oppressors.”
He pointed out that since the end of the colonial era African nations have opposed outside interference in their internal affairs. Millions have perished as the result of that policy that breeds situations like those witnessed in Rwanda, Sudan, and elsewhere.
Gedrich chastised the U.N., saying, “Responsible members of the free world – led by the United States – appear ready to help alleviate and end the massive suffering being endured by Sudan’s African Black population. The U.N and leaders of groups like the African Union should do likewise and take the additional step of ostracizing instead of rewarding those, like Sudan’s terror regime, who clearly do not abide by the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Several other countries with repressive governments also sit on the commission, including China, Cuba, and Zimbabwe.
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