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Kofi Annan's statement on Darfur, Sudan at the UN remembrance of the Holocaust

Sudan: the Passion of the Present provides an editorial by Eric Reeves regarding the recent statements UN Secretary General Kofi Annan made regarding Sudan. As you read the first several paragraphs below recall the Russia and China have rejected sanctions against Sudan.

"At this moment, terrible things are happening today in Darfur, Sudan"--- Kofi Annan, January 24, 2005, to the UN General Assembly

Eric Reeves
January 24, 2005

Kofi Annan's statement today of this long conspicuous truth must still gain significance from its extraordinary context. For Annan was addressing the UN General Assembly and world leaders on the occasion of an unprecedented UN commemoration of the Holocaust of World War II. There could be no more powerful reference to human evil and mass destruction. Moreover, the Secretary-General did not shy away from naming other genocides, including those in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. He was powerfully echoed by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who painfully observed, ""if the world had listened, we may have prevented Darfur, Cambodia, Bosnia and naturally Rwanda," (Reuters, January 24, 2005).

But a grim and disconcerting irony stalks Annan's comments. For it was Annan who headed UN peacekeeping operations during the Rwandan genocide, and who bears much responsibility for international failure to stop the unspeakable carnage. Indeed, the irony became savage today when Annan went on to invoke Edmund Burke's famous declaration, "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." For "nothing" is precisely what Annan and the US administration of Bill Clinton engineered in response to the desperate plea for intervening troops from Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, UN force commander at the time of the genocide in Rwanda.

Moreover, "nothing" also comes perilously close to defining what the international community is providing in the way of means for halting current genocide in Darfur...

Posted by tim at January 26, 2005 7:30 AM

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