It's about time

The United States Senate is now considering a resolution to declare that Sudan is committing genocide in the Darfur region The resolution, co-sponsored by Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Senator Jon Corzine (D-New Jersey), hopes to spur the international community and the Bush administration to do more to stop the genocide in Darfur.

Mr. Brownback, who recently visited the region and saw burnt and pillaged villages and talked with victims, is concerned that what happened in Rwanda a decade ago, is being repeated in Sudan. He hopes his resolution will spur international action.

"Unlike Rwanda, where afterwards we pronounced genocide after 800,000 died, here is a chance for the international community to step in and stop the deaths," he said. "If we will act decisively and now, we can stop hundreds of thousands of people from dying. If we do not, they will die."

Senator Brownback says reports from the area indicate little has changed in the region in the two weeks since he returned from his trip, despite promises from Khartoum to reign in the militias known as the Janjaweed.

Senator Brownback warns of the moral consequences of nations who oppose action in Sudan to stop the genocide:

"What this resolution does is to add the political pressure on everyone. It requires the United Nations to take decisive and necessary action," Mr. Brownback. "Any country on the Security Council that opposes or thwarts actions that the U.N. might wish to take under chapter seven of its charter, will, in effect, have approved of the genocide occurring in Sudan, or worse yet, just not care.

"Those nations will be on notice. More importantly, Sudan itself will be on notice," he continued. "It will become a pariah among nations, and will carry the shame of doing nothing to prevent the wanton murder of its own people, even participating in it."

However, the US State Department, as diplomatic as ever, continues to play word games with the genocide:

But the U.S. State Department has stopped short of calling the situation in Darfur genocide, describing it as ethnic cleansing instead.

According to Prevent Genocide International, here is the official definition of genocide:

Article II: In the present
Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,
as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious
bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended
to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children
of the group to another group.

Let's first establish the identity of the victims. They are black Muslims who are being victimized by Arab Muslims who dominate the Sudanese national government. That establishes the attempt to destroy a unique racial group.

Now let's document the acts of the Sudanese government and their aligned militias:

Killing members of the group: So far, 10,000 civilians have been killed and an estimated 350,000 will be killed if the world doesn't act soon enough.

Causing serious bodily or mental harm: There have been reports of rapes and other forms of sexual violence committed by Sudanese forces.

Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy a group: Thousands have been displaced from their homes and their villages and crops have been destroyed by the Sudanese government and their allies.

Prevention of births: Standard Sudanese government procedure is kill all the men in a village during the attack. This reduces the long term birth rate among the Darfurians.

Forcible transfer of children: Though I have not read any reports of children being sold into slavery in Darfur, the Sudanese government and its allies are known to practice the slave trade in South Sudan, which involved mostly children.

Maybe the State Department should look again...