David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to talk about the continuing crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, a crisis which the world, very sadly, seems to have turned its back on. As we enjoy glorious autumn days in Canberra, the rainy season is now beginning in the Sudan. In Sudan, the rainy season is known as the hunger season. Today, more than two million people in Sudan and over the border in the refugee camps in Chad are facing a slow death through starvation and disease.

Two months ago, the Sudanese dictator, General Omar al-Bashir, expelled international aid agencies from the country, ending one of the largest humanitarian relief operations in the world, an operation that was bringing at least a bare minimum of food, water and health care to these millions of hopeless, wretched people. President al-Bashir took this callous action in retaliation for the International Criminal Court’s decision to indict him for crimes against humanity. His reaction to being accused of crimes against humanity was to prove the validity of those charges by committing an even more dramatic crime against humanity—that is, ensuring the lingering death of tens of thousands of people by cutting them off from their lifeline, the work of international aid agencies.

These agencies were supplying health services to 1.5 million people and water and sanitation for 1.2 million. The World Food Program had been distributing food rations to nearly two million displaced people in refugee camps. Deaths in these squalid refugee camps will now escalate as these people are cut off from aid, with no ability at this time of year to find alternative sources of food. Immunisation programs and disease control have also been suspended, so the risk of infectious disease will rise rapidly with the arrival of the rainy season.

The situation in Darfur has been an international scandal ever since President al-Bashir launched his campaign of racist genocide against Sudan’s black minority in 2003. President al-Bashir seized power in a coup in 1989, overthrowing the elected government. Since then he has sought to bolster his power by imposing radical Islamism on his country and by inciting racial, religious and ethnic hatred among the majority Arab population against the black minorities in the south and in the Darfur region.

The fact that the Darfuris are Sunni Muslims like the Arab majority has not deterred President al-Bashir, his armed forces or the murderous Janjaweed militias which he has armed and unleashed against the defenceless villages of Darfur. What sets the Darfuris apart is not their religion but the fact that they are black Africans. The word ‘Sudan’ derives from the Arabic ‘bilad al-sudan’, which means ‘land of the blacks’. The Arab world sees Sudan as a frontier zone, an area contested historically between the Arab and African peoples.

The al-Bashir regime has sought to drive all the Darfuri people out of Sudan through a ruthless campaign of violence, rape, terror and starvation. The campaign has claimed over 300,000 lives and forced 2.7 million people from their homes. Several hundred thousand of these are in neighbouring Chad, also a poor country, which cannot afford to house or feed them. The rest are internally displaced inside Sudan, unable to return to their homes for fear of the army and the militias.

The international response to this human catastrophe has been frankly pathetic. The Arab League, not surprisingly, has unconditionally supported President al-Bashir and has opposed any sanctions against Sudan. They also apparently share Sudan’s views about the black majority. We should remember that African slavery was only legally abolished in Saudi Arabia in 1962, and it is alleged that it may still be covertly practised there as well as in Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania and other states on the Arab-African frontier. This is why it was so grotesque that Sudan was one of the organisers of the recent UN anti-racism conference in Geneva, generally known as Durban II.

In 2004 the African Union set up the African Mission in Sudan, AMIS, as a peacekeeping force for Darfur, but the sad fact is that the states of the African Union, many of which have their own internal problems, are too weak and/or too poor to mount an effective challenge to the Sudanese military, even if they had the political will to do so. Pledges of aid to the African Union from western countries were not honoured. Most notably, the Bush administration promised $50 million but failed to deliver it.

In 2007 it was recognised that the African Union was not up to this task, and a joint EU-NATO mission under UN auspices, known as UNMIS, which was designed to put AMIS on a better footing, was launched. But in the face of noncooperation from Sudan, and without a mandate to use force to prevent armed attacks on Darfuri villages and refugee camps, the effectiveness of this force has been very limited. Seven years after the onset of Sudan’s murderous campaign against its own people, and despite many expressions of good intentions from western and African leaders, the people of Darfur are still largely defenceless and friendless in the face of these attacks.

The Darfur peacekeeping mission is supposed to be the world’s biggest but, 15 months after its launch, only 15,700 of its planned 26,600 soldiers have been deployed, and few of them are adequately equipped or trained for their mission. We should remember that the region of Darfur is in fact larger in size than the nation of France. Professor Amanda Grzyb, author of the book The World and Darfur, says:

There just isn’t that will from the individual governments to contribute to the mission … It is under-staffed, under-resourced and under-funded. There is just no will to support the mission in the international community.

And what about the United Nations? Why is the world body not imposing tough sanctions on Sudan? The answer is that China and Russia have used the threat of their veto on the UN Security Council to block any attempt to impose serious sanctions on Sudan. President al-Bashir knows that he can rely on diplomatic cover, arms supplies and financial assistance from both China and Russia. The reason is that Sudan has large reserves of oil and natural gas and that China has made huge investments in oil wells, refineries and transport infrastructure to facilitate Sudanese oil exports to China. Russian oil companies are also active in Sudan. In 2003 China signed a US$70 billion deal with Sudan, basically an oil-for-arms swap, which gave China a huge stake in the survival of President al-Bashir’s regime. Sudan also imports arms from Russia.

It is not possible for Australia to solve the crisis in Sudan on our own. But we can and should use our international influence to keep the Darfur issue on the international agenda and particularly to persist in raising the Darfur question in our dealings with China, President al-Bashir’s principal ally. Over the past five years Australia has given $40 million in aid to Sudan, of which $30m has been allocated to assist refugees in Darfur. This does give us a stake in the international response to the crisis, which is a completely man-made crisis. Australia, like other western countries, is spending money to help people who have been rendered homeless and destitute by the criminal acts of President al-Bashir. It is time the international community took a much tougher line with the government of Sudan and we must not forget the humanitarian crisis that continues to unfold there.