Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know whether the manoeuvre of the member for Herbert, moving to the government side, was designed to show the opposition’s flip, flop, flap, but anyhow—whatever is behind it—I’m over here, if he’s over there.

Twenty thousand people fled into Chad on 10 February, and another 150 people were killed in western Darfur after a continuing attack on villagers by the Janjaweed militia, backed by the Sudanese government in Khartoum. The United Nations has taken a very strong stand and asked that the hybrid United Nations force, UNAMID, be deployed there with 22,000 troops. That still has not happened. Australia has supported this very strongly at the United Nations and only the 8,000 African troops are there at the moment. They have proved ineffective to date because of their inability to transport themselves around to places that the Janjaweed militia attack.

A tribal sheikh, Musa Hilal, described as ‘the poster child for Janjaweed atrocities in Darfur’ has been given a senior government position by the Sudanese government. Musa Hilal, who is accused of leading militias in a state-sponsored campaign to ethnically cleanse Darfur of non-Arab farmers, will act as special adviser to the minister of federal government in the Sudan. This follows the September appointment by President Omar al-Bashir of Ahmad Muhammad Harun, one of the two men sought by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, as state minister for humanitarian affairs. I think this indicates, very sadly, the attitude of the Sudanese government and why the United Nations force has not been able to be deployed there.

The situation in Darfur overall remains that hundreds of thousands of people over the last four years have been murdered there. These are hundreds of thousands of black African Muslims, all Sudanese citizens, living in refugee camps in Chad. The United Nations—in an effort that was eventually not blocked by Russia or China, who receive most of Sudan’s oil supplies—agreed to deploy this United Nations force. But despite the UN resolution regarding the deployment of this force, this remains blocked by the government in Khartoum. On the ground in Darfur the situation continues with the massacre of innocent civilians, and Australia and other Western nations need to continue to put pressure on Sudan and its allies at the Security Council and the General Assembly to see that that United Nations force is put between the people of Darfur and the murderous Janjaweed and its backing by the Sudanese government. Unless there is a Western country that is willing to step up and provide the transport assets that will enable the UN force to be effective, I am afraid that the innocent people of Darfur will continue to be murdered by their own government. (Time expired)