Feb. 5, 2007 21:59 Updated Feb. 5, 2007 22:32
Meltdown in Darfur - what happened to 'Never Again'?
By IRWIN COTLER
"The genocide by attrition in Darfur is being accelerated." It is painful - almost incredulous - to have to repeat these words, which I first spoke at the Save Darfur rally on September 17, 2006, the first anniversary of the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine (the "R2P doctrine").
Yet tragically, incrementally, the genocide in Darfur has moved into high gear, a standing repudiation of the R2P doctrine, both mocking the lessons of history while betraying the people of Darfur.
For the enduring lesson of history is that the genocide of European Jewry occurred not only because of the ideology of hatred, but also because of crimes of indifference and inaction. Indeed, we have witnessed in our own days an appalling indifference and inaction which took us down the road to the unspeakable - the genocide in Rwanda.
Unspeakable, because this genocide was preventable. No one can say that we did not know. We knew and we did not act. We know what is happening in Darfur and we have yet to act. The moral injunction of "never again" has become "yet again" - again and again, a particularly poignant and painful reminder as the UN has just commemorated the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust.
Moreover, Darfur is in "freefall" or "meltdown," as Chief UN Aid Coordinator Jan Egeland recently put it, going beyond his ominous predictions in conversations with me in September on the occasion of the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Full article here - 3 more excellent pages
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