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Breaking the Relative Silence on Arab/Muslim Brotherhood Genocide in the Sudan

 

COMMENT: Although the slaugh­ter in Dar­fur has received some rel­a­tive­ly super­fi­cial cov­er­age in recent years, the true nature of the decades-long geno­cide in the Sudan remains large­ly unspo­ken and, as a result, unrec­og­nized.

At the recent anti-Israeli dog and pony show in Dur­ban, the drone of “anti-Zion­ist” (read anti-Semit­ic) voic­es was pierced by a dis­senter.

A refugee from what is now South Sudan, Simon Deng detailed the mon­strosi­ties vis­it­ed upon the black African pop­u­la­tion of that land, per­pe­trat­ed by the Arab pop­u­la­tion of the north­ern part of what had been Sudan.

The text of Deng’s poignant, elo­quent address should be pref­aced by sev­er­al con­sid­er­a­tions:

  • The geno­ci­dal gov­ern­ment of Omar al-Bashir is a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood enti­ty. So much for the “mod­er­a­tion” of this orga­ni­za­tion.
  • The Arab League refused to con­demn al-Bashir’s gov­ern­ment, and has main­tained a gen­er­al­ly lauda­to­ry stance against this war crim­i­nal.
  • South African judge Richard Gold­stone recent­ly penned an op-ed piece in the New York Times high­light­ing pre­cise­ly why Israel is not an “apartheid” state. (Gold­stone is, of course, the jurist who lent his name to the report on the report on the 2009 Gaza war–which he has since dis­owned and dis­cred­it­ed.)
  • Don’t expect the so-called “pro­gres­sive” sec­tor in this coun­try to deal with this issue. BTW–if the shrill voic­es of the so-called “pro­gres­sive” sec­tor were REALLY so con­cerned about the polit­i­cal auton­o­my and inde­pen­dent gov­er­nance of Mid­dle East­ern Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions, one might expect them to be absolute­ly dev­as­tat­ed by the plight of the Kurds. Don’t hold your breath.
  • One should not for­get my work on the fas­cist her­itage of the Israeli right-wing while eval­u­at­ing this post.

“The Unit­ed Nations: Acces­so­ry to Slav­ery and Oth­er Crimes against Human­i­ty” Simon Deng; The Hud­son Insti­tute; 10/19/2011.

EXCERPT: Like you, I came to this con­fer­ence, The Per­ils of Glob­al Intol­er­ance to protest this third Dur­ban con­fer­ence which is an effort based on a set of lies, and orga­nized by nations who are them­selves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppres­sion.

Dur­ban III will not help the vic­tims of racism. It will only iso­late and tar­get the Jew­ish state. It is a tool of the ene­mies of Israel. The UN has lost its way. Its obses­sion with the Jew­ish state is obvi­ous: . For over 50 years, 82% of the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly emer­gency meet­ings have been about con­demn­ing one state — Israel. Hitler could not have been made hap­pi­er.

Giv­en all the good Israel does in the world, giv­en its democ­ra­cy and its striv­ing to fol­low the high­est stan­dards of human rights, even in the face of the most bru­tal, the most fanat­ic ene­mies, the Dur­ban Con­fer­ence is an out­rage. All decent peo­ple know that.

But friends, I come here today to make a dif­fer­ent case. I come with what you might at first think is a rad­i­cal propo­si­tion: I come to tell you that there are peo­ples who suf­fer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those peo­ple.

By exag­ger­at­ing Pales­tin­ian suf­fer­ing, and by blam­ing the Jews for it, the UN has muf­fled the cries of those who suf­fer on a far larg­er scale.

For over fifty years the indige­nous black African pop­u­la­tion of Sudan — Chris­tians and Mus­lims alike — have been the vic­tims of the bru­tal, racist Arab Mus­lim regimes in Khar­toum.

In South Sudan, my home­land, Sudan, about four mil­lion inno­cent men, women and chil­dren were slaugh­tered from 1955 to 2005. Sev­en mil­lion were eth­ni­cal­ly cleansed, and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

Every­body at the Unit­ed Nations is con­cerned about the so-called Pales­tin­ian refugees. They ded­i­cat­ed a sep­a­rate agency to pro­vide for them; this agency, UNWRA, treats them with a spe­cial priv­i­lege.

Mean­while, my peo­ple, eth­ni­cal­ly cleansed, mur­dered and enslaved, are rel­a­tive­ly ignored. The UN even resist­ed using the word “slav­ery” to describe the enslave­ment of tens of thou­sands of my peo­ple. Why? Because slav­ery is a crime against human­i­ty, appar­ent­ly no one com­mit­ting it want­ed to end up before an inter­na­tion­al court. When Khar­toum insist­ed that the term “abduct­ed peo­ple” be sub­sti­tut­ed for the word “slaves,” the UN, caved to Arab pres­sure and agreed. Try that in Amer­i­ca. Try call­ing Fred­er­ick Dou­glas an “abduct­ed per­son.” It is out­ra­geous.

The UN refus­es to tell the world the truth about the root caus­es of Sudan’s con­flicts. Take Dar­fur, for exam­ple. Who knows real­ly what is hap­pen­ing in Dar­fur? It is not a “trib­al con­flict.” It is a con­flict root­ed in Arab colo­nial­ism, as it has typ­i­cal­ly been prac­ticed in Africa. In Dar­fur, a region in the West­ern Sudan every­body is Mus­lim. Every­body is Mus­lim because the Arabs invad­ed the North of Africa and con­vert­ed the indige­nous peo­ple to Islam In the eyes of the Islamists in Khar­toum, the Dar­furis are not Mus­lim enough. And they also do not want to be Ara­bized. They like their own African lan­guages and dress and cus­toms. They resist Ara­biza­tion. The Arab response is geno­cide. But nobody tells the truth about Dar­fur.

In the Nuba Moun­tains, anoth­er region of Sudan, geno­cide is tak­ing place as I speak. The regime is tar­get­ing the black Africans — Mus­lims and Chris­tians. This hap­pened to the Nuba peo­ple before. In the 1990’s hun­dreds of thou­sands were mur­dered; a large num­ber of women were raped; chil­dren were abduct­ed and forcibly con­vert­ed to Islam. Nobody at the UN told the truth about the Nuba Moun­tains.

Do you see a mas­sive amount of out­rage and reports and protests about this com­ing out of the UN or Human Rights Watch or Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al? Do you hear them con­demn Arab anti-black racism?

Look at the pages of the New York Times, or the record of the UN con­dem­na­tions, What you will find is “Israeli crimes” and Pales­tin­ian suf­fer­ing. My peo­ple have been dri­ven off the front pages by the exag­ger­a­tions of Pales­tin­ian suf­fer­ing. Why? Because what Israel does is por­trayed as a West­ern sin that we are all sup­posed to address.

The truth is that the West com­mits a real sin when it aban­dons us: the actu­al vic­tims of non-West­erns. Our suf­fer­ing has become almost taboo.

Let me return to the top­ic of slav­ery: while there are issues that divide pub­lic opin­ion, we can all agree that for one man to own anoth­er is a sin, and it should be stopped. The Amer­i­cans tore them­selves apart over the issue of slav­ery.

Chat­tel slav­ery, a cen­turies-long prac­tice in Sudan, was revived as a tool of war in the ear­ly ’90s. The Islamist regime in Khar­toum declared jihad, or holy war, and there­by legit­imized tak­ing slaves as war booty. Arab mili­tias were sent to destroy South­ern vil­lages and were encour­aged to take African women and chil­dren as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kid­napped, brought to the North and sold into slav­ery.

I am a liv­ing proof of this crime against human­i­ty.

I do not like talk­ing about my expe­ri­ence as a slave, but I do it because it is impor­tant for the world to know that slav­ery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when I was made a slave. An Arab neigh­bor named Abdul­lahi tricked me into fol­low­ing him to a boat des­tined to North­ern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his fam­i­ly. For three and a half years I was their slave going through some­thing that no child should ever go through: bru­tal beat­ings and humil­i­a­tions; work­ing around the clock; sleep­ing on the ground with ani­mals; eat­ing the fam­i­ly’s left-overs. Dur­ing those three years I was unable to say the word “no.” All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”

The Unit­ed Nations knew about the bru­tal enslave­ment of South Sudanese by the Arabs from the ear­ly days of the con­flict. Human Right Watch issued exten­sive reports about the issue. These reports gath­ered dust on UN shelves. It took UNICEF – under pres­sure from the Jew­ish –led Amer­i­can Anti-Slav­ery Group — six­teen years to acknowl­edge what was hap­pen­ing.

As soon as the Sudanese gov­ern­ment and the Arab League pres­sured UNICEF, the UN agency back­tracked, and pro­ceed­ed to crit­i­cize the Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Orga­ni­za­tions that worked to lib­er­ate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gas­par Biro, the coura­geous UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Human Rights in Sudan who report­ed on slav­ery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.

My friends, today, tens of thou­sands of black South Sudanese still serve their mas­ters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League. So much for “human rights for every­body”.

As a for­mer slave and a vic­tim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think call­ing Israel a racist state is absolute­ly absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times vis­it­ing the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they end­ed up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hop­ing to find shel­ter in Egypt. They were wrong. In 2005, the refugees camped out­side the offices of the Unit­ed Nations High Com­mis­sion for Refugees in Cairo look­ing for mer­cy. Instead, the Unit­ed Nations closed its doors and left the help­less women and chil­dren at the mer­cy of the ruth­less Egypt­ian secu­ri­ty forces who bru­tal­ly slaugh­tered at least 26 of them.

After this event the Sudanese real­ized that Arab racism is the same, whether it is in Khar­toum or in Cairo. So they con­tin­ued look­ing for a shel­ter and they found it in Israel. Dodg­ing the bul­lets of the Egypt­ian bor­der patrols and walk­ing for pun­ish­ing­ly long dis­tances, the refugees’ only hope was to reach Israel’s side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

The fact that even Dar­furis, who are Mus­lims, chose Israel above all the oth­er Arab-Mus­lim states of the area, speaks vol­umes.. Israel is racist? Israel is against the Mus­lim world? Ask the thou­sands of black Mus­lim Dar­furis who found shel­ter inside the Jew­ish state.

When I asked the refugees about the treat­ment they receive in Israel, their response is absolute­ly the oppo­site of what the Unit­ed Nations alleges. They were wel­comed and treat­ed like human beings. Com­pared to the sit­u­a­tion in Egypt, they described their lives in Israel as “heav­en.” No-one called them “abid” – an Ara­bic word for slaves often used in Sudan, Egypt and oth­er Arab nations.

Is Israel a racist state? To my peo­ple, the peo­ple who know racism – the answer is absolute­ly not. It is a state of peo­ple of the col­ors of the rain­bow. Jews them­selves come in all col­ors, even black. I met with beau­ti­ful black Ethiopi­an Jews in Israel. Israel is a state that has tak­en my own black peo­ple in, res­cued them, and helped them.

So, yes … my claim may be a rad­i­cal claim: I claim that the vic­tims who suf­fer most from the UN’s anti-Israel pol­i­cy are not just the Israelis but all those peo­ple who have to be ignored in order for the UN to tell its big lie against Israel: all those vic­tims of non West­ern abuse, espe­cial­ly all those vic­tims of Arab and Mus­lim abuse: women, eth­nic minori­ties, reli­gious minori­ties, homo­sex­u­als, in the Arab and Mus­lim world. These are the biggest vic­tims of UN Israel hatred.

So far, the Israelis have only been cursed by the UN. But look at the sit­u­a­tion of the Copts, the Chris­tians in Iraq, and Nige­ria, and Iran, the Hin­dus and Bahais and Sikhs who suf­fer from Islam­ic oppres­sion. We all suf­fer. We are ignored, we are aban­doned so that the big lie against the Jews can go for­ward.

Before I con­clude let me tell you a sto­ry that reflects a spe­cial con­nec­tion that the peo­ple of South Sudan feel toward Israel. In 2005, I vis­it­ed one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she want­ed to go to school to become a doc­tor, and then, she want­ed to vis­it Israel. I was shocked and numb. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she want­ed to vis­it Israel, she said: “This is our peo­ple.” I was nev­er able to find an answer to my ques­tion.

On July 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an inde­pen­dent state. We achieved free­dom despite the oppo­si­tion from the Arab world and despite the Unit­ed Nations, whose Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Bi Ki Moon, lob­bied for the uni­ty of Sudan. For the South Sudanese, that would mean con­tin­u­a­tion of oppres­sion, bru­tal­iza­tion, demo­niza­tion, Islamiza­tion, Ara­biza­tion and enslave­ment.

In a sim­i­lar man­ner, the Arabs con­tin­ue deny­ing Jews their right for sov­er­eign­ty in their home­land; and the Dur­ban III con­fer­ence con­tin­ues deny­ing Israel’s legit­i­ma­cy. . . .

 

Discussion

One comment for “Breaking the Relative Silence on Arab/Muslim Brotherhood Genocide in the Sudan”

  1. That arti­cle is absolute­ly incred­i­ble. And yet, it is the absolute truth. As a diehard oppo­nent of Islamism, and even of Islam itself, and as an uncon­di­tion­al sup­port­er of Israel and of the Jew­ish peo­ple, this speech is music to my ears. This is real­i­ty. Me and my friends of sup­port­ers of Israel, we have been called many times, Islam­o­phobes, racists, fascists...and even Nazis. Can you believe that, me, a Nazi? Any­way, I don’t care any­more. I think that I have a good judge­ment and a good capac­i­ty to dif­fer­en­ci­ate what is pho­ny from what is authen­tic. And that’s why I like your show, Dave, which is so unique.

    I will con­tin­ue to defend the Jews and to strike back against the Islamists and Mus­lim mil­i­tants in my com­mu­ni­ty and through­out the world on the web. When you read such a poignant and heart­break­ing wit­ness account of the sit­u­a­tion in Sudan, you real­ize again how pho­ny and trea­so­nous the Unit­ed Nations and their branch­es have become with time. The idea of the UN was great after WWII, but it became more and more, due to the pres­sures and influ­ence of the Arab coun­tries, lob­bies and orga­ni­za­tions, a cir­cus and pro­pa­gan­da machine to serve these same inter­ests, such as the OIC, the Arab League,etc.

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Israel and the Jews, the media, let­ting their crit­i­cal judge­ment at the door, copy-pastes robot­i­cal­ly into the “news” every­thing these UN enti­ties say about Israel, Pales­tine and the con­flict, and again, for a sec­ond time in less than a cen­tu­ry, the Jews are scape­goat­ed to take the blame for all the prob­lems of the world.

    For every­one who will read this com­men­tary, fight back in your com­mu­ni­ty. Don’t let the Nazis win again. Fight for democ­ra­cy, fight for Israel, fight for all of us.

    Posted by Claude | November 4, 2011, 9:26 pm

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