Today, March 4, 2016, marks the seventh anniversary of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) issuing of an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan, Omar al Bashir. Bashir has been indicted for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, as I explain on my Patheos blog, Faith & Chelsen.
But Bashir has not been arrested. It is not even — as they say about criminal in TV shows — that he remains “on the loose” or “at large.” That would describe a fugitive fleeing from justice, furtive in his movements, afraid to show his face, believing the long arm of the law could reach him in any city the world over.
Instead, Bashir is brazenly traveling the world, just daring some country to detain him for the ICC. So far, he has not had to even resort to a double-dare, never mind a double-dog-dare!
Take the case of Bashir’s trip to South Africa in 2015. As my friend Kimberly Hollingsworth has pointed out in her piece today on E-International Relations, “To receive confirmation that Sudan’s President Bashir was already in the air at the same time that the South African government was lying to a judge about his whereabouts…well, it was a blow to us, to a South African court, to South Africans, not to mention all the Sudanese refugees who have been waiting for justice.”
But it’s not just the South African government that is the problem. The Sudanese regime, and its architects of evil…whether indicted by the ICC or not…have waged their charm offensive right here in the United States.
The then Sudan Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Karti — the man behind the Popular Defense Force militia that has slaughtered, tortured, and taken as slaves tens of thousands in South Sudan, Darfur, and the Nuba Mountains — was invited to the National Prayer Breakfast in 2015! Hollingsworth also described how Sudanese tribal leaders working with Bashir were invited to the United States by the State Department. They “happened” to stop for a quick touristy photo outside The White House while dozens of us were holding a demonstration against the regime.
And so we demonstrate. We write letters, too — to the President, the State Department, Congress, the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Commission, and others. Sometimes we receive a reply; sometimes we receive nothing. Sometimes the replies are so insipid or insincere that nothing would have been a better option, but sometimes the replies give us hope and keep us fighting.
That brings me to today. Today’s demonstration commemorating the 7th Anniversary of the Bashir arrest warrant featured Sudanese activists and their American supporters in New York. It was held outside the United Nations, on Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.
But there was/is also an option for those of us who could not be in New York today. Act for Sudan, the coalition of which IRD is a founding member, has a page of resources for doing “virtual activism” to demonstrate for justice in Sudan and an end to impunity for those who commit genocide. You can post photos on Face Book, tweet messages to those in authority to join your voices to those who were demonstrating today and who personally delivered to the UN a letter signed by over 110 human rights organizations and individuals, church and political leaders, and genocide scholars.
The slide show below demonstrates how I downloaded and adapted the Act for Sudan poster with my own sayings. Feel free to borrow them, if you like them. The captions on the slides give a short explanation of the truth behind each saying. If you hover the mouse over the photo, the caption will come up. I am posting them throughout the day on Face Book and Twitter.
Will you join me to take a stand against the evil that continues so needlessly in Sudan?
[slideshow_deploy id=’35652′]
No comments yet
