A strange juxtaposition

Isn't this a strange juxtaposition of news stories? It was on the World News page of the Daily Telegraph (UK) online edition.

So on the one hand, the UN is very aggrieved that the US state of Texas would proceed with the execution of a Mexican national without taking into account that he did not have consular assistance at trial. The US Supreme Court denied a last-minute stay because US law does not recognize the lack of consular assistance as the basis for a Federal appeal.

Not that this was anything other than a stalling tactic. The condemned killer, Humberto Leal, tortured and murdered a 16-year-old girl: the physical evidence conclusively disproved his version of the events.

At the same time that the UN is deploring the execution of a particularly vicious rapist-murderer, its "peacekeeping" mission in Sudan stood idly by as Sudanese government forces attacked and murdered civilians:

Hundreds of people gathered outside a UN base for safety after Sudan's armed forces moved to crush a fresh rebellion by opposition militia in the town of Kadugli in the country's southeast.

They were refused entry to the fortified compound and instead camped outside its barbed wire perimeter with little shelter, food or water.

Reverend Barnaba Ibrahim said soldiers arrived in the middle of the night and dragged men accused of being rebel sympathisers away to be killed.

The allegations, supported by other reports from the area, again call into question the ability of the £650 million-a-year UN mission in Sudan to fulfil its mandate to protect civilians.

"I was just hiding, lying down pretending to be asleep, and they took the man next to me and beat him to death with sticks, five metres from the walls of the UN base," Rev Ibrahim said in Juba, capital of South Sudan, where he has fled for safety.

"Two other men were taken the same night. They were screaming and protesting.

The next day, we found their bodies nearby and they had been shot." Rev Barnaba, an Anglican pastor from Kadugli, said that "there is no way the peacekeepers did not know what was happening".

"There are armed guards all around that place, even at night," he said, still wearing the white shirt and grey slacks he fled in, a month ago.

"The peacekeepers are supposed to be there to protect us. They did nothing. This happened more than the one time I witnessed." Anderson Yacoub, who works with the Anglican diocese of Kadugli, said colleagues sleeping outside the same UN base, at Shaahir on the city's outskirts, had reported similar stories.

"There were other people who fled into the mountains, even though that seemed more dangerous, and they survived," he said, also in Juba.

"Those others who went seeking refuge at the UN, they were the ones who died." The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) has been plagued by allegations that it has repeatedly failed to carry out its central mandate to protect civilians, by force if necessary.

The UN protests that an American state executes a brutal killer, while the force it deploys with the mandate to stop brutal killers from brutally killing civilians simply stands by as those brutal killer brutally kill civilians. It seems to me that the UN as an organization is culpable in the deaths of the Sudanese who believed its promises of safety and protection, especially since those people flocked to the UN compound precisely because of those promises and were thus nicely arranged in a compact group for the murderers to slaughter.

And note that the UN donor countries pay $1 billion a year to have UN peacekeepers sit on their thumbs and watch civilians be murdered. I would rather have my taxes go to the costs of executing more Humberto Leals rather than to subsidizing the incompetence and cowardice of so-called "peacekeepers" whose presence actually facilitates the killing they were sent to prevent.

"We just heard screams of pain and the sounds of beatings. Then the screams stopped."

An Israeli soldier told Israel's Channel 10 that he witnessed Egyptian troops killing four Sudanese attempting to reach asylum in Israel from the Sinai.

According to the soldier, female IDF troops operating night vision devices identified several refugees approaching the border in an attempt to infiltrate Israel and alerted other soldiers who arrived after a few minutes in an army jeep.

However, Egyptian troops who also discovered the refugees, fired upon them, immediately killing two and wounding a third. A fourth refugee ran towards the fence and an IDF soldier stretched out his hands, trying to help him cross.

At that point, the soldier recalled, two Egyptian soldiers arrived and started pulling at the refugee's legs.

"It was literally like we were playing 'tug of war' with this man," the soldier said. The soldier eventually loosened his grip on the man, fearing the Egyptians would shoot him.

"They were aiming loaded weapons straight at us, I was afraid they were going to shoot us," he said.

The Egyptians then carried the man several meters away from the border fence, and proceeded to beat him and another wounded refugee to death with stones and clubs.

"What happened there yesterday was a lynch. These are not men, they're animals. They killed him without even using firearms," the soldier said. "We just heard screams of pain and the sounds of beatings. Then the screams stopped."

The IDF apparently has this incident on videotape. It will probably never allow it to be seen for fear of creating embarrassment for Egypt.

But there is something horribly, hideously wrong when Egyptian troops, who for so long have let smugglers move weapons and explosives into Gaza with relative impunity, go out of their way to kill four unarmed persons -- Muslim persons, at that -- seeking asylum. Perhaps they hope that other Sudanese will hear of this incident and decide not to try to cross Egypt to reach the safety of Israel.

Isn't the Islamic world supposed to be one ummah, where all Muslims are brothers?

On the AP wire - but not in the USA

Interesting that this AP story isn't being reported in the USA. Yahoo! Singapore and the Jerusalem Post, yes, but not even on the AP's own Web site Stateside. Maybe the headline is just too much even for AP's US staffers to stomach:

China to continue efforts to bring peace to Darfur

The peace of the grave, for Black Darfurians, that is.

BEIJING - China will continue its efforts to help bring peace to the troubled Darfur region, Vice President Zeng Qinghong said Wednesday during a meeting with a top Sudanese official.

Sudanese First Vice President Salva Kiir was in Beijing as part of a six-day visit to China. He said he appreciated China's role in helping resolve the bloodshed in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million others displaced since February 2003, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

"China's stance on the Darfur issue is consistent and China has played a constructive role," Zeng said, according to state television. "China will actively push for an early resolution to the Darfur issue."

Consistent, yes: rape and slaughter in Darfur are insignificant unless they impact Chinese commercial interests.

China's involvement in Sudan is becoming a liability as the country tries to portray itself as a responsible power while welcoming the world to the 2008 Olympics, a massive source of national pride.

China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports, sells the African country weapons and military aircraft, and has blocked efforts to send U.N. peacekeeping forces to Darfur without Sudanese consent.

Why does the Chinese placing more value on commerce than human rights surprise anyone? After all, one can't expect the Chinese government to care more about the people of Darfur than about its own citizens... which ain't much.

Let the shame be on the Muslim nations, not on Israel

Israeli citizens are taking action to prevent shame from coming down on the Israeli state over its treatment of refugees from Darfur.


An Israeli volunteer holds a Sudanese child in her arms during a demonstration at the Wohl Rose Grden in Jerusalem on Sunday. The sign reads 'Deportation=Death'.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski

One family who took in a Darfuri family Sunday morning said they felt it was their duty as Jews and Israelis to help asylum-seekers.

David, who asked not to use his real name for fear of putting both his family and the Darfuri family at risk, is on the board of the international Jewish volunteer movement Brit Olam.

"What is interesting to me about it is that private Israelis don't go around making declarations about what they want to do, they just go and do it," said David. "The government has made the declaration 'never again,' we heard it from [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert and other politicians on Holocaust Remembrance Day. But those declarations have not yet yielded action."

After reading about the refugees in the press, David and his daughter visited a group camped outside the Wohl Rose Garden. After a discussion with his family, they decided to offer a family two rooms in their house.

"We are currently handling it on a day-to-day basis," said David. "I was talking to my daughter about some of the problems on the phone. I said, 'We are all pushing boundaries to do this.' And she told me, 'Yes, I guess that is what it means to do a mitzva sometimes.'"

Israel has legitimate security concerns about people infiltrating over its southern border. But as far as refugees from Darfur are concerned, let their mistreatment be the shame of the Muslim world, and let Israel be a light unto the world to show how compassion should be extended to the oppressed.

Sudanese president unclear on the concept

The concept of the carrot and the stick, that is.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Saturday condemned the United States for pursuing sanctions against his country over Darfur, the BBC quoted Sudan TV as reporting.

"We are amazed why USA is continuing with sanctions after a time when we agreed with the U.N. on the heavy support package," he said.

Why? Because agreeing is not the same as following through.

Sudan agreed on June 12 to a combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 troops and police, but many diplomats doubt Khartoum will keep its word.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week accused the Khartoum government of repeatedly breaking its promises to end the violence in the remote western region of Darfur.

Rice also said Sudan must face "consequences" -- code for new U.N. sanctions -- if it failed to allow the force in.

"Will these sanctions return the displaced and refugees to their villages? Will these sanctions help in providing services to the people?" Bashir asked during a live media conference.

How about, you let the displaced and refugees return to their villages and stop slaughtering them, Mr. President, and then you won't have to worry about the sanctions?

The beacon of hope for the Muslim masses: Israel

Israel has one more thing in common with the USA: illegal immigrants streaming across its southern border.

Egyptian border guards on Saturday arrested six Sudanese, one Somalian and one Eritrean as they were trying to illegally cross from Egypt into Israel, a police official said.

The Sudanese men, who were from the war-torn Darfur region, were attempting to enter Israel in an effort to seek political asylum there, the police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The Somalian and Eritrean men wanted to cross the border for job opportunities in Israel, the official said.

The eight men, who were all in their 20s, paid thousands of dollars to human traffickers in the central Sinai Peninsula to help them cross, the official said. After their arrests, the eight were taken to Cairo in order to deport them to their home countries, according to the official.

This, more than anything else, is the shame of the Arab world. As wealthy as many Arab countries are, as much as they preach pan-Islamic brotherhood, the place that shines as a beacon of hope and freedom to the desperate Muslim masses is Israel.