Bashir snub step in right direction

Editor | Tuesday January 30, 2007 00:00

The Khartoum regime's excesses are well documented and it could have been a travesty of justice to reward it with the chairmanship of the African Union.  Since its genocidal campaign, spearheaded by Arab militias of Janjaweed against the black Sudanese of the western region of Darfur, more than 200 000 of the latter have been slaughtered and more than two million displaced.

Of late the regime has been carrying out systematic aerial bombardments of their black victims, to the extent of making it impossible for much-needed food and medical relief to reach them.  In addition, the Khartoum regime has been intransigent in allowing the increase of the paltry 7 000 strong African Union force charged with bringing peace to that beleaguered region. The regime has blocked well-intentioned and necessary efforts to bring in the United Nations supervised forces.   Not to mention the armed conflicts the Khartoum regime is believed to be fomenting in the neighbouring countries of Chad and the Central African Republic. 

As if these excesses were not enough, El Bashir still wanted to be rewarded for his 'handy' work with leading the continental body.  The African leaders must be commended for seeing this farce for what it is.  It is noteworthy, that El Bashir's regime has previously been denied the AU leadership twice.  He should have been decent enough to concentrate on cleaning-up his internal mess before he could aspire for the continental post.

But do the African dictators ever learn from these experiences?  We doubt it.  What is needed is to suspend them from such bodies.  In the not-so-distant past, President Robert Mugabe was diplomatically denied the chairmanship of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), ostensibly with the hope that he would clean up his act.  Instead his idea of a clean-up act was so calamitous that it left millions of Zimbabweans homeless.

Dictatorial regimes deteriorate to such base levels as evidenced by an article somewhere in this issue, whereby the Mugabe regime is denying the deceased even to be afforded a decent burial.  What has happened to the much-hyped botho?

                                        Today's Thought
Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

                                   -  Harold H. Greene