In preparing to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, China has engaged in a massive campaign to dissemble its role in the Darfur genocide in western Sudan, now entering its sixth year. Such a task was unexpected by Beijing. The regime knew it would encounter strenuous protests over the continuing destruction of Tibet, although the recent violent crackdown in Lhasa suggests Beijing hadn’t anticipated how deeply Tibetan anger runs. China’s leaders also knew they would draw fierce protests over their callous support of the brutal Burmese junta. Condemnation of Beijing’s own gross domestic human rights abuses was equally predictable. But the effectiveness of Darfur advocacy in highlighting China’s role in Sudan took Beijing by surprise. Steven Spielberg’s resignation as an artistic director for the Games - a decision of conscience stressing China’s role in Darfur - sharply intensified China’s dismay.
Thus Beijing has pulled out all the stops to counter advocacy success in emphasizing China’s longstanding diplomatic protection and economic support for the Islamist regime in Khartoum. Though Khartoum’s genocidal counterinsurgency campaign against Darfur’s African tribes has been authoritatively documented for years, Beijing seeks to obscure this grim reality through distortion, half-truths, and outright mendacity. In turn, nothing encourages Khartoum more than China’s refusal to speak honestly about violent human destruction in Darfur, where growing insecurity has brought the world’s largest humanitarian operation to the brink of collapse.
Why does China airbrush away Darfur’s genocidal realities? Why has Beijing been Khartoum’s largest weapons supplier over the past decade? Why has China repeatedly wielded a veto threat at the UN Security Council as the world body vainly struggles to bring pressure to bear on Khartoum? The answer lies in China’s thirst for Sudanese crude oil.
Since the beginning of serious oil development in the 1990s, China has been the dominant player in an oil production consortium located mainly in southern Sudan. China was also complicit in the scorched-earth clearances that were part of oil development until the north-south peace agreement of 2005. What China got for its ruthlessness was prime access to the 500,000 barrels of crude that Sudan now produces daily. Given the voracious growth in China’s oil consumption, Beijing has determined that ignoring gross human rights abuses in Sudan is simply a cost of doing business.
This is why China has offered unstinting diplomatic protection to Khartoum, most consequentially at the Security Council. And now in defense of this destructive protectionist policy, China offers up deliberate distortions of Darfur’s terrible truths. Thus Khartoum’s adamant refusal to accept desperately needed non-African troops and specialists for a UN-authorized peace support operation becomes a mere “technical” problem, according to Liu Guijin, China’s Darfur envoy. But this is false. The regime’s refusal to accept the UN-proposed roster of troop-contributing countries has largely paralyzed deployment of the UN/African Union Mission in Darfur, authorized by the Security Council last July. Britain’s UN ambassador spoke for many when he declared this year that Khartoum had made a “political decision” to obstruct the deployment. China blames the “international community” for not pressuring rebel groups in Darfur to negotiate an end to the conflict. While there is some justification to this charge, the real problem lies in China’s refusal to countenance sanctions that might pressure Khartoum to engage in good-faith diplomacy. China will not allow even targeted sanctions against regime officials most responsible for flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.
Confident that China will block punitive actions, Khartoum recently resumed savage civilian clearances in West Darfur, deploying regular military forces and Arab militia proxies. Tens of thousands of African civilians were displaced by ground and air attacks, and hundreds were killed; towns, villages, and camps for displaced persons were destroyed; humanitarian aid was blocked. Only immense confidence in China’s diplomatic protection emboldened the regime to resume such large-scale genocidal destruction. If China is to be a legitimate host of the 2008 Olympics, the preeminent event in international sports, it cannot be complicit in the ultimate international crime - genocide. The world community must respond more forcefully to this intolerable contradiction.
Eric Reeves is author of “A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.”
© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Western companies created China. First they said investing in China would encourage democracy and social justice.It hasnt happened. Quite the opposite. China floods the markets with cheap goods, with no ethical responsibility. Instead, now they say we cant criticize China because it is becoming a superpower(meaning they have too much money invested there).
The word genocide has an objective meaning. It would be a real great accomplishment if the New York Times could damn well use it only based on that objective definition which has no application from any objective evidence. Give everybody a damn break with this overheated hot air. Hell, the US Government and its surrogates are more responsible for genocide in this world than everybody else put together and the “chief purveyor of violence in this world today” as Martin Luther King Jr said in his day.
With over 800,000 Iraqis of all ages dead, and over a million crippled in the past 5 years - all as a result of Bush and Cheney’s lies - and for them to be strutting around the world with no remorse, protected by thugs in suits, it is incredibly hypocritical for Americans to point at the errors of another country.
The USA has more conceit and arrogance than any other nation.
We point at the splinter in our neighbor’s eye, but we can’t see the log in our own. We should Shut the F up and fix our own problems, before we preach at others.
That’s the kind of crap one can expect from those who are so blind, that they think that NPR is a liberal and enlightened station.
Those who are sick and tired of American imperialism now have another option, Beijing Pepsi instead of Washington Coke.
First end the five hundred year genocide in America against American Indians. It is American athletes who should be banned from the games. It is black and white athletes who should be derided for playing for a team called the Washington Redskins (Redskin being the “N” word for Indians).
It is the White and Black public who continues the genocide against American Indians today. Indifference make you guilty too, guilty of genocide.
Complete agreement with above posters . Editorial opinionees like Eric Reeves are entitled but if the BG is not inundated with “first ,-take-the-log-out-of-your-own-eye letters as indicated by CD posters then BG readers are as brain-dead as all readers and watchers of MSM .
Eric Reeves’ rants are as stale , hackneyed , expected and futile as the ones levelled at Jesus by Jewish academia , two thousand years ago.
Funny how the anti-’genocide’ yada, yada, yada folk concentrate on Darfur, and have nothing to say about Gaza, Congo, Palestine, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. What gives with you antiChinese Westerners?
Please ! Please ! USA look at your own face in the mirror and appreciate what HELL you have created in Iraq, a nation that had done nothing to the USA; and yet your Predient Bush says it was worht the Million plus of Iraqis killed and now that rendition is out there for everyone to see and what about Abu Ghraib etc etc etc.
Why do you Americans do not feel shame ? This is what amazes me; why do you not feel shame ?
yap.chongyee:
Let me assure you the majority of Americans are very ashamed…or at least
beginning to be, but American imperialism does not excuse Chinese imperialism.
I can’t wrap my mind around the hell the US has created in Iraq. It is inconcievable, but it is a fact. It is a fact I have mourned and been angry
about, and fought against for five long years(a close friend was in the military and was activated to Iraq…since he has returned, he is not the same man I knew…
but he hates the war as much as I do…his precious son was sent to Afghanistan, and also is not the same man he once was).
How many Chinese sons, and friends have come back not the same? Human minds
work pretty much the same no matter what border they happen to be near.
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/lies/video.html
Have a look at this.. you won’t find this on any American TV station
see how the neocons and the MIC are doing it again with Iran ( that’s ear ron..not eye ran )
We built China so we could export our productive economy to them and raise their standrad of living, while lowering Americans. Don’t you know that in order to merge the nations of the world into a one world government we need to equalize the living standards amongs the merged nations.
Our global government will be a lot more like China than a “democracy”
Frankly, any American talking about Chinas human rights abuses does not know their own history, of 200 years, 60 years or even 7 years.
And when people talk about genocide and human rights in Africa, you know it’s about the oil.
MiMiCcS, let me guess—I think from how you write that you may have made it to 3rd year of High school.
Now, now yap.chongyee, no need to be confrontational with Mr M. I don’t agree with everything he says but the last two points I agree with.
And, yes, this is another ho-hum opinion piece which as poster Safiyyah correctly asks, “What gives with you antiChinese Westerners?” Good question.
May I posit an answer? How about ‘racism’, open or closeted? Yes, that’s right! I said it! And no apologises! The fact is too many westerners cannot stomach the thought of a non-white power.
This is supposedly a liberal site. Which brings to mind that line from the late British playwright, Joe Orton, “Scratch a liberal and you find a fascist.” (Or something of that nature…)
I love it when capitalist governments fight each other. One could see the US as “pulling up the ladder.” They committed genocide against Native Americans, instituted slavery and still operate sweatshops. So, if American capitalists can do that to build their infrastructure and economy, why can’t other capitalist countries like China?
Yay, capitalism!
Throughout the American history “genocide” is “American way” and since 1990, three US Presidents waged genocidal war in Iraq to erase the “cradle of civilization”.
Native peoples were its earlier victim. Puritans saw them as “brutes, devils” and “devil-worshippers” in a godless, howling wilderness filled with evil spirits and “dangerous wild beasts.” They were targeted for removal as settlers moved west. They cleansed the land through violence, bloodletting and 40 Native Indian wars from 1622 - 1900 to win the West, North and South. Wars became the US national pastime, and waged them like blood-sport ever since in an endless unbroken cycle.
The forefathers loathed Native Indians, and George Washington showed it in his language. He called them “red savages,” compared them to wolves and “beasts of prey,” and aimed to exterminate the Onieda people who aided him in his darkest hours at Valley Forge. He also dispatched General John Sullivan and 5000 troops against the noncombatant Onondaga people with orders to destroy their villages, homes, fields, food supplies, cattle herds, orchards and then annihilate them and seize their land.
Hitler modeled his “Final Solution” on the “American Holocaust.” He targeted Untermenschen (subhumans) and Slavs he called “redskins.” We know what happened. Raphael Lemkin called it “genocide” as he first defined it in 1944 to mean: “the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.” Genocide “does not necessarily mean the….destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings….It is intended….to signify a coordinated plan (to destroy the) the essential foundations of the life of national groups” with intent to destroy them. Genocidal plans involve the disintegration of….political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion….economic existence, personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and” human lives.
The US took the Philippines (slaughtering 200,000 of its people), Hawaii, Haiti, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Samoa, assorted other territories later and the Canal Zone from Colombia to fulfill Theodore Roosevelt’s dream to link the Atlantic and Pacific with a canal across its isthmus. Wilson occupied Haiti in 1915 beginning 20 hellish years for its people until Franklin Roosevelt withdraw US forces in 1934. He sent US troops to Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and in 1914 invaded Mexico, occupying its main seaport city of Veracruz.
North Korea’s Fatherland Liberation War began June 25, 1950 when the DPRK retaliated in force following months of US influenced Republic of Korean (ROK) provocations. It ended in an uneasy cease-fire July 27, 1953 and is still unresolved to this day. The North and South are technically at war, the US refuses to negotiate an honorable peace, and 57 years later 37,000 American forces are in the South with no intention to leave.
War with Vietnam began under Truman and Eisenhower supporting France. It expanded full-blown under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon costing innocent lives, and destruction of the nation.
The 1980s brought more conflict with Ronald Reagan’s war against “international terrorism.” He invaded tiny Grenada in 1983. Scorched earth proxy wars then upped the stakes in Central America, Afghanistan, Africa and the Middle East. These conflicts left hundreds of thousands dead.
Bill Clinton’s 1990s Balkan wars took their toll earlier at a time most people shamefully bought the US-led NATO propaganda of a good war against a demonized enemy and a well-intentioned intervention to remove him. It divided and destroyed a country under the guise of humanitarian intervention that provided cover for naked imperialism.
The Gulf war followed with 12 crushing years of sanctions its legacy. They left 1.5 million Iraqis dead and the living devastated. According to Jeff Nygaard’s June, 2007 Z Magazine article titled “The Secret Air Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” relentless air attacks against Iraq and Afghanistan have gone on for years - on average 75 - 100 each day against both countries. The death toll is unknown, he says, “but a reasonable estimate” is between 100,000 - 150,000 in Iraq alone, and it’s anyone’s guess in Afghanistan. That’s on top of all other war-related deaths estimated in both countries. Two and a half million are dead and counting from it, one-third of its people need emergency aid, millions go hungry, and a once prosperous nation is now an occupied wasteland with few or no essential services like electricity, clean water, medical care, fuel. That’s the ugly face of “genocide” in real time.
Yes !Mopy of course it is all about racism. 20 years ago China was ranked 132 in the world and now just a mere less than 20 years, we are almost abrest of the USA as No 2. Scary eh ?
I read many of the posts here and I find all of you posturing altruism when in fact you are all as blood thirsty as the conquistador and just as callous. Why don’t you introspect a little. Why not ask yourself what is going on in the Gaza, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, even in Latin America; where do you stand in the moral stakes ? Is the USA and the west generally any more righteous than China ? Why don’t you Americans, French, and Belgian ask yourselves where do you stand in respect to the truely genocidal hell of Rwanda !
On Iraq the USA is still in denial and you are still posturing the moral high ground and your State Department still has the gall to issue censures on China’s human rights; which to all the world China’s human rights is examplar. Why talk of Tibet when we know from foreigner’s eye witness account IT WAS THE TIBETANS WHO ORGANIZED THIS RIOT ! Why not the USA ADMIT TO THE KILLING OF OVER 1 NILLION IRAQIS under a war waged under criminal false pretences ? Why call this genocide games when the USA & Britain are the most blood thirsty aggressors of all time ! Why not admit that it was the greed for oil and plain simple DOLLARS that the USA aggressed against Iraq. Anyway as we Chinese say “GOD HAS EYES” and the USA is broke today because you printed too many many dollars and now THE USA$ IS LOOSING VALUE AGAINST THE CHINESE YUAN. The USA has gone broke because there is enough US$ to stretch back and forth from here to the moon 50 times and the US$ against the Chinese yuan is declining even as we argue here on this forum.
Nancy Pelosi and the rest of you behave like little children; when you are caught out as the worst genocidal mass murderers since the Nazi and Adolf Hitler; you go on to deny the charge by saying “WE AMERICANS ARE NOT THE WORST, LOOK IT IS THE CHINESE WHO ARE THE WORST”. Yes ! Americans are not the world worst killers, ADOLF HITLER IS THE WORST, BUT CHINA IS NOT THE SECOND EITHER. WE CHINESE HAVE A CLEAN RECORD. By the way all those who got killed were Chinese and not Tibetans ! Remember that.
USA show the world that you even have a heart at all ! LEAVE IRAQ AS THE IRAQIS WANT YOU TO DO SO. Do not use the pretext of the Al Malaki PUPPET GOVERNMENT AS PRETEXT.
in short USA, mind your freakin’ business and do as you say !
Firstly, this is a Boston Globe article, copyrighted NYT!
Secondly, instead of writing what my views on the USA-Tibet-China matter consist of in this post, I’ll just provide links to two posts already made on March 22nd articles. Those two posts are very specifically related to this imperialist-West msm “news” media attack on China, [again]. In the following page, simply do a webpage search for ‘corbeil’, and there are two posts in it, both relevant, while both provide a link directly to the other post I’m referring people to; as explained in my posts in the following page.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/22/7824/
Thirdly, it was long said by the rest of the planet Earth’s peoples and govts that what’s been going on in Darfur is NOT ‘genocide’; that only the USA was claiming the contrary, that it’s supposedly genocide, as if the USA has ANY credibility at all left on or in international affairs.
And China is not at all responsible for the plight and violence in Darfur; and neither is Russia.
This Bo. Globe, i.e., NYT, article is just more imperialist-West msm “news” media propaganda, which constitutes one of the imperialist-West’s ruling elites’ favourite WMD.
And that’s a WMD which is multi-facted in terms of impact. One negative outcome is the brainwashing, dumbing down, rendering nonsensical of the believers of this hell’s-making “news” reporting. The other consequence is the contribution to the continued supreme crimes of the imperialist West, and therefore the increasing numbers of victims in Iraq and Afghanistan, among plenty of other places of important significance in the respect I’m speaking of; in addition to the continued destruction of their countries. Of course the victims are the millions in the aggressed countries, but there are also the U.S. citizens and foreigners accepting to serve for the USA in these multiple wars the USA is committing today, and their loved ones, families. That’s the families who [care] anyway, or that is; while many enough they are.
If the article, which I haven’t yet read except for the opening sentence or two, enough to see finger-pointing at China AGAIN, for that immediately raise WARNING-OF-DANGER OR -PROPAGANDA ALARMS for me; well, if it doesn’t mention the guilt of the imperialist West in the Darfur not genocide, but crisis, then the article is suitable for only two things:
*) For criticising it, denouncing it as more lies from the lie factory USA’s ruling elites and their pundits; and,
*) Your nearest trash basket, or incinerator, or [sewer].
johnycanuck, are abadmouthing the US punk in chief and his neo conization on the dawg? You “can’t do that.” We want to do that big time. You Canadians give W’s old buddy, Stephen Harper hell. He and his damn slimy neo cans, Canadian neo cons deserve it. Say, can’t ya’ll have a vote of confidence thang to force that dawg and Conservative or Tory dawgs into another election which they should be assured of losing and the great Canadian people winning on the dawg?
“Doom n Gloom March 22nd, 2008 11:48 am
…”
Valid enough point DnG, although not in terms of whether or not we need to oppose the genocides the USA is presently committing, and the others the USA is directly contributing to, for these definitely need to be opposed regardless of the long history of genocide against the indigenous peoples of [all] of North America, and all three of its countries, and then Haiti, and others.
ALL of those presently happening need to be stopped “dead in their tracks”, and reparations need to be made to the indigenous peoples ALL OVER planet Earth; while part of this set of reparations is recognition of the sovereignties of these peoples, TOO.
However, I believe to have read in one of your posts here today or over the past few days that you are a US military veteran, and given what you say in your above post, I wonder why you chose to be part of the imperialist-West’s military apparatus at all. Whatever the reason though, the above stands; there’s nothing I’d take back in the above. But I’m nonetheless curious about the military service you committed yourself to.
And with all of that said, I’m going to add a comment on the article by Eric Reeves, a man who’s evidently one of the following:
a) Not as thoroughly informed about the situation in Darfur as he pretends to be; or,
b) Propagandist for the ruling elites of the imperialist West.
He may be both, too.
It’s welcome to see the NYT, even if it’s through the BG, publishing an article that seriously speaks of OIL resources worth exploiting in Darfur. It’s something the Bush administration has been wanting to avoid admitting, if I’m recalling what I’ve read about the Darfur crisis correctly anyway; and it’s a key element of truth, the presence of OIL and a significant quanity of it, that is.
Much of the article can be taken as truth, only in [reverse], sort of. The imperialist West wants the OIL concessions in Darfur, and which are presently exploited by China, Russia, and some European countries’ oil industries; based on what I’ve read from Keith Harmon Snow, as well as some other authors with articles posted at www.globalresearch.ca (see the sub-Sarahan Africa index, f.e., or esp.). Given that significant oil reserves are located there, and China is among the “oil production consortium located mainly in southern Sudan”, as Reeves said, surely these other authors I’m referring to are correct when saying the aforementioned countries are also there.
AS for the UN “peacekeeping” forces being rejected by the govt of Sudan, NO KIDDING! NO ONE who is sane, honest, and reasonably informed can fault the Sudanese govt for this refusal. NONE of the imperialist-West’s forces should be involved in Sudanese affairs at all. At most only the African Union should play a role in Sudan, a truly peacekeeping one, and in accord and jointly with the Sudanese govt, which is not responsible for all or even most of the violence in Darfur.
The UN should at most only work with Sudan and the AU in a consulting, advisory role, to encourage authentic relationship between the two and for real peacekeeping and justice. The UN absolutely must not send “peacekeeping” forces, for then we’ll just have more imperialist West bs, hegemony and hypocrisy. And NATO ever more absolutely must NOT be permitted to get involved in Sudan.
More can be said on Reeves’ article, but I’ll say only one more thing, and this is that China is being put in a serious vice-[squeeze].
It has the strong US-Taiwan team-up on one side, to the east, the US now targeting, again, China over the Tibet matter, the US and NATO military build-up in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and the many enough US military bases in positions that strategically add to this overall imperialist-West squeeze on China, the govt of the People’s Republic of China.
As if China didn’t suffer enough from the major war of aggression and genocide committed by Japan! Oh, and of course Japan’s a strong US, imperialist-West ally, and the location is nothing short of very strategic for the imperialist-West, which has some military bases in parts of Japan, or its nearby territory.
And that’s it; gotta disconnect.
Every nation that pursues aggressive war or backs other regimes which do the same are at fault. We can’t single out one country without singling them all out.
Mike Corbeil makes good points. This smacks of neocon pot stirring. They want war with Iran, Russia and China. Several years ago I read (here?) that R. Perle et.al., in the Reagan administration, said the CIA had undercounted Soviet missiles and underestimated Soviet intentions. The solution? Pre-emptive war–nuke Moscow! Reagan said nyet. After the Fall, they found out the CIA had overestimated Soviet military capability.
There are also people who think the Tibet protests have been instigated by the CIA.
” jsc March 23rd, 2008 10:50 am
…
There are also people who think the Tibet protests have been instigated by the CIA.”
I APPRECIATE the info. wrt the Reagan administration, CIA, and the so-called counts of Soviet missiles or military [defence] capabilities; it gives me a lead for Web searches that I’ll now want to do for more information on all of this … crap.
As for what I left quoted above, see my first or second post, above, and in which I provide a link for posts I made in other pages of also March 22nd articles. Those have for one principal focus, the sort of activities the CIA (operations branch), N.E.D., USAID, State Dept, CFR, and so on conduct and for the most part, in terms of what we most critically need to know or learn about anyway, covertly.
In addition to those posts, there are plenty of articles at, f.e., www.globalresearch.ca about these above imperialist-West actors, agencies, whatever they can all be referred to when using one word. Some of the articles will be found on the topic of Venezuela, but there are also others, probably being linked in different indexes at GR; therefore, a Web search of GR and on ‘NED’ or ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ or simply the first two words of the latter, and f.e., should produce fitting hits.
I suppose ZMag or Znet and maybe informationclearinghouse.info would have such resource articles, too; but being only one person and therefore very limited, I can’t get around to knowing enough about all of the topics covered by these two websites. Antiwar.com may also have the sort of content I’m speaking of; among other wesbites. It should be easy enough to determine with Web searches.
There’s a specific way to use Google directly and while also doing it specifically for a website, but I forget what to use to flag when this sort of search is to be performed. I just use, f.e., “globalresearch.ca” followed by whatever keywords fit for the articles I’m looking for. For NED, f.e., it’d be, “globalresearch.ca NED”, minus the quotes. It also returns hits at sites referring to GR articles containing NED, say, but this is sometimes useful too.
GR has a search engine, and it’s sometimes worked for me, but more often hasn’t. So I use Google to search for GR content.
Whether or not the CIA (ops), NED, or … are involved in orchestrating or otherwise covertly backing the Tibetan protests, as well as the same and/or funding of ‘Free Tibet’ movement groups, I’m not capable of saying what the real truth of this is. However, it all smacks of this sort of involvement, and it’s strongly fitting with imperialist-West agenda, of which PNAC, relevant PNAC is a known part; or part and example. Anyway, this is better explained in my other posts mentioned a little above; although they don’t mention PNAC and could.
PNAC [and] Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ‘The Grand Chessboard’, I should’ve said. His ‘chessboard’ “game” plan shouldn’t be considered irrelevant.
Wherein I above-said “However, it all smacks of this sort of involvement”, I’m not meaning to say that all Tibetans for a totally independent Tibet are guilty; but …. Well, my aforementioned additional posts in other pages here explain.
If you do not want to participate in Chinese crimes against humanity, do not purchase Chinese products and boycott the Beijing Olympics !
I’d rather boycott the US instead. JConrad, are you an American? Are you boycotting the US because of its crimes against humanity? NO? Well, why not then?
As some have noted, if human rights crimes are the litmus test, the United States should never have been allowed to host any Olympics.
http://glumbert.com/media/hahahaamerica
The thing about China is that they have more resources and they actually are better at capitalism than Americans. The problem is inherent in the culture where brutality is considered normal. The strong prey on the weak is what happens and they openly admit and accept this. It is a much older civilization. They are brutal, take the harvesting of organs from prisoners for sale, where we simply use prisoners for medical experiments.
As a matter of opinion, China is little more than a pathetic HIGHLY POLLUTED imitation of America and has become the new Nazi empire of Asia !
And if I was not clear, corporate China is an extension of corporate America, thus BOYCOTT ALL CORPORATIONS SPONSORING THE BEIJING OLYMPICS !
FREE TIBET AND THE CITIZENS OF CHINA !