Have we forgotten ‘never again’?

The Italian poet Dante once wrote that "The hottest places in hell are reserved for people, who, in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality".

The silence about the bloodshed in Darfur - the first genocide of the 21st century - is deafening. How can we sit passively by when an estimated 300,000 people have died in a campaign of ethnic cleansing and 2.5 million people (more than 50 per cent of them children) have been uprooted and deported from their homes into refugee camps in arid regions and neighbouring Chad? Is it simply the old refrain of “this doesn’t involve me” or “Darfur is remote and far away”?

Memories of the world’s apathy during the Holocaust and the almost total global indifference shown to the one million dead in Rwanda’s genocide (murdered in 100 days) still cast a giant shadow. These memories should have been enough to compel most nations to intervene in the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crisis. Shamefully, the international community has failed to respond decisively to the mounting carnage, remaining unconscionably spineless, idle and neglectful.

Warnings issued in 2003 about the widespread slaughter went unheeded. In 2004, then US Secretary of State Colin Powell finally admitted, “Genocide has been committed in Darfur”: an assessment reiterated by President Bush. The US, the only country with real leverage to pressure Khartoum to change its wicked ways, has been feckless.

The Sudanese Government has backed the Arab Janjaweed marauding militias which have indiscriminately pillaged and destroyed whole villages and have terrorised, tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of defenceless men, women and children. Armed bandits and security forces subject girls as young as 12 to beatings, rape and kidnappings.

Living in fear and unable to cultivate crops, countless starving and sick civilians are reliant on the World Food Program which in May reduced its rations by half due to lack of money.

Over the last few months things having been getting worse and reaching new levels in the killing fields of Darfur. Despite a May 5 peace agreement between the main rebel faction and the Sudanese regime, Sudan’s military dictator has ruled out the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the war torn region. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan noted recently that the situation in Darfur was out of control as 600,000 children under five suffer starvation and disease.

Outrageously, the UN has again shown impotence. This week, it was agreed that the United Nations Human Rights Council will dispatch a high-level mission to Sudan's Darfur region to examine claims of worsening abuses against civilians. Incredibly, it stopped short of condemning the Sudanese Government for widely documented atrocities.

Over the last year, the only forces on the ground belong to the African Union, whose inadequate 7,000 members have been unable to handle the catastrophe and stop the butchery. They have been charged only with issuing reports rather than with confronting the gunmen. Their mandate was to end September 30, but was extended through to the end of the year.

Some experts predict the death toll will eventually pass one million

In Bosnia, American, British and NATO forces intervened to end the sickening campaign of violence against Muslims, but in Sudan only envoys have been dispatched. Attempts to halt the heart-rending anguish have been thwarted by countries with vested economic and political interests. China, for instance, with its veto power on the Security Council, is Sudan’s largest supplier of arms and has oil interests there.

An 18-page report by the International Security Group, a renowned think tank, concluded, "Darfur is a test-case on whether the international community is prepared to translate its political commitment into effective action. The response to date has been extremely disappointing".

Empty rhetoric of condemnation abounds but has not translated into real action. The toothless Security Council has invoked, for the first time in its history, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and threatened “strong and effective measures”, but has not stopped the onslaught and the unfolding humanitarian disaster.

The Europeans for their part do not perceive this calamity as genocide, preferring the “tribal violence” label, and remain indifferent. Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire, who headed the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda between 1993-1994, has observed that early, decisive action against the Hutu extremists who led the ethnic extermination would have foiled their plans.

Australians must feel outraged enough to raise their voices about this. What happened to “never again” that oft-quoted promise made after the Holocaust? Why are we not seeing demonstrations in the streets of Melbourne, Sydney and other capital cities and an avalanche of talk back calls urging the Australian Government to take a leading role and advocate sanctions against Khartoum’s brutal tyrants and the immediate deployment of an effective international force?

Unless there is a reversal of the world’s silence and inaction, many more innocents will be caught in the never-ending death spiral.

Put simply, genocide is the one international issue that should garner consensus. Each Australian must be moved by compassion and see themselves as an inseverable part of a crusade for justice. Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel maintains that: “What hurts the victim is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.” If the endless needs of babies and children are not a catalyst for action, I don’t know what is.

The time has come for Australia and other nations to tell the vicious Sudanese regime that they will no longer just stand by and that the world will do all that is necessary to protect life wherever it is threatened.

Australians don’t have the right to disregard the suffering of another human being, whether in Darfur or closer to home. Martin Luther King called the human bonds of society “an inescapable network of mutuality”.

The international community should be ashamed that it has allowed the savagery to continue. Words require action. There are innocent orphans and widows devastated by the tragedy that are in desperate need of help from the outside world. In the Book of Micah we read, “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Perhaps we need to begin to feel the pain of others and to begin thinking with our hearts.