Daily Darfur: Popular Dissent on the ICC - But Who's Listening? | Stop Genocide

Daily Darfur: Popular Dissent on the ICC - But Who's Listening?

Published July 16, 2009 @ 04:08AM PT

A coalition of prominent South African civil society organizations joined the protest against a recent African Union declaration of non-cooperation of the International Criminal Court case against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

The statement signed, by many well-known South African human rights champions, including Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu, asserts that the South African government will be in defiance of its own constitution if it complies with the resolution, which "represents the most serious challenge to the struggle against impunity and lawlessness on the African continent."

South Africans are not alone in feeling a disconnect between their will and their government's actions on the ICC/Bashir debacle: A new poll of seven majority-Muslim and African nations finds that, "contrary to the position of their governments, publics in four nations approve of the indictment of Sudanese President Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, one is divided and two are opposed." (See image on the right.)

"This suggests that leaders of some majority-Muslim and African nations, in denouncing the indictment of President Bashir, are out of step with their people," comments Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org.

But will popular dissent amount to anything?

Uganda, for one, is now referring to statements made by a foreign ministry official that indicated that the government would arrest Bashir if he visited as a "diplomatic embarrassment."

Quickies

Radio Dabanga reports on the arrest and torture of a Darfuri man for unknown reasons, complaints over lack of services and indiscriminate nighttime shooting in IDP camps, and government interference with the work of MSF-Spain.

Nikki Serapio at OurPledge writes of her exasperation over the divide between Obama's on-paper policy towards Darfur and the actions of his administration. Alex Meixner, of Save Darfur's government relations team, has an important post on the Save Darfur blog on the importance and complexity of Obama's ongoing policy review on Sudan --- but also notes that the review cannot be never-ending.

[Photo of Desmond Tutu.]

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Comments (1)

Just in case, the related ICTJ press release on the South African letter (including the full text of the statement and the official list of signatories) is at http://ictj.org/en/news/press/release/2822.html.

Posted by Eric Jon Magnuson on 07/16/2009 @ 11:02AM PT
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Michelle became involved in the anti-genocide cause at a young age, and has been involved in various activist endeavors, including the Teach Against Genocide pilot campaigns, ever since.