Darfur - Page 2

The United States walked out of a U.N. meeting Tuesday to protest its decision minutes later to give Sudan a third term on the Human Rights Commission, the world body’s human rights watchdog. U.S. Ambassador Sichan Siv called the vote an “absurdity” and accused Sudan of massive human rights violations and “ethnic cleansing” in the western Darfur region before getting up from his chair and walking out of the Economic and Social Council chamber. U.N. Votes to Keep Sudan on Human Rights Commission

According to the United Nations, one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises now afflicts a Muslim people who face a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing driven by massacre, rape and looting. These horrors are unfolding not, as Arab governments and satellite channels might have it, in Iraq or the Palestinian territories, but in Sudan, a member of the Arab League. Maybe because there are no Westerners or Israelis to be blamed, the crisis in Darfur, in northwestern Sudan, has commanded hardly any international attention. Though it has been going on for 14 months, the U.N. Security Council acted on it