Jimmy Carter downgrades the slaughter in Darfur!
Another town was razed in Darfur today.
At least 200,000 have died in Darfur since 2003.
The conflict has created around 2.5 million refugees.
South African Nobel peace prize laureate Desmond Tutu (L) and Ex-US president Jimmy Carter leave after a meeting with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir in Khartoum. A group of elder statesmen led by Tutu, on a mission to foster peace in Sudan, called for the rapid deployment of a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.(AFP/Isam Al Haj)
This week Jimmy Carter made a stunning announcement.
Jimmy Carter claimed there was no genocide in Darfur!
Sweetness and Light and Islam Online reported:
The United States is exaggerating when it described the Darfur conflict as “genocide,” former US president Jimmy Carter has said, warning that the use of the term was legally inaccurate and “unhelpful,” The Christian Science Monitor reported Friday.
“There is a legal definition of genocide and Darfur does not meet that legal standard. The atrocities were horrible but I don’t think it qualifies to be called genocide,” said Carter, a member of the group of Elders who visited Darfur and included Archbishop Desmond Tutu, rights advocate Graca Machel, and entrepreneur Richard Branson.
Nobel laureate Carter, whose charitable foundation, the Carter Center, worked to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC), said: “If you read the law textbooks … you’ll see very clearly that it’s not genocide and to call it genocide falsely just to exaggerate a horrible situation I don’t think it helps.”
Not only did Jimmy Carter’s remarks completely contradict the current Administration’s stand, but they very effectively minimize the magnitude of the slaughter in Darfur.
Jimmy added this wisdom at a later press conference…
“There is no reason for the government to continue to bomb people.”
The Sudan Tribune reported on the latest adventures of “elder statesman” Jimmy Carter:
Carter urged the government to cease air raids on Darfur civilians.
“There is no reason for the government to continue to bomb people,” Carter told the unusually mute Sudanese reporters, who didn’t ask a single question at the press conference.
At least 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced since ethnic African rebels in Darfur took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing of discrimination and neglect.
Hours before Tutu visited the Darfur town of Nyala on Wednesday, a gunbattle broke out between government forces and followers of the sole rebel chief who had signed a peace agreement with Khartoum, the U.N. said. Six people were killed.
The delegation vowed they would do more than be outspoken to help resolve the conflict.
“We are hoping not to be seen as another tourist group seeking photo opportunities,” Tutu said after the group held its second meeting with al-Bashir.
Some of their achievements were not immediately clear. Carter initially announced that al-Bashir promised them a $100 million compensation fund for Darfur victims, backed by $200 million from China. But it later turned out that some of these funds were reconstruction money that had been pledged a year earlier.
Al-Bashir did agree to invite observers from the ex-president’s Atlanta-based Carter Center to monitor Sudan’s general elections. The vote, due in 2009, is considered crucial to preserving a fragile peace in southern Sudan and improving conditions in Darfur.
Jimmy Carter has a longstanding working relationship with Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashar.
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