Tsunami Deaths More than 100,00 What About the 370,000 Deaths in Sudan?

[las47032]

Now, the latest estimates of dead from the tsunami that swept South and Southeast Asia are around 70,000, even reaching 100,000 (link here). The world’s attention has focused on this horrible catastrophe as associated photographs, videos, and interviews dominate the news, as they should. This is a disaster of the first magnitude and we all should be sensitive to what it means in human terms——the suffering, the loss of loved ones, the sheer horror.

So, I wish in no way to belittle or upstage this tragedy. But I cannot help mentioning another ongoing one even worse in human terms and the taking of untold lives. The difference in treatment, in apparent news worthiness, of the tsunami disaster, and the Sudan democide, even genocide in many cases, is astounding.

Some history. In 1989 Lt. General Omar Hassan Bashir and the Arab-led Sudanese People's Armed Forces overthrew the democratic government in power at that time and imposed strict Muslim law and faith on Sudan. Now, its population is about 34 million people, of which Muslims are about 70 percent, mainly in the North. Some 5 percent of the population, mostly southern Blacks, is Christian. The rest of the six million living in the South are animist who attribute conscious life to nature and natural objects. The South had a protected and special constitutional status under the democratic government, but with its overthrow and especially with the effort of the new regime to impose Muslim law throughout the country, the South revolted and a bloody civil war resulted.

To defeat the South and motivate its Arab tribal militia to fight, the North made slaves part of their compensation, along with whatever they could loot, and gave Arab soldiers freedom to commit rape. Of course, old people did not fit into this scheme, since they are good neither as slaves nor for rape, so they were beaten up, if not killed. Young men, however, were usually marched off to slavery, unless for some reason they were unworthy of this: then they also were killed. According to the Muslim faith, all non-Muslim southerners, whether man or woman, old or young, are infidels. They have no rights, even to life. They may be killed as a matter of course, enslaved, raped, and all deprived of their possessions.

In this civil war, bombing from the air has killed many of those who live in heavily populated areas of the South; even schools are bombed and children killed. Hospitals do not escape. There have been many bombing attacks on the Samaritan's Purse, the largest hospital in southern Sudan. Bombers often attack other medical facilities as well, sometimes with cluster bombs. Even more monstrous, the North bombs the wells that provide southerner's water, as well as sites with foreign relief supplies, including food for the starving southerners. All this, in addition to the regime's socialist economic policies, has contributed to a massive famine.

But because they live under a fundamentalist Muslim regime, even northern Sudanese far from the civil war enjoy few human rights. For example, the government harasses and monitors women for correct dress, forbidding even slacks. Women who dare to defy the law risk arrest, conviction by an Islamic court of immoral dressing, and flogging. Women also cannot hold any public office that would give them authority over Muslim men, nor can they marry a non-Muslim.

Both men and women have no freedom of speech or religion——all must accept the Muslim faith. Also, police can arrest any commoner and imprison them for up to six months without trial. And while detained suspects can expect as a matter of course that officials will torture them. To further this religious rule, the government appoints only Muslims to the judiciary. Worst of all, a Muslim dare not convert to another religion, for the punishment for doing so is death.

By 1999, about 20,000 to 40,000 Sudanese were enslaved, and nearly 4,000,000 displaced from their homes and villages——the largest number for any country. Many more Sudanese simply gave up on the country. Moreover, 352,000 have fled, escaping the fate of some 1,500,000 to 2,000,000, who died from the war, famine, or disease, or were murdered in cold blood by Muslim forces or rebels.

Unlike their urgency to provide aid and support to the current tidal wave survivors, the so-called international community, enshrined in that dictator's haven, the United Nations, mumbled about the killing in the Sudan, passed ineffective resolutions, made incompetent statements about the situation, and in effect did nothing.

Now we have Darfur, an added democidal crisis. Again, the UN shows it incompetence and the power of its member dictators to prevent effective action. While perhaps over 370,000 people have been murdered outright or died as a result of the Muslim's dictator's war on those in Darfur alone (see Eric Reeve’s estimate) and possibly 35,000 people are dying or being murdered there every month, members of the "international community" again dither, shake their heads, pass mild and ineffective resolutions in the Security Council, and ask, "Is it genocide?"

It is as though a group of karate experts were walking down the street, and suddenly see across the street a man beating an old woman with a baseball bat. While the beating goes on they stop, stare across the street, and finally one asks, "Why is he doing that?"

Another asks, "Do you think it is a hate crime?"

"I don't know," says a third, shrugging his shoulders, "how do you define hate crime?"


Glancing across the street at the beating, another asks, "In any case, what should we do?"


"Well," says the first, "lets yell at him to stop, and if he doesn't in a few minutes, I think we might go over there and take his bat away."

Fourth item down from top.

Okay, 100,000 Dead——What About Sudan’s 370,000?
http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/

[BrianK]

Originally Posted by las47032

But because they live under a fundamentalist Muslim regime, even northern Sudanese far from the civil war enjoy few human rights. For example, the government harasses and monitors women for correct dress, forbidding even slacks. Women who dare to defy the law risk arrest, conviction by an Islamic court of immoral dressing, and flogging. Women also cannot hold any public office that would give them authority over Muslim men, nor can they marry a non-Muslim.

Both men and women have no freedom of speech or religion——all must accept the Muslim faith. Also, police can arrest any commoner and imprison them for up to six months without trial. And while detained suspects can expect as a matter of course that officials will torture them. To further this religious rule, the government appoints only Muslims to the judiciary. Worst of all, a Muslim dare not convert to another religion, for the punishment for doing so is death.

Las I chopped this out of your post in order to isolate what I've learned over the past few years.

Snowden has pointed this out as the way of life that I couldn't understand. The more Snowden explained in language I could understand the more I understood the why of the war we are fighting.

The entire article is a good one and the question asked even better. Over double the amount of death yet the horror of the tsunami takes on a more urgent or mind numbing precedence.

If America is weakened economically as the terrorists state is their aim/goal, and do nothing. IMO we are looking at countries with expanding muslim populations that are the tsunami that is building.

[Joker]

I thought this was a no brainer. In the case of the tsunami relief efforts, you're talking about countries whose governments want to be helped, apart from India's, who believe thay can handle the situation (and, as far as we know, they don't regard this as an opportunity to thin down the undesirables).

Sudan can't be helped with a charity appeal. It will take, as I'm sure everyone appreciates, troops to stop the killing, some of whom will die. Would people be as kean to offer that kind of assistance? Put it another way, as an illustration, if most of the people affected by the tsunami were cannibals, would we still think they deserved our assistance, considering the risk to the aid givers?

There was a time when the deaths in Sudan could have been averted. That time has long passed and now, apparently, is the time for making spurious comparisons.