Protests, China and Darfur

I wonder if the pressure on China, with the Olympics in mind, will have any effect--or just put their backs up, given the Chinese reaction to pro-Tibet protests:

Eight months after the United Nations Security Council authorized sending a peacekeeping force to Darfur, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon is warning that security and humanitarian conditions in the violence-torn western province of Sudan are going from bad to worse.

[...]

Worldwide protest campaigns aim to pressure the international community to take action on Darfur, But they have yielded mixed results, at best, in two key objectives: building the UN peacekeeping force and enlisting China to strong-arm Sudan, with which it has close commercial ties, to cooperate more fully on Darfur...

The peacekeeping mission approved last summer is to be a hybrid force of as many as 26,000 UN and African Union military personnel and civilian police. So far, 9,000 troops have been deployed to Darfur [most were already there with the AU force - MC]. The Sudanese government of President Omar al-Bashir has resisted plans for some of the peacekeepers to come from outside Africa, but Ban says the government has given the green light to troops from Nepal and Thailand [that's a reversal].

The US government – spurred by President Bush's characterization of violence in Darfur that has killed more than 200,000 people as "genocide" – is calling on the UN to accelerate deployment of peacekeepers and to add at least 3,600 troops by June. The US is not offering troops or helicopters – which the Khartoum government would probably not accept anyway [same would apply to any such Canadian offer] – but pledges $500 million to help train, house, and supply the mission.

[...]

Grass-roots efforts for more action from the international community, especially in getting consistent cooperation from the Bashir government, explain the mounting pressure on China. Activists are playing on Beijing's sensitivity to its image as it prepares to host the Olympic Games this summer. Chinese officials counter that the pro-Darfur activists are exaggerating Beijing's influence over Khartoum.

Right.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at April 9, 2008 09:07 PM