Shaming China on Darfur

The Boston Globe

The sanctions on Sudan that President George W. Bush announced Tuesday are justified as expressions of solidarity with the 2.5 million people of Darfur and eastern Chad who are prey to government-backed janjaweed militiamen. But there is no reason to believe the new sanctions are enough to compel Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, to end the genocide.

These sanctions are limited in scope, but Bush also said he would propose fresh UN sanctions. Some of these measures have teeth but are unlikely to survive a Chinese veto in the UN Security Council. One such action is a ban on Sudanese military flights in Darfur; many of the janjaweed raids on African villages there are preceded by bombing from government planes.

China, with its large investments in Sudan's oil sector and its profits from arms sales to Khartoum, so far has run interference for Bashir.

There are signs that officials in Beijing are beginning to get the message about their responsibility - not from other governments but from a grassroots movement to shame China by characterizing the 2008 summer games in Beijing as the "genocide Olympics." In response, China has appointed a special envoy to Sudan, Lui Guijin, who returned from a recent trip to Darfur disputing reports from the United Nations and international aid groups. "I didn't see a desperate scenario of people dying of hunger there," he claimed.

This is transparent propaganda. But when Chinese officials nervously complain that talk of a genocide Olympics is an intolerable politicizing of sport, they are acknowledging that their weak spot - and Bashir's greatest vulnerability - has been located. Bush's sanctions may not achieve much, but civil society has a chance to shame China into forcing Bashir to stop the genocide in Darfur.

Shaming China on Darfur - International Herald Tribune