The UN File: Let Us Now Thank Sudan
Sudan’s regime is not, as a rule, a venture that inspires thank you notes. Sudan is a sinkhole of repression, violence, and even slavery. Its president, Omar al-Bashir, is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide. Its security forces are notorious for arbitrary arrests, rape, and torture, which, as the U.S. State Department notes, they usually commit with impunity. And, courtesy of Amnesty International, you can read here about the case of 23-year-old Layla Ibrahim Issa Jumul, who just last month, convicted in Sudan of adultery, was sentenced to be stoned to death.
Now, as UN Watch notes, “It’s Official: Genocidal Sudan Running Uncontested for U.N. Human Rights Council Seat.” Word of this, first reported by UN Watch, had been circulating for weeks. The UN General Assembly, which oversees the Human Rights Council, and votes on who fills these seats, had coyly refrained until this past week from posting Sudan’s candidacy on the web site for the Human Rights Council elections. But here it is, the official site, where Sudan now shows up as one of five African nations running for five seats allotted in this election to Africa. In other words, Sudan’s run is uncontested. Unless competition materializes before the election takes place this November, it’s highly likely that Sudan will win a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
That’s an outrage, rightly condemned as such. It’s an abomination that the government of Sudan might be seated on any council presumed to be associated with human rights.
It’s also how the UN system works. This is the default mode. Never mind such distractions as genuine human rights. At the UN, tyrannies and democracies all enjoy equal rights — to votes in the General Assembly, and seats and posts within the UN empire of commissions, councils, programs, funds, and organizations. The old UN Commission on Human Rights was “reformed” in 2006 precisely because it had utterly discredited itself — devoting most of its energies to the anti-Semitic exercise of condemning democratic Israel, while serving as a nest for some of the world’s worst regimes — including Sudan. Here we go again.
Maybe they could retroactively appoint Nazi Germany to the UNHRC. After all Hitler was a great champion of rights for the Palestinians.
“Sudan is a sinkhole of repression, violence, and even slavery.”
I always wondered why, according to Obama, Libya was worth getting involved in but the Sudan was not. Even though Obama fought an entire war in Libya without Congressional approval, the Sudan never even seems to come up in any of his conversations or speeches. And you never, ever, hear about the Christians being persecuted in places like the Sudan. Could it be because Libya has lots of oil and the Europeans, especially the French and the Italians, need that oil? Seems to me that a life in Libya seems way more important than a life in the Sudan. And if the only reason that is so is because of oil, then liberals like Obama should be ashamed of themselves.
Obama has no interest in deposing islamist governments where the sharia is the rule of law. Mubarak, Gaddafi, and Assad are/were secular dictators. Obama faces Mecca when he prays.
That is the difference. Obama seems to prefer dictators to democracies, Islamic dictators to all others particularly if they impose sharia law. Oil as a mitivation for intervention is overrated. Sudan is also an oil producer. Most of which goes to China btw.
Spot on!
The UN has been taken over by the Islamist supremacy promoters of the World.
Send the UN back to Switzerland. The old League of Nations building is still standing. Reclaim a piece of prime real estate in Manhattan. Americans have thrown more than enough money into that bottomless pit.
The problem with this is that nowadays, no one sees the irony when something like this happens. I blame the guy who got the stripper elected to the Italian legislature, years ago. He was trying to illustrate the fact that *anyone* can get elected, because of their political system, and using her as the example, but it backfired on him, in that the whole thing turned into a farce, and everyone was titillated rather than indignant. Back when Nero got his horse elected to the Senate everyone got the joke: the Senate was so meaningless, and the elections so unnoticed, that something like this could happen without damaging the country seriously.
Nowadays, of course, we’re used to the spectacle of this happening, the damage is continuous, and we’re all more or less oblivious.
David W. Nicholas:
“Back when Nero got his horse elected to the Senate…”
Uh–wasn’t that Caligula?
This involves a lot more than just Obama.
the larger UN system that not only tolerates such monstrous farce, but protects and sustains it
…Worse, it actively approves of it; the UN is now best defined by what Mark Steyn calls the ‘international thug bureaucrat class’.
For the average U.S. taxpayer…who has time to sift through, absorb, and recall the details?
…This is too kind, since the average taxpayer struggles to find Canada and Mexico on the map and is toe-curlingly ignorant about things foreign. As are many who should know better — both Obama and Romney look and sound like yokels when they go abroad, and the Obama State Dep’t is mainly about self-esteem and fat living, not performance.
How about a new institution just for democracies, membership by invitation only?
And if anyone in Washington should yet come up with a way to block Sudan’s bid for a seat, it would be unseemly to object.
…Short of evicting every Sudanese functionary and sowing the ground with salt, won’t happen. Applause for Claudia Rosett, who soldiers on.