13th Feb 2008
Yesterday at a Global Day of Action, Aegis Students joined protesters around the world and a group of Nobel Peace laureates to call on Chinese President Hu Jintao, the host of the Beijing Games, to uphold Olympic ideals by pressing Sudan to stop atrocities in Darfur.
In London at a ceremony supported by Aegis Students and STAND, 2 Darfuri families led a torchlit procession and 3 “Olympians” were presented with lead medals symbolising the weight of China’s responsibility to act on the Darfur crisis.
Speakers urged China to fulfil the potential it has to play a positive role in the resolution of the Darfur crisis. Dr Martin Stern who survived the Holocaust, stated: “of all people, China should know what it means to have civil war and massacre…China cannot turn back the tide of pressure to behave responsibly over Darfur.”
The President of the Darfur Union, Abdul Adam, emphasised the support given to the Government of Sudan by the People’s Republic of China and finished with the chant “shame on you, China!”
Sakiba Gurda, a survivor of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, urged China to use its economic weight in Khartoum to help put a stop to the crisis.
Andrew Han, a US national with a Chinese heritage who is STAND Ambassador to Hong Kong, said: “China must remember the massacres in Nanjing and live up to its Olympic slogan of’ ‘One World, One Dream’, a dream of a world without genocide.”
The news of Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal as an artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympic Games comes as a fillip to Darfur activists.
“Spielberg’s withdrawal from the Olympics increases the pressure on China to use its influence to end the Darfur crisis,” says Dr James Smith, Chief Executive of the Aegis Trust.
“No one’s calling for a boycott of the Games; it would be great to see them go ahead as a real celebration of China’s remarkable development in recent years. But politics will continue to intrude on other spheres unless China grasps the nettle and leans on Khartoum to stop killing and displacing the non-Arab groups of Darfur.
“We are calling on China to stop selling arms to Sudan; to stop watering down UN resolutions and blocking UNSC presidential statements on Darfur; to put oil revenues into an oil trust fund – as proposed by the Aegis Trust and Human Rights Watch – to be used for humanitarian and development purposes; and to halt its building of the presidential palace in Khartoum.
“Seventy years ago, 300,000 Chinese were murdered at Nanking; China knows what it means to be the victim of mass atrocities. We urge China, in memory of its own suffering, to act decisively to help end Darfur’s destruction.”
