As China prepares to host the 2008 Olympics, the nation faces increasing criticism over human rights issues. One of its chief critics is former MP David Kilgour , an outspoken Christian. Following are excerpts from an address he gave August 15, at The Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal.

IN SUDAN, where many independent observers have concluded that the Omar al-Bashir regime has been committing crimes against humanity and genocide in its province of Darfur since mid-2003, the Beijing [regime] remains his major diplomatic backer.

There is little doubt the government of China’s recent sudden interest in stopping the killing, burning and raping, which continues against communities deemed ‘African’ in Darfur, is related to offsetting – for public relations purposes – the ‘genocide Olympics’ charge which Darfur supporters like Mia Farrow utilize to raise public awareness.

Investment

Over the past decade, the government of China has provided the Bashir government with more than $US 10 billion in commercial and capital investment, mostly for oil investments, with crude oil comprising virtually all of Sudan’s exports – and much of it going to China. Some seven percent of China’s oil imports now come from Sudan.

According to one source within Sudan, up to 70 percent of the Sudanese government’s revenues from oil are spent on arms – a good deal of them coming from China. Nick Kristof of the New York Times has reported that the government of China has built four small arms factories in Sudan.

In February of this year, President Hu of China, visiting Khartoum, offered to forgive $80 million of his host government’s debt  – and promised another $13 million for infrastructure, including a new presidential palace.

The most valuable service Hu has provided to Bashir’s government is using China’s permanent veto at the UN Security Council to protect the Sudanese regime from any robust peacemaking initiatives – while the slaughter continues. Only following Mia Farrow’s op-ed piece in March, which accused the government of China of assisting in genocide, did China’s UN representative join in the Security Council initiative to send 26,000 civilian police and soldiers to Darfur. 

There are several problems already evident with this latest in a long series of ineffective Security Council initiatives on Darfur.

Good faith

Will a good faith peace process begin for Darfur and continue in South Sudan – where there are indications that the peace agreement is breaking down, in part because the Bashir government refuses to withdraw its army from the South as required by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)? 

Will Chinese, Russian and other arms exports to Khartoum continue? 

Will Beijing pressure Bashir to honour his previous ceasefire agreements and get him to disarm the janjaweed  militias, which have caused so much human suffering?

Will the Sudanese government permit humanitarian agencies much-needed unfettered access to all regions of Darfur?

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The specifics of UN SC resolution 1769, passed at the end of July, demonstrate how well Beijing continues to protect Khartoum.

The hybrid UN/African Union (AU) force will have no authority to seize weapons from belligerents, probably making it impossible to control the janjaweed and other militias.

There is no provision for sanctioning the government in Khartoum, in the highly-probable event that it refuses to comply. The watered down command-and-control provisions will inevitably create problems between the African Union commander on the ground in Darfur, and the UN Department of Peacekeeping in New York.

Nothing is specified about containing the violence that has spread into Chad, where China is looking for oil, and the Central African Republic. Not a word is said about halting aerial assaults by Khartoum’s helicopter gunships and Antonov bombers.

Tragically, the deployment of the peacekeepers is still to be very slow, with December 31 being the deadline for the transfer of authority from the AU to the AU/UN hybrid.

The inability of the AU to solicit enough trained troops and civilian police for the hybrid force remains unaddressed. The AU Commission chair, Alpha Konare, has indicated that he wants only Africans to be deployed – and that they must be under African command.

Shaming

Shaming the government of China over its role in Sudan offers the best hope to save civilian lives in Darfur. How to proceed?

The key task is to transfer knowledge to those presently unaware of China’s role in Sudan generally and Darfur specifically.  

What happens if students and others demonstrate in front of the Chinese embassy in Ottawa or the consulate in Montreal, declaring with banners, placards, and T-shirts that China must be held accountable for its complicity in the Darfur genocide? 

What happens if such demonstrations are continuous, and take place outside China’s embassies in other countries? What happens if, everywhere Chinese diplomats, politicians and business people travel, they are confronted by people highlighting China’s destructive role in Darfur?

The campaign must be creative and focused. It must take advantage of every means offered through electronic communications.  

The government of China must be forced to see a stark choice: either it uses its leverage effectively with Khartoum to improve and speed up the UN/AU deployment, or it will be the target of the most powerful international shaming campaign in history.  

The lack of effective advocacy initiatives has not been lost on Khartoum’s génocidaires . Despite the enormous successes of the American-led divestment campaign, pressure must be ratcheted up even higher. Other European companies should follow the lead of Germany’s Siemens and Switzerland’s ABB Ltd; both have suspended operations in Sudan. Such ongoing loss of European commercial and capital investment certainly has the full attention of the Bashir regime.  

The task is daunting – but fully achievable, given the moral passion and creative energies of the Darfur advocacy communities.

All success to the campaigns!

September 2007