Some of Europe’s most well-known thinkers protest the EU’s inaction in the face of four years of extreme violence in Darfur.
Some of Europe’s most prominent writers and intellectuals have written an open letter to the leaders of the European Union, to protest its inaction in the face of four years of violence in Darfur, Sudan. Published in the Independent, Tom Stoppard, Seamus Heaney, Harold Pinter, Dario Fo, Günter Grass, Jürgen Habermas, Umberto Eco, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Franca Rame and Václav Havel have all signed a letter demanding that the EU take immediate action and impose the “most stringent sanctions” on the leaders of Sudan, including banning travel, freezing assets and cutting off trade.
The writers compare the current situation in Darfur to the horrors of the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, and to Srebrenica, the UN-protected Bosnian “safe area” where 8000 men were massacred in 1995 by Serb paramilitaries. Since 2003, between 200 000 to 300 000 people have been killed in Darfur, when rebel groups, Janjaweed or “devils on horseback,” a militia group recruited by the Khartoum government from Bedouin Arabs, started targeting ethnic African farmers and herdsmen. Over 2.5 million Sudanese have been displaced during this fighting. Evidence of systematic looting, rape and village burning has led many to refer to the situation as genocide.
The signatories of the letter, a group that includes four Nobel prize winners, declare that the European Union, “born of atrocity to unite against further atrocity” is failing in its founding purpose by not acting to put an end to this war. In another letter, Tom Stoppard, Czechoslovakian-born British playwright asks “If not now, when? If not we, who?”
The letter was written in response to the 50th anniversary party the EU was preparing at the end of last month, at which time, ironically, the Berlin Declaration, containing an affirmation of the basic dignity of the individual was unveiled. The letter asked “what do we celebrate? The futile posturings of our political class?”
This article was published Saturday, April 14, 2007.
