Human Rights and Social Justice
UN should send troops to Darfur, MP urges
Reprinted from the Winnipeg Free Press
Sun Feb 25 2007
By Nick Martin
THE United Nations should send troops to Darfur to prevent the type of genocide the world ignored in Rwanda, former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler declared Saturday.
"Unless there is political will to act, then atrocities will continue," Cotler told the University of Winnipeg's conference on social justice and human rights.
"What it will mean is putting on the ground as soon as possible a multinational protection force," even if the Sudanese government does not agree to foreign troops protecting refugees, Cotler said.
That military action would include establishing a no-fly zone to prevent aircraft from attacking refugees, Cotler said.
The Montreal Liberal MP lauded what he called a grassroots movement among university students to protest genocide around the world and force governments to act.
Silence "is one of the most enduring lessons of genocide of the 20th century," Cotler said. "No one can say we didn't know (about Rwanda) -- we knew, and we did not act." At the last federal election, "not one of the political (party) leaders mentioned the name of Darfur in any televised debate," including then Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, Cotler said.
And the media was guilty of being part of a conspiracy of silence that prevented the plight of refugees in the Sudanese desert from being a Canadian election issue, Cotler charged.
The Winnipeg Free Press is a major sponsor of the three-day conference, which concludes today at U of W.
Cotler said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be placed on an international "watch list" and be told he is not welcome anywhere, including at the UN.
Under Ahmadinejad, Cotler said, Iran is promoting a toxic convergence of advocating genocide and anti-Semitism, while trying to develop nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, Cotler said, Canada has not done enough for its own indigenous people, for women, or for the disabled.
nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca