There have been, to the best of my knowledge, only two demonstrations in the UK about the ongoing mass murders taking place in Darfur. The first attracted about 150 people, the second about 100. The large majority on each occasion were Sudanese refugees, supplemented by some Jewish students and a handful of interested individuals. The contrast with the mobilisations that took place against the Iraq war or the numbers that turned out recently to protest against Israel’s actions in Lebanon could hardly be more striking.

Why such an immense, crushing disparity? It can hardly be because of the rights and wrongs of the different cases. There are many after all who would still say that, for all its faults, the invasion of Iraq did nevertheless remove a clearly genocidal regime, while the sight of people marching through London to proclaim ‘we are all Hizbollah now’, whatever their legitimate distress about the destruction of innocent civilian life in Lebanon, has deeply alarmed many of us (if not many enough) on the left. Nor can this disparity be explained by the identity of the victims – they are nearly all Muslims (as are their killers), no different from those who we are repeatedly told are victims of the west’s so-called ‘war on Islam’.

What is going in Darfur is altogether more clear-cut. We are faced here with a conscious, deliberate and sustained effort by a state to commit mass murder against its own citizens. Over 300,000 have already been killed (compare this with the estimated 1,000 killed recently in Lebanon); a systematic policy of rape and sexual assault is being carried daily; 500 are dying every day; some two million have been displaced, forced to flee from the government-backed Janjaweed militia – African Arabs bent on cleansing the region entirely of blacks. As I write, there are extremely alarming indications that the Khartoum regime is planning a further and dramatic escalation of the killing.

The response of the international community has been dire. It took endless negotiations before a hopelessly inadequate African Union force was assembled and allowed in by the regime, which has demanded it leave. It is only in recent days that the UN has finally agreed a proposal to send in a more adequate force. But China (11 per cent of whose oil is supplied by Sudan) is almost certain to veto the use of such troops if the regime objects, which it is almost certain to do, as it becomes more and more arrogantly contemptuous of public concern, feeble though it is. Russia and France have both signalled their reluctance to back any serious threat of force. Only the US and Britain (which pushed the resolution) have shown any sign of wanting something serious to be done – not enough for many of us but at least a start.

The response of the left here has, frankly, been shameful and shaming, particularly in contrast with the US, where there has been considerable mobilisation, transcending divisions over the Iraq war. Here, there has been until now almost nothing – indifference, silence, even at worst apologetics. Largely this is because Darfur does not ‘fit’ the hegemonic view of a world dominated by US imperialism which has to be ‘resisted’ at all costs. But this may be no temporary blindness. The left does not have a great track record when it comes to mobilising against genocide, as our passivity over repeated genocides from Cambodia to Rwanda should continually haunt us.

It is still not too late, however. An international day of action has been called for 17 September. Surely it is time for the left above all to stand up and protest against what the UN itself has called by far the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our time.

http://eustonmanifesto.org/joomla/