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Tens of thousands rally for intervention in Sudan

People rallied in cities across the world on Sunday to protest the violence in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan and urge world leaders to intervene to resolve the conflict.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in New York City, religious leaders gathered outside Downing Street in London to pray for a resolution, and a candlelight vigil was held in Cambodia to remember Darfur victims.

In New York City's Central Park, one speaker likened the destruction there to the Holocaust.

"This genocide was preventable, and we did not act," former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler told the crowd on Sunday. "Just as we are not acting today in Darfur. Let us resolve that we will never again be indifferent to evil. We will speak and act."

The protests came on the eve of yesterday's UN Security Council meeting on Sudan, which was scheduled to take place just before this year's UN General Assembly speeches.

At least 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than 2 million have fled their homes since 2003, when ethnic African tribes revolted against the Arab-led government. The government is accused of unleashing brutal Arab militiamen known as janjaweed in the remote western province.

A May peace agreement signed by the government and one of the major rebel groups was expected to help end the conflict. Instead, it has sparked months of fighting between rival rebel factions, adding to the toll.

Sudan's government has rejected a UN plan to send peacekeeping troops to Darfur to replace the largely ineffective African Union peacekeeping force, whose mandate expires at the end of this month.

"People have to stand with the oppressed against their oppressors and urge their leaders to extend any political leverage or capital that they have over the government of Sudan," said Omer Ismail of the Washington-based Darfur Peace and Development humanitarian aid organization.

US Representative Chris Smith said the people of Darfur have "had atrocities imposed upon them that no human being [should] have to face."

Speaking in New York's Central Park in front of a crowd police estimated at 20,000, Smith said that China, which has major oil interests in Sudan, should "put its economic interests in Sudan aside and say enough is enough."

Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders in London evoked the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where more than 500,000 people were slaughtered. The leaders were met by Baroness Amos, leader of the House of Lords, who warned that the world must not once again turn a blind eye to an unfolding crisis in Africa.

"We do not want to see a repeat of what happened in Rwanda when the world community turned its face away," she said.
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