Regime Watch: Beijing

From the Associated Press (June 11)

The prosecutor of the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal will seek an arrest warrant Monday charging Sudan’s president with crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur, a move U.N. diplomats warned could bring a backlash from Sudan’s government.

U.N. officials and diplomats said the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court would seek an indictment charging Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with orchestrating violence in Darfur that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead.

Woops, bad timing for al-Bashir and the rest of the thuggish regime in Khartoum. For years, Beijing has been the chief financial and political enabler of the mass-murder in Darfur, but with China’s role in the genocide increasingly being tied to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and with the games only weeks away, Beijing may have to throw its partner in genocide under the bus, at least publicly. The AP piece continues:

China’s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose nation is an ally of Sudan, expressed concern that bringing charges against al-Bashir could jeopardize peace talks and put peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers in Darfur at greater risk.

“It’s one of the implications we have to consider,” he said.

Wow, talk about a luke-warm reaction.  Of course, the Chinese ambassador failed to mention that the need for peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers is due to Khartoum’s mass-slaughter in Darfur in the first place…a mass-slaughter that Beijing has enabled over the years.  Nor does the ambassador actually defend al-Bashir.  Kind of sounds like the regime in Khartoum  will have to do without overt support from its fellow thugs in Beijing…at least until after the Olympics.

For background and information about China’s outrageous economic and political complicity in the genocide in Darfur, check out Regime Watch’s Darfur archive here.