Across the continent of Africa, millions of ordinary Africans suffer silently, daily, from untold hardship and misery – the direct result of the terrible yoke, which the curse of a forced existence under the jackboots of some of the modern world’s cruelest and most despotic of rulers, represents.
To such Africans, forced to endure the tyranny of barbaric, corrupt and mostly-incompetent rulers (who are in effect accountable to no one, and maim and kill at will, regularly, with total impunity), news of the indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC), of one of the cruelest of Africa’s many present-day Adolf Hitlers, Sudanese President Omar Bashir, is nothing short of miraculous.
They are overjoyed that at long last the international community is serving notice to cruel and despotic rulers across the African continent – by making it absolutely clear to such leaders that they will no longer be allowed to get away with crimes against humanity.
For years, the people of Darfur have suffered greatly, as the international community has looked on helplessly, unable to halt their suffering and protect them from their cruel and despotic rulers.
Over that period, Sudan’s ruthless and crafty rulers have strung the world along, with one blatant lie after another, and topped their perfidy with a series of broken promises – so as to buy themselves sufficient time for the end-game of their grand strategy: the rolling pogrom taking place in Darfur.
Despite widespread international condemnation of their barbaric actions, Sudan’s leaders have ignored all pleas to cease fighting the horrendous war they are prosecuting in Western Sudan. Rather, they have obstinately pursued their ethnic-cleansing agenda in Darfur, regardless – often using their proxies, the cruel and brutish myrmidons known as the Janjaweed: remorseless killers who are recruited, trained and armed by Omar Bashir and the brutish regime he leads.
It is a simple and effective strategy that has enabled Sudanese leaders to carry out their evil agenda in Western Sudan without any interruption – whiles blithely cocking a snook at the world: by loudly proclaiming their innocence. Orchestrating this crime against humanity has been the freshly-indicted war criminal, Sudanese President Omar Bashir.
It is such an outrage and an affront to humankind that black African leaders, who themselves, ironically (on account of their dark hues), would have been at the receiving end of Omar Bashir’s unspeakable and abominable acts of cruelty, if they had had the misfortune of being born in Darfur, are now pleading with the U.N. Security Council that Bashir’s indictment by the ICC be suspended for a year.
Why does the African Union not rather elect to expend its energies persuading the indicted war criminal, Omar Bashir, to rescind his decision to boot out a number of humanitarian organisations operating in his country to save countless human lives – and on which nearly five million Sudanese citizens depend for their daily sustenance?
The question that concerned and freedom-loving Africans across the continent would like the African Union to answer is: Why should the international community, through the ICC, not come to the aid of Africans, who are being brutalized and murdered in droves, on a daily basis, from Darfur, through Eastern D.R .Congo, to Zimbabwe, and elsewhere on the continent?
Are those unfortunate millions not their compatriots too – who happen to be helpless victims of African despots whom the African Union as a continental body appears so powerless (or unwilling) to assist and protect?
The absurd notion that somehow the indictment of African leaders by the ICC, for their crimes against humanity, is part of a grand conspiracy by neocolonialists, who are apparently out to get progressive and anti-imperialist African leaders, in order to enable them re-colonize Africa, is an insult to all freedom-loving Africans.
The world must put political correctness aside and see that nonsense on bamboo stilts for what it truly is – a cynical attempt by the racist Omar Bashir, a black African of a lighter hue than most black Africans, who sadly deludes himself that he is an “Arab” (although most in the Arab world despise fellow-Muslims of his colour, if truth be told) to play on the sensibilities of black Africans: by exploiting memories of past humiliations that European colonial domination of their continent, represents, for most Africans.
Colonial domination is a thing of the past and no outsiders will ever be able to dominate our continent in the same way that Europeans did in the past. So let those in the continent who make such spurious arguments understand that their fellow Africans, unfortunate victims, who are being brutalized and murdered by African leaders of Omar Bashir’s ilk, are no less deserving of freedom than Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Germans, Japanese or Scandinavians.
Enslavement of fellow Africans by the Omar Bashirs of today is as unacceptable as the enslavement of Africans by the colonial powers of yesteryear was. Freedom-loving Africans across the continent, who care about the many victims of Omar Bashir’s cruelty in Darfur, consequently urge the U.N. Security Council to ignore pleas by the African Union, that Bashir’s indictment by the ICC be suspended for a year.
On the contrary, the U.N. Security Council must rather speak out unequivocally, and act boldly, by calling on all the member-nations of the United Nations to endeavour to have Omar Bashir arrested immediately – and sent to appear before the ICC in The Hague: to stand trial for the many crimes against humanity, which he and the members of the regime that he leads have been committing in Darfur.
Now that Omar Bashir has finally got his come-uppance and received his just desserts, let all the other African “mini-Adolf Hitlers” also busy at work brutalizing, pillaging and murdering with impunity in places such as: Eastern and Northern D.R. Congo; Zimbabwe; Central African Republic; Chad; Kenya, and elsewhere in Africa, take note of the times we now live in. A word to the wise…
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