US Activists Urging Obama to Escalate Pressure on Sudan

By Daniel Van Oudenaren

January 22, 2009 (WASHINGTON) – Activist groups in the United States are lobbying to get President Obama to increase pressure on the Sudanese government, which they say is responsible for committing genocide in Sudan’s westernmost region of Darfur.

Internally displaced women carry firewood to Kalma Camp, near Nyala in Darfur in this handout photograph released by MSF, April 3, 2008 (Reuters) Three leaders of the activist movement sent a joint letter to the president Thursday, pressing him to use force to ban offensive military flights in Darfur, facilitate deployment of the UNAMID peacekeeping operation, expand the arms embargo against Sudan, enhance “multilateral, non-military coercion” and continue supporting the International Criminal Court investigation.

The letter was sponsored by ENOUGH, Genocide Intervention Network and Save Darfur. In an attempted demonstration of grassroots strength, ENOUGH delivered a petition Wednesday to Obama containing 39,900 signatures asking for immediate action to halt widespread sexual violence against women and girls in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. ENOUGH focuses on conflict zones in Sudan, eastern DR Congo, Chad, northern Uganda, Somalia and Zimbabwe.

In their letter on Sudan, one of a series, the activists urged Obama to be alert to what the Sudanese regime could do in response to the anticipated International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of Sudanese President Omer Al-Bashir, which some have said could bring added chaos or reprisals in the Sudan. “President Obama’s response must be firm in addressing this immediate threat, but should not lose sight of the larger strategic goals that ought to be at the center of a new administration’s policy: an unyielding focus on brokering a peace deal for Darfur and the implementation of the existing Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA, the 2005 agreement to end the 22-year war between northern and southern Sudan,” said authors John Prendergast, John Norris, and Jerry Fowler, who are leaders in the activist groups.

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