World

Angelina Jolie speaks out for the victims of Darfur

by Amy Judd | June 5, 2009 at 12:29 pm

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Angelina Jolie, a refugee advocate for the United Nations has asked, through her Time Magazine article, that the members of the United Nations Security Council bring Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the president of Sudan to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Today the council was presented with the results of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Darfur investigation and they have to determine if Bashir will be held accountable.

Jolie writes:

The evidence the prosecutor has presented is clear and compelling. Millions of people have been displaced; hundreds of thousands have been killed; and at the center of it all stands Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been indicted on seven counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity.

The ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked the Sudanese government to arrest Bashir.

"The government of Sudan has the responsibility to arrest him (Beshir)," Moreno-Ocampo told the UN Security Council, citing a legal obligation stemming from the UN Charter and UN resolutions.

An arrest warrant was issued for Bashir last March, but he defied all orders and instead kicked out the 16 aid organizations working in Darfur and continued to travel freely and do as he pleased.

Moreno-Ocampo also asked the ICC to arrest Ahmad Harun and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushaby, both of whom has also committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He said the recent designation of Haroun as governor of the South Kordofan province "contravenes the resolutions of this council."

"We are at a crossroads," the prosecutor later told reporters. "There's a chance to stop the violence (in Darfur). Crimes have to be stopped."

The Sudanese minister to the UN Abdalmahmood Abdallhaleem Mohamad again stated that he would not cooperate with the ICC and called Moreno-Ocampo a 'mercenary of destruction and death' and said he was the threat to real peace and security in Darfur.

"The prosecutor has outlived his usefulness and has become a liability for his own promoters," the Sudanese envoy, with Moreno-Ocampo at his side, told reporters.

As Angleina Jolie writes however, over 250,000 people in Darfur have been made to flee from their homes and have had to live in refugee camps in Chad for over six years. These camps have over 2 million people living in them, and all these people want is to go home, but they can't.

She finishes with:

Today the Security Council member states will be faced with a simple decision: to embrace impunity or to end it.

As they are considering Bashir's fate they are also considering their own.