Report: Up to 70,000 Sudanese dead

[Namelessv1]

Sunday, October 17, 2004 Posted: 1:53 AM EDT (0553 GMT)

GENEVA, Switzerland (CNN) -- The World Health Organization says that up to 70,000 refugees have died in Sudan's Darfur region since March 1, 2004 due to various causes, including diseases and malnutrition.

WHO spokesman David Nabarro said Saturday the figure does not take into account deaths from direct violence in the conflict-torn region.

Nabarro said the number of displaced people in Darfur increased to 1.8 million in September.

Sudan disputes the WHO figures, saying there could not have been more than 7,000 deaths in Darfur refugee camps.

Mohammed Yusuf Ibrahim, state minister at the ministry of humanitarian affairs, called the WHO findings "totally wrong", The Associated Press reported.

In a written report, Nabarro said the WHO's disease surveillance system showed an outbreak of dysentery-like illness and an increase in malaria cases in Darfur in late June and early July, and the situation appears to be much worse in the hard-to-reach areas.

Meanwhile, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Saturday that the United Nations is receiving fresh reports of attacks against internally displaced people in South Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict.

The WHO report comes as five African leaders prepare to meet in the Libyan capital of Tripoli Sunday in an attempt to end the conflict.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi invited the leaders of Sudan, Nigeria, Egypt and Chad to the meeting.

[Bilbo Baggins]

Yeah, lets go and sort out this mess.

[dlinkwit27]

isnt this kinda the Earth's way of saying we have too many people?

[MegaRock]

It's Earth's way of telling the people over there to stop spitting out 20 kids per person. There are alot of people I feel deserve help but why help a country that is more worried about having sex and babies than improving their country.

[Wolfgang]

Earth could just as easily tell you lot to switch off some lights, use public transport and stop consuming so much. I bet 20 of them consume much less natural resources than either of you. Sudan has a population density of about 15 per square km. In the case of the US it is over 30. Also, consider that most of the population of Sudan is uneducated and helpless. They need the children to help out with the family chores because they don't have modern commodities such as electricity and machinery to help them.
Perhaps you guys should waste less and not moan so much about people in the third world having so many children.

[Mattress]

You guys are whining about overpopulation, this is a genocide taking place, this is about racism. This is a concerted effort of the arab government to wipe out the black population of Darfur, they have instituted a policy of killing all the males and raping all of the females in each village they attack. Its an effort to dilute tribal lines through rape.

Systematic rape and murder founded in racism, and you say this is an overpopulation problem?

[MegaRock]

Originally posted by Wolfgang
Earth could just as easily tell you lot to switch off some lights, use public transport and stop consuming so much. I bet 20 of them consume much less natural resources than either of you. Sudan has a population density of about 15 per square km. In the case of the US it is over 30. Also, consider that most of the population of Sudan is uneducated and helpless. They need the children to help out with the family chores because they don't have modern commodities such as electricity and machinery to help them.
Perhaps you guys should waste less and not moan so much about people in the third world having so many children.

WTF?

They can't feed their children so they have more to take care of chores? What the hell kind of logic is that?

And uneducated and helpless I don't get. Who's fault is that? How long have there been people in that region of the continent? Since as long as anyone remembers. So why are some countries developed some others didn't? Maybe you could explain.

Not that I don't feel bad about this kind of thing happening and wished it didn't but how can you solve a problem that created itself?

[Wolfgang]

As Mattress has pointed out, the reason they're starving to death is that there's a civil war going on. These people are refugees. Thay have nowhere else to go. Where these people lived before they were forced into Darfur, the children helped with the family business, whether it be farming or taking care of the shop or whatever. They don't have machinery like combine harvesters so everything is done with human muscle.

And uneducated and helpless I don't get. Who's fault is that? How long have there been people in that region of the continent? Since as long as anyone remembers. So why are some countries developed some others didn't? Maybe you could explain.

I can't explain that. Sometimes I think about why the hell Peru is not as rich as somewhere like France. Peru has less people and more natural resources. But I think it goes back to the time of colonisation. It's also to do with the mentality, though, I think. Peruvians are inherently lazy, laid-back and selfish.

[MegaRock]

Ok, that way it makes better sense and you definately have to keep food production going.

Peru, Sudan and alot of other countries I think suffer because of one thing - internal wars. The US has had it's own civil war but it didn't last that long (as far as Civil type wars go) and it didn't take long for people to figure out it was solving nothing. War in general solves nothing but works great to keep a country down and eliminates the time and peace needed to get an economy going, get industries running and get people employed. It's not a mentality the world shares such as the Middle East which seems to have some type of war going on at all times, some African countries and several in South American who are either constantly at war with themselves or their neighboring countries.

I don't think anyone is inherently lazy but if everytime you almost get somewhere and it's destroyed time and time again by war people eventually just give up.

[dlinkwit27]

Originally posted by MegaRock
It's Earth's way of telling the people over there to stop spitting out 20 kids per person. There are alot of people I feel deserve help but why help a country that is more worried about having sex and babies than improving their country.

actually, if they are an agricultural society, the more children you have, the more land you can farm, and the more money you can make, so it's really a vicious circle.

[Wolfgang]

It doesn't matter how many people there are, what matters is how many natural resources they consume. There are over a billion people in India, but as a whole they cause less damage to the planet than the US, which has less than a third that number (about 293m).

There are loads of countries that are poor but don't have internal wars. There was no such thing in Peru until the 1980s, but in that time it was still pretty backward compared to Europe or North America. We have, however, had plenty of dictatorships and apallingly incompetent leaders. Why that is, I don't know.
However, there is a parallel between how a country is doing now and what happened when it was colonised.
In the USA, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Chile, the native peoples were/have pretty much been wiped out. Argentina and Chile are the richest countries in South America and poverty there is nowehere near what poverty is like in Bolivia or Peru).
Other countries, such as Tanzania, Peru, India and Brazil, are poor, because the native peoples are the majority of the population. In Peru most people are descended from the people who populated the Inca empire. However, white people descended from Spanish colonisers, generally control industry and politics and are the most educated. It may not be like that in India or Zimbabwe, but is sure as hell is like that in Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador...
It's just a relationship. I don't know if it's crap or not.

At the moment we don't have any kind of internal war, but the country's growth is stunted by corruption, inefficiency and incompetence. How do you finance education, roads, healthcare, new industries, etc. if you don't have the money? And you won't get it either because the countries with the money won't be willing to give it away. Peru is the country the raw materials come from, and then they're turned in to Products elsewhere. Then they're sold over the world for a large profit.

Read Escape from Slavery by Francis Bok, and you'll understand what is going on. It's the autobiography of one of those enslaved by the Arabics living in northern Sudan. I read it last year and heard him speak at my school and was shocked by his story. It is just unimaginable how this stuff continues today.

Also, check out his website, http://www.iabolish.com.

[Mattress]

It's going to be a repeat of Rwanda, and probably, like Rwanda, the international community isn't going to do anything about it.

[MegaRock]

"It doesn't matter how many people there are, what matters is how many natural resources they consume. There are over a billion people in India, but as a whole they cause less damage to the planet than the US, which has less than a third that number (about 293m)."

I'll totally agree with this one although it is less the fault of the people themselves and more the industries which are allowed to pollute.

In my town old cars do not need emissions testing. Neither do black belching buses and semi trailers but are required for new cars - the ones least likely to pollute.

Many industries also needlessly package things, chemical plants polluting and the such which contribuet heavily to overall damage. There should also be much more done in the way of recycling because much of what we consume today is recyclable and rarely is.

"It's going to be a repeat of Rwanda, and probably, like Rwanda, the international community isn't going to do anything about it."

I agree again. Problem is other than aid there is little one can do outside of invading the country, toppling the government and replacing it with one less corrupt - which in time will turn corrupt as well. All you can hope is the people can rise up and finally do what they have to do in order to remove the current government.

[grumpyBB]

Wow, sure is a good thing we have the U.N. around to take care of things. It's time we scrap that worthless orginization and start over. Their incompetence and widespread fraud is pathetic.

[Wolfgang]

Yeah, the US should take over.

[CaboWaboAddict]

Originally posted by Mattress
It's going to be a repeat of Rwanda, and probably, like Rwanda, the international community isn't going to do anything about it.

So the UN resolves to send troops in to restore order,
we send the majority cuz we're the big kid on the block,
and then Bush gets slammed for starting another war...

Same old story, same old song and dance...

[Wolfgang]

Come on, man. That did NOT happen in Iraq.

[CaboWaboAddict]

No it didn't happen that way with Iraq. I didn't say it did.

But with all the anti-American feelings out there, tell me it wouldn't happen like I said. Tell me Michael Moore wouldn't have some slander to say. Tell me all the liberals wouldn't bitch.

[zootm]

I think that Iraq has shown us that it wouldn't happen like you said.

edit:
Let me elaborate. The UN's refusal to back war in Iraq has added credence to everything that they agree with the US to do in the future. People are less likely to judge them as being "bullied" into war by the US, since it's been proven that when they have objections, they can and will object.

So Bush becomes less of the target, thanks to the UN thinking for themselves last time.

[Mattress]

Originally posted by CaboWaboAddict
So the UN resolves to send troops in to restore order,
we send the majority cuz we're the big kid on the block,
and then Bush gets slammed for starting another war...

Same old story, same old song and dance...

That would never happen, the UN resolve to actually do something? HA!

They've voted at least twice now to 'condemn the situation' and threaten sanctions if Khartoum doesn't move to restore order. nothing has happened. They are pretty useless if you ask me.