U.s., UN Condemned for Inaction on Genocide Against Black Africans in South Sudan

The president of the National Women’s League of the United Synagogue of America has condemned United Nations and United States inaction on “the genocidal campaign of destruction that the Arab military dictatorship in Khartoum is waging against black Africans in the South Sudan.” Mrs. Henry N. Rapaport of Scarsdale expressed regret, in a statement, that the UN Commission on Human Rights “took no action” at its recent meeting in Geneva on a petition favoring an investigation of the Sudanese situation. “America, ” she added, “must share heavily in the responsibility for this neglect, because once again the United States failed to speak out on an issue of massive racial oppression.” Mrs. Rapaport added that it was “unfortunate that the United States did not at least see fit to demand that the Human Rights Commission order an investigation by an official fact-finding body.” She said “all available information” supported the charge of the South Sudanese that “the crime of genocide has been committed against 4 million people of South Sudan because they are black, because they are Africans and because they do not belong to the dominant religion of the North.”

Mrs. Rita E. Hauser, the American representative on the UN Human Rights Commission, advised the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the situation in the Sudan was not officially discussed in Geneva because no government asked that it be. She did, however, “spend considerable time” discussing the matter with various delegates, she said. Arthur Still man, economic and social affairs advisor at the U.S. Mission to the UN, told the JTA that “it was absolutely impossible for us to cite each specific example” of oppression at the Geneva meeting, and that “this year it was felt the Jews in the Soviet Union was the issue we would highlight.” As described by Mrs. Rapaport, the South Sudanese are being oppressed by “a minority of Arabized Moslems who control the Moscow-oriented regime at Khartoum,” and are “struggling…in a desperate endeavor to save their lives, keep their remaining liberties and protect themselves against enforced Moslemization.” Mrs. Rapaport charged that “Large numbers of Egyptian troops and several hundred Russian ‘advisors’ are actively participating in this genocidal war against the Africans.”