As Berlin celebrates the European Union’s 50th birthday, there is a ghost at the festivities. Darfur was never meant to be centre stage or even to have a minor role. But Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, will on Sunday discuss over a private lunch with other leaders what Europe must do to help end the massacres that have claimed 200 000 lives.
Much of the impetus for action comes from two letters. One is a plea by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to fellow leaders to back United Nations sanctions against the Sudanese government — a call that was immediately condemned by the regime in Khartoum, and the second, more notable letter was published on Saturday in newspapers in all 27 member states. The signatories to this demand for EU action are the leading cultural figures of Europe. Umberto Eco, Dario Fo, Günter Grass, Jurgen Habermas, Vaclav Havel, Seamus Heaney, Bernard Henri-Levy, Harold Pinter, Franca Rame and Tom Stoppard have united to list the sanctions that, in their view, Europe must impose forthwith.
The Observer can reveal the story behind the letter, drafted as Sudan refuses to hand over two officials named as war crimes suspects by the International Criminal Court and as the UN humanitarian chief John Holmes was barred from visiting one of Darfur’s overflowing refugee camps by the Sudanese military guard on Saturday.
It is a resurgence of the double act of Tony Blair and Bob Geldof, last witnessed at Live 8 and the Gleneagles Summit of 2005. On 9 March, as he flew back from a ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Blair opened a long letter from Geldof. It began ”Hi, Tony” and it demanded something ”substantial and real” to stop the genocide.
Geldof pointed out that this weekend’s anniversary was the perfect moment to highlight the obligations of Europe, a region born out of atrocity and slaughter and Africa’s near neighbour.
He wanted an initiative to put Darfur on the same continuum as ”Auschwitz and Srebrenica”. As matters stood, he complained, the focus would be on ”some shite pop concert”. Or, as Geldof told the Observer on Saturday: ”The Euro 50 moment was too good an opportunity not to present an alternative view of our history. It’s about recomposing the picture.
”NGOs [non-governmental organisations] have always done the hungry African kid, and people would put a few quid in, which is vital. But now people are being whipped and raped at will. We should not let that happen. It could be stopped in a three-week period, but it isn’t. What was needed was not to hijack the Europe weekend, but to offer an achievable goal. Then you have to go and achieve it.”
Geldof rang the names on his list. Some, such as Stoppard and Pinter, he knew. Havel and he had once had dinner, and Heaney was ”a fellow Paddy.” French writer, Bernard Henri-Levy, is on record as loathing Geldof’s tactics. ”We had a fight 20 years ago [in the aftermath of Live Aid] when he called me ‘the greatest killer since Stalin’.” All agreed to support economic sanctions against Sudan’s President, Omar al-Bashir.
Helped by the influential NGO Crisis Action and others, Geldof planned to fly his icons to Chad, on three private jets he had borrowed. ”But they’re all old men, and some are ill or deaf. And we had only days to plan it.” Instead, just after 6am on a flight to Belfast, he ”bashed out” the first draft of a letter for their signature.
The laureates of literature proved less amenable to his efforts than his Band Aid song co-writer, Midge Ure, had once been. ”Seamus said: ‘I can’t sign this, Bob. It’s too extreme.’ Finally Heaney and Stoppard produced a version that satisfied all, including Günter Grass, co-opted into the SS as a young man and who, like Heaney, has never before become embroiled in politics.
As the letter took shape, Geldof received many textual queries. ”Eco had something to say about ‘the subtext of the symbiosis’, and Pinter wanted to know what a ‘gist’ was — he had misread the word gift. Stoppard said one phrase was ‘otiose’.” Geldof conceded on all points, on the basis that ”I Don’t Like Mondays will not be heard in 2050, and they will all be read”.
Meanwhile Blair- – who, like Gordon Brown, speaks frequently to Geldof — was preparing his own missive. A copy of the demands he sent last week to Merkel and all other leaders has been obtained by the Observer. Al-Bashir, Blair warns, is ”going backwards on all substantive agreements made”. On Saturday Sudan said the West had exaggerated the crisis. After four years of violence in Darfur, there was now only scattered violence, Al-Samani Al-Wasiyla, Sudanese Foreign Minister of State, said in Nairobi. ”No one is denying the crisis, but if you try to solve it with arms do you really expect to save lives? We don’t want another Somalia in Darfur,” he added, referring to 16 years of almost constant anarchy there
But for Blair the time has come ”for the international community to take action”. He is pushing for a new United Nations Security Council resolution and hopes for agreement.
By contrast, the Geldof end of the pincer action focuses on Europe’s duty to curb Bashir and his henchmen. ”Forbid them our shores and our health service and luxury goods,” his supporters write. ”Freeze their assets in our banks, and move immediately to involve other concerned countries.”
Many would consider this a thin list against blatant atrocity, but Geldof says it is ”code to get the UN behind us” … ”It can have a massive impact .”
Today, as every day, many will die in Darfur, slaughtered by their fellow countrymen or strafed by the missiles of a president who has gauged the supine nature of international will and flouted any attempt to curb his murders.
It is easy to mock the efforts of those who work for change, or cavil over the worth of their demands. The question is whether an unprecedented coalition of politicians and Geldof’s icons, the successors of Goethe, Ibsen and Shakespeare, can evoke a spark of humanity and rage in Europe. If not, then Darfur, and much else, may stand condemned.
The text of the letter urging Darfur Action
How dare we Europeans celebrate this weekend while, on a continent some few miles south of us, the most defenceless, dispossessed and weak are murdered in Sudan?
Has the European Union — born of atrocity to unite against further atrocity — no word to utter, no principle to act on, no action to take, in order to prevent these massacres in Darfur? Is the cowardliness over Srebrenica to be repeated? If so, what do we celebrate? The thin skin of our political join? The futile posturings of our political class? The impotent nullities of our bureaucracies?
The Europe which allowed Auschwitz and failed in Bosnia must not tolerate the murder in Darfur. Europe is more that a network of the political classes, more than a First-World economic club and a bureaucratic excrescence. It is an inherited culture which sustains our shared belief in the value and dignity of the human being.
In the name of that common culture and those shared values, we call upon the 27 leaders to impose immediately the most stringent sanctions upon the leaders of the Sudanese regime. Forbid them our shores, our health service and our luxury goods. Freeze their assets in our banks and move immediately to involve other concerned countries.
We must not once again betray our European civilisation by watching and waiting while another civilisation in Africa is destroyed. Let this action be our gift to ourselves and our proof of ourselves. When it is done, then let us celebrate together with pride.
Umberto Eco, Dario Fo, Gunter Grass, Jurgen Habermas, Vaclav Havel, Seamus Heaney, Bernard Henri-Levy, Harold Pinter, Franca Rame, Tom Stoppard – Guardian Unlimited Â