MADRID, 10 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The United States government has accused Sudan of threatening to expel the United Nations mission in the country if the UN Secretary General’s envoy, Volker Perthes, explains to the Security Council about the atrocities of the conflict.
The representative of the United States to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has indicated that the Security Council has met this Wednesday “to discuss a pressing matter of peace and international security”, such as the conflict between the Army of Sudan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began on April 15, but has denounced Perthes’ lack of it.
“While we are grateful for the participation of the secretary-general’s adviser for Africa (Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee), we had hoped that Perthes would come to the Council to report. We now know that the Sudanese government has threatened to end the UN mission in Sudan if he participated in the briefing,” the US representative said.
“This has been really scandalous, and I have raised it before the Council. No country should be able to force silence, even less in the United Nations,” he said, before remarking that “it is not appropriate for any member state to block or threaten a whistleblower”, after the organization reported the day before that Perthes was going to participate.
Thomas-Greenfield has called on members “to continue to report on this dire situation” as some of the speakers pointed out a lack of information about what is happening in Sudan.
In this sense, he has denounced that the conflict adds up to more than 100 days of confrontations, turning “large areas of Sudan into hell”: “The stories and images that come out of Sudan, especially Darfur, are chilling,” he added, referring to reports accusing the RSF and its allied militias of carrying out widespread atrocities in the region.
“One of the worst chapters in recent history is repeating itself. And it is more than horrible. The Security Council, and the entire international community, have the responsibility to demand that the parties comply with their obligations under International Humanitarian Law with regarding the protection of civilians,” the diplomat said.
He has also claimed responsibility for demanding the Sudanese Army and the RSF to lay down their arms and guarantee humanitarian assistance, “at this dangerous moment”, in which “the Security Council and all Member States must be on the side of the peace and on the right side of history”.
“Let’s do everything in our power to end the bloodshed. Sudan’s political future belongs to the Sudanese people, not to the armed men who prolong human suffering,” he concluded.
