Richard Boyd Barrett on Sudan's Genocide and Western Hypocrisy

I do not often thank the Government, but I will thank the Government for facilitating this important debate on the horror that is being inflicted on the people of Sudan, the genocidal horror that they are enduring at the moment, which has led to at least 150,000 people being killed, over 21 million people, 45 per cent of the population, facing hunger and famine, 12 million people forcibly displaced, and some of the horrific scenes have been recently seen with the RSF in the siege of El Fasher, to name just some of the atrocities that have taken place. Now, it is complex, and like Deputy Coffinger, I remember speaking about this, and at the time I had been briefed, I have not unfortunately had a chance to talk to Sudanese people before this debate by people from Sudan, before that debate, at the time of the revolution, basically by the people of Sudan, which was a revolution not based on siding with either of the two factions that are responsible for this horror, but was a grassroots rebellion of people against the austerity that was being imposed, the poverty and so on, by institutions and backed by institutions like the International Monetary Fund, our friends in the IMF, the purveyors of austerity across the world, and what this is, I mean there are layers and layers and layers of this, but in essence this is the old divide and rule tactic used by different factions in the Sudanese ruling class, fighting over power to divide and rule a population that was rising up against them, and in turn the alignment of those factions who are guilty of the genocide, both factions with external powers, and ultimately external powers who are tied up with big western powers, who are armed and financed and supported by big western powers. And you see, wear it over, I heard some people saying, oh the people who are campaigning and advocating for the people of Palestine aren't talking about Sudan. Well first of all, we were, back when the revolution was happening, and we are, but there is actually a connection between these two things. And the connection, and it's very important, it brings it into a sort of sharp focus, what is the western agenda in this region and in the wider Middle Eastern region? Now in the popular narrative purveyed by western leaders over the years, the US, the European foreign policy and so on, is to sort of support democracy, to be supporters of democracy. In actuality, the entirety of western foreign policy, US and European foreign policy, has been to prevent democracy and to back dictatorships, and to divide and rule the population to ensure that you don't have successful democratic revolutions in places like Sudan, where ordinary people might take control of the resources, and of strategically important areas. Some of the, it's strategically important, the resources have been mentioned, gold, UAE, of course is a big time involved UAE, that we have trade relationship, that's armed by France, armed by the United States, and so on, so Europe and America are backing these regimes. The Egyptian regime has its interests in terms of plans by Ethiopia to build a dam, which will impact on the movement of the Nile, and who gets what share of the Nile, and so on, so they're backing other forces and backing particular factions, there's also the question of access to the Red Sea, and various battles going on between different states, in turn backed by western governments, let's remember the Al-Sisi dictatorship in Egypt, that has brutally crushed the Arab Spring in Egypt, backed by the United States, backed by the western governments, treated like a normal government, when the people who led the democratic uprising in Egypt are all languishing in jail, being tortured and so on, but we pretend as if the Egyptian regime is somehow a sort of normal regime. And you see the policy was summed up by a guy called the first Governor General of Ronald Storrs in 1936 of Jerusalem, when he was asked why were the British backing Zionism, and what would later be the Nakba and the destruction of the Palestinians, he said, we want to create a loyal little Jewish Ulster in the Middle East, to guard against a potentially hostile sea of Arabism, right, divide and rule, so we'll do what we did in Ireland, setting the Catholics against the Protestants, in order to make sure we control the region, and that the people of the region don't democratically control their own resources, right, and this is the same playbook that has been playing out in Sudan and in the entire region, back dictatorships, back this faction against that faction, as long as we control the resources, the, or our allies get what they want, or Red Sea routes, or whatever, whatever it is, and of course on top of all that, backing governments that are imposing brutal austerity on an incredibly poor country, right. It's complicated and too complicated to discuss in the time available, but the hypocrisy in the double standards of some of the external players, including Western governments here, is stunning, and often they've done it precisely because, you know, some of these disgusting factions were willing to police migration coming out of these countries, of desperate people trying to flee a horrific situation. Honestly, you couldn't make up the hypocrisy in double standards around this.