Farrow to kick off torch relay to protest China’s Darfur stance

Farrow, a U.N. goodwill ambassador, and a new activist group called Dream for Darfur are hoping to use the spotlight of the 2008 Beijing Olympics to draw attention to China’s economic and diplomatic support for Sudan. China buys two-thirds of Sudan’s oil and has close commercial ties with Khartoum.

They are asking China to suspend debt relief for Sudan, end arms transfers to the regime, and increase diplomatic pressure on the Sudanese government.

Jill Savitt, director of Dream for Darfur, said the organization hopes China will act before the games, reaffirming the Olympics as a symbol of “world peace through sporting.”

“It’s irreconcilable for the host of the Olympics to also be complicit in an ongoing genocide,” Savitt said in a telephone news conference Wednesday.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made homeless in Darfur during four years of attacks by Arab militias known as the janjaweed and allegedly backed by President Omar al-Bashir’s government. The government denies the charge.

The torch relay will begin Aug. 8 in Chad near the Sudan border and make its way through countries associated with genocide: Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia, Germany and Cambodia, before ending up in December in Hong Kong. Farrow will attend the launch in Chad and will travel to Rwanda.

“It’s apparent now that there’s one thing that China holds more dear than its unfettered access to Sudanese oil,” Farrow said. “And that is their successful staging of the 2008 Olympic Games.”

After several months of delay, Sudan said Wednesday it would accept a joint United Nations-African Union force of between 17,000 and 19,000 troops.

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