The UN has the opportunity of taking action over the mass rape and extermination of the black Africans by Arab militias, acting in concert with the Sudanese government. These atrocities, which have killed at least 70,000 people, have gone relatively unnoticed by western governments and activist groups in the west, who have been preoccupied with the actions of the US in Iraq rather than those of the central Sudanese government in Darfur. The British and US governments have already ruled out any kind of military intervention on their part to assist the afflicted people of Darfur, and the African Union troops present in the region do not have the mandate to stop rape and killing. The consequence of this is that people continue to be brutalised and killed on a daily basis.

Comment: it is a disgrace that governments and activist groups have been so obsessed with the actions of the US that they have forgotten that there are other serious criminals out there, and that there are many more destructive conflicts in the world than Iraq. Western governments have behaved in a spineless way and action needs to be taken to ensure that UN peacekeepers are sent into Darfur to protect the people there. Write to Chris Mullin MP at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and urge him to support UN intervention and to persuade other countries on the UN Security Council that intervention is needed. Otherwise, the killing and mass rapes will carry on unabated.