On the wake of the Chinese president – Mr Hu Jinao’s visit to Nigeria last year, some of us Nigerian writers warn in our open letter (Sunday Guardian 30 April 2006) that empowering China with oil prospecting licence must be done when China is willing to be responsible to global covenants on the environment and to the immediate stop of the genocide project in Darfur.
The gloomy sands of Darfur are a desolation of tears and blood. Lots of cries for help yet no big one is underway. Over 250,000 helpless black people have been murdered and over 2 million are in hellish refugee conditions. And yet in both cases still counting.
China with its oil interest is one of the very few countries the Sudanese government relies on for cash and guns which makes China morally culpable in the mass slaughter.
We call on the Nigerian government to rally all other African nations to boycott the Beijing Olympics next year should China still insist on its deadly intimacy with the Sudanese government. Frustrating this deadly intimacy is much more critical than the impact of UN or AU peacekeepers in Sudan.
We must act now!
