Baroness Cox has presented herself over the
past several years as an expert witness on Sudan and Sudanese
issues. She has testified as such before various committees
of the United States Congress and has also spoken on Sudan
at various other conferences and gatherings. What is abundantly
clear, however, is that her reliability and judgement in
some of the very serious claims she has made about Sudan
and the Sudanese Government have been questioned and contradicted
by several informed sources - sources which are themselves
unsympathetic to the Government of Sudan.
Baroness Cox's claims about "slavery" in Sudan:
Contradicted by Anti-Slavery International and African
Rights
Baroness Cox has made repeated allegations about "slavery"
in Sudan, and that the Government of Sudan was involved in
such "slavery". Her claims, and those of Christian
Solidarity International, with which she has been closely
associated, have been clearly questioned by professional human
rights groups such as Anti-Slavery International and African
Rights. The internationally-respected human rights activist
Alex de Waal, an acknowledged expert on Sudan and a former
director of African Rights, stated with reference to Christian
Solidarity International, and the claims made by Baroness
Cox, that despite the fact that there are no "slave markets
in the 19th century image":
Nonetheless, overeager or misinformed human rights
advocates in Europe and the US have played upon lazy assumptions
to raise public outrage. Christian Solidarity International,
for instance, claims that "Government troops and
Government-backed Arab militias regularly raid black African
communities for slaves and other forms of booty.".This
despite the fact that there is no evidence for centrally
organized, government-directed slave raiding or slave
trade.
A 1997 Anti-Slavery International report on allegations of
Sudanese slavery, also contradicted Baroness Cox's claims
of government involvement in slavery:
the charge that government troops engage in raids for
the purpose of seizing slaves is not backed by the evidence.
Baroness Cox's claims of Iraqi Scud Missiles in Sudan:
Contradicted by the British Government, the White House
and UNSCOM
Baroness Cox has made serious claims about Sudanese access
to and use of weapons of mass destruction technology which
adversely reflect on her reliability as a source of information
on Sudan. On 17 February 1998, in the British Parliament,
Baroness Cox claimed that four hundred Scud missiles (including
support vehicles well over one thousand vehicles) had been
secretly transferred to Sudan from Iraq since the Gulf War
in the face of unprecedented satellite, electronic and physical
surveillance of that country by the United States, the United
Nations and other concerned members of the international community.
It is a matter of record that Reuters reported that on the
same day that Baroness Cox made this claim, the White House
clearly stated:
We have no credible evidence that Iraq has exported
weapons of mass destruction technology to other countries
since the (1991) Gulf War.
On 19 March 1998, Baroness Symons, a junior British foreign
minister, supported by all the information available to the
British Defence Intelligence Staff , stated in relation to
the claims of weapons of mass destruction technology transfers
from Iraq to Sudan cited by Baroness Cox, that:
We are monitoring the evidence closely, but to date
we have no evidence to substantiate these claims.... Moreover,
we know that some of the claims are untrue...The defence
intelligence staff in the MoD (Ministry of Defence) have
similarly written a critique which does not support the
report's findings.
The British Government Minister also stated that:
Nor has the United Nations Special Commission reported
any evidence of such transfers since the Gulf War conflict
and the imposition of sanctions in 1991.
Baroness Cox's claim that chemical weapons were used in
southern Sudan in July 1999:
Contradicted by the United Nations.
In a debate in the British Parliament on 13 October 1999,
Baroness Cox stated that Sudanese Government forces had used
chemical weapons in locations in southern Sudan in July 1999.
On 17 October the United Nations revealed that tests conducted
by the laboratories of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta
on medical samples taken by Operation Lifeline Sudan members
in the areas cited by Cox "indicated no evidence of exposure
to chemicals".
Baroness Cox's claims about genocide in Sudan:
Contradicted by the British Government.
On 26 May 1998, the London
Daily Telegraph carried
an interview with Baroness Cox in which she alleged that genocide
was taking place in the Bahr al-Ghazal region of southern
Sudan. She was commenting on fighting between Dinka and Rizaiquat
tribesmen, during which Rizaiquat tribesmen had raided Dinka
and SPLA-controlled areas. She ignored that fact that, as
reported by
Agence France Presse on the 7 and 12 May
of that year, Dinka and SPLA members had repeatedly raided
northwards into Rizaiquat villages. Baroness Cox's claim of
genocide appears to be based on raids by Arab civilians on
people, camps and villages associated with raids earlier in
late April and May by the SPLA. It is clear that to Cox SPLA/Dinka
attacks on Arab civilians in late April and early May 1998,
attacks which resulted in considerable deaths and destruction
of property, were not deemed "genocide", while what
appear to have been similar attacks in retaliation were classified
as "genocide" by her. This studied selectivity can
at best be said to reflect naiveté
on the part
of Baroness Cox and only but diminish Baroness Cox's credibility
as a commentator on Sudan.
Cox's claims were contradicted by the British Government.
When directly asked in Parliament if they had any evidence
to verify Baroness Cox's claims of genocide in Bahr al-Ghazal
as reported in the
Daily Telegraph in May 1998, the
government, no friend of the Sudanese regime, replied:
The situation was very complicated and the picture
unclear, making it difficult to verify facts.these killings
should be seen in the context of a long history of tribal
conflicts. It would appear from the information available
to us that no one side was entirely to blame.
Baroness Cox's claims that the Sudanese Government was
involved in the 1992 World Trade Center bombing
Contradicted by the United States Government
In October 1999, Baroness Cox claimed that the Sudanese Government
had been involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center
in New York. In March 1993, the United States government stated
that the World Trade Center bombing was carried out by a poorly
trained local group of individuals who were not under the
auspices of a foreign government or international network.
In June 1993, the American authorities again stated there
was no evidence of foreign involvement in the New York bombing
or conspiracies. Any Sudanese involvement was again unambiguously
denied in 1996 by Ambassador Philip C. Wilcox Jr., the Department
of State's Coordinator for Counterterrorism, on the occasion
of the release of the 1995
Patterns of Global Terrorism.
Ambassador Wilcox stated:
We have looked very, very carefully and pursued all
possible clues that there might be some state sponsorship
behind the World Trade Center bombing. We have found no
such evidence, in spite of an exhaustive search, that
any state was responsible for that crime. Our information
indicates that Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and his gang were a
group of freelance terrorists, many of whom were trained
in Afghanistan, who came from various nations but who
did not rely on support from any state.
Baroness Cox and Sudan:
"not well-enough informed" - international
humanitarian aid workers
It is worth nothing that in Andrew Boyd's sympathetic biography
of Baroness Cox,
Baroness Cox: A Voice for the Voiceless,
Christopher Besse of Medical Emergency Relief International,
an aid group with which Cox is closely associated, is quoted
as saying:
She's not the most popular person in Sudan among the
humanitarian aid people. She has her enemies, and some
of them feel she is not well-enough informed. She recognizes
a bit of the picture, but not all that's going on.
That Baroness Cox only "recognizes a bit of the picture"
is clearly borne out by her claims on "genocide"
outlined above. That Cox is not popular amongst the humanitarian
aid workers and organisations is very significant. These workers
and groups are people involved in Sudanese issues and relief
on a day-to-day basis. They are in a far better position to
judge Baroness Cox's reliability as a commentator on Sudan
than Congressmen several thousand miles away for whom her
partisan and often inaccurate claims may merely reinforce
political and religious prejudice about Sudan and the Sudanese
situation. The sooner this is realised the sooner a clearer
picture of Sudan will emerge, especially within the United
States.
