How China’s lust for Africa’s assets is putting Irish lives on the line

IRISH soldiers are risking their lives in Africa as a consequence of China’s thirst for political muscle and oil.

That was the depressing reality outlined on Monday evening by the BBC’s Panorama programme, China’s Secret War. It was narrated by Hilary Andersson, who first brought the Darfur crisis to the world’s attention, and it demonstrated convincingly that China is still selling arms to the Sudanese government in defiance of UN resolutions. The Irish-led EU force defending the refugees in Chad, on Darfur’s western border, picks up the pieces.

Already 300,000 people are estimated to have died in Darfur; hundreds of thousands more have been raped and mutilated. And still the onslaught goes on.