Honourable senators, I too would like to lend my voice of appreciation and congratulations to Senator Boniface for her service to the Senate and to Canadians. Thank you.

Honourable senators, while much of the world is looking elsewhere, Sudan is drowning in blood. And that is not an exaggeration.

The Rapid Support Forces, Islamist militias tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, are butchering civilians, overwhelmingly Christians. They are executing families, burning villages and razing churches, and they are filming their killings for the world to see. The scale of these atrocities is such that satellite imagery literally shows streets soaked in blood.

Yet, you wouldn’t know any of this if you relied on the usual moral authorities in the West: the activists, the academics, the editorial boards. The people who have spent the last two years accusing, for example, Israel of genocide loudly, relentlessly and baselessly have suddenly lost their voices. Even more shamefully, although unsurprisingly, the Canadian government can’t even summon the courage to speak plainly.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand put out a statement this week expressing horror at the killings. Absent, of course, from her statement was a direct naming of the perpetrators. Instead, she called on “all parties” to uphold the law, as if there were any doubt as to who is carrying out these mass executions. Only after public pressure did Global Affairs Canada mention the Rapid Support Forces by name — silence when it’s inconvenient, loud condemnation when it fits a political narrative.

This is not caution. It is ideology and political partisanship and calculation taking precedence over principle. It is cowardice and failure that provide moral cover for this Islamist terrorist group.

The victims in Sudan are being abandoned because their suffering is inconvenient. Because speaking truth would expose the left’s hypocrisy. Because principle is sacrificed for political narratives and short-term gain. That is shameful. It is a stain on our conscience. It is a stain on our democracy.

We must all call it out and stand with the innocent men, women and children in Sudan who face terror and death every day. We will not remain silent, nor should we remain silent.

Thank you, colleagues.