Thankfully, more and more people are talking about Darfur...and it's about time. Darfour is another holocaust - genecide and "ethnic cleansing" that our government and media have ignored for too long.
The Sudanese government has been clearing out villages of African Zaghawa, Masaalit, and Fur communities in Darfur since February 2003 in a fierce campaign of “ethnic cleansing.” Government soldiers and Arab nomad militia, called “janjaweed,” frequently surrounded groups of villages, often encircling them with trenches. In the first phase of the coordinated attacks, government air forces using Russian-built MiG and Antonov jets and attack helicopters, bomb the villages. In the second phase, the soldiers and militia move into the villages to loot, burn, kill, rape, and abduct. Bodies are left out in the open or thrown into the trenches.
Over 10,000 humans a day are eliminated. Current data shows that over 450,000 have perished during the 3-year reign of violence and malnutrition due to aid being blocked from the villages. 450,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For terrifyingly, all current evidence suggests that hundreds of thousands of human beings will die in the coming months from these same causes. A rapidly accelerating contraction of humanitarian reach and capacity has left three quarters of a million civilians without any assistance whatsoever in Darfur and eastern Chad; many hundreds of thousands of other innocent human beings have only exceedingly tenuous access to aid. Further, the UN World Food Program just announced that it was halving food rations for Darfur and eastern Sudan.
The only words that come to mind are moral failure. By the government. By the press. By humanity. If Darfur was a nation of wealthy whites or had natural resources we craved - this would not be happening.
The good new is I am hearing my friends talk about it. Last weekend, my friend Amy Karp went to Washington DC with her daughter to a rally protesting the government's lack of action. The Sudan Freedom Walk was initiated by former Sudanese child slave Simon Deng. For decades, slavery, civil war and genocide have wracked southern Sudan — and, more recently, the western region of Darfur. The United Nations' inaction on this urgent issue prompted Simon to organize the 300-mile Sudan Freedom Walk from New York City to Washington, D.C. to demand that the U.S. government take a strong stand against the forgotten genocide of black Sudanese.
The goals included:
Pressing Congress to pass the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act
Encouraging colleges and universities along the route to adopt Sudan divestment policies
Encouraging states the Walk passed through (NY, PA, DE, MD, and VA) to pass Sudan divestment legislation
Push the U.S. State Department to re-assign a Tier III human trafficking classification to Sudan
Push the State Department to withdraw the waiver allowing the PR firm C/R International to work with Sudan's government
Urge the Bush White House to support the implementation of Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Act Push the government of Sudan to establish an anti-slavery task force focused on ending slavery throughout that country
Press war crimes charges against Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir
Push Congress to reinstate $50 million in support of the African Union peacekeeping force
I was in Dallas on Monday with my buddy Mark Masinter who was enraged about Darfur - worried about what type of world this is that history could repeat itself in this way. He has children and wonders what they are inheriting with a world in this state.
The more awareness we can spread, the better. Get educated and take action...will be writing more about how you can help next blog....
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