Geodog

Can we really let this happen again? Ignore the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and a million people will die

J Moore and others have done for the ongoing genocide in Sudan something similar to what I did for SARS in its infancy. In May they started a group blog, Passion of the Present and have been posting news about the situation in Darfur, with links for more information, daily. The site, Passion of the Present, is a great resource for learning about what it happening in the Sudan, learning about efforts to prevent the ongoing genocide, and suggestions for what people can do to try and stop it. If you haven't seen it, check it out, link to it, and write about it.

In case you haven't heard of Darfur, as the Mercy Corps home page says:

it is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. According to the United Nations, some 2 million people are in desperate need of food and humanitarian aid, and the U.S. Agency for International Development estimates 350,000 people could die in coming months from starvation and disease.

But this humanitarian crisis is not the result of natural forces. It is the result of a deliberate campaign by the leaders of the Sudan to destroy the people of Darfur. So far, the campaign looks like it will be successful. It is, as the US House and Senate voted tonight to declare, Genocide.

This is not a Democratic or Republican issue, nor a conservative or liberal, issue. A people is being exterminated like termites by their government. Until recently, the world has just watched and made "naughty naughty" noises. Unless the world steps in, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of people will die. For those interested in the details, Human Rights Watch recently published a lengthy report on the crisis in Darfur. If you prefer a more impressionistic view, the NYT recently had a first person account of a visit to the refugee camps. A small sample:

Two weeks after Colin L. Powell and Kofi Annan visited this part of Sudan in the hope that the glare of diplomatic shame might arrest a human crisis, conditions are still miserable.

Days after the American secretary of state and the United Nations secretary general ended their tour, witnesses said, gunmen stormed a girls' school in the desert region of Darfur, chained a group of students together and set the building on fire. The charred remains of eight girls were still in shackles when military observers from the African Union arrived on the scene.

That is a gruesome reminder of the kind of violence that the Sudan government has promised to stop by reining in the Janjaweed militias that it once encouraged when the government's focus was on quelling a civil war that swept Darfur. But since the visits, killing and raping continues, and health conditions are more dangerous. ...

At the Nyala hospital, one man writhed on the floor with a gash in his bicep that he said he received in a militia attack days earlier. There were skeletal babies, many of whom no longer had the energy to cry. Outside of town, one boy with burn marks on his face, his arms and much of his body approached a visitor and asked for something to eat. He was burned, he said, when his village was set afire....

Small children are the first to die in a health crisis like the one unfolding here. Diarrhea and dysentery weaken them. Their kidneys stop functioning. Then their hearts begin failing. Over time, their immune systems no longer protect them from the germs that fill the crowded camps now called home by villagers.

Feeding centers for starving children have been set up across the region, and hundreds of babies arrive every week, cradled by desperate mothers. The children are weighed and measured. Only the skinniest and sickest are allowed in.

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This is not a political issue. This is a human issue. After the 20th century, which saw the attempted Extermination of the Armenians, the Holocaust in Europe, the Killing Fields in Cambodia, Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans, and Genocide in Rwanda, will we start the 21st century by standing by and letting genocide happen again?

I strongly recommend a visit to Passion of the Present, and then calling or writing your Senator or Representative and thanking them for passing the Resolution Declaring Genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and asking them to encourage the administration to secure a U.N. Security Council resolution with teeth, and finally, if you can afford it, donating to one of the organizations like Human Rights Watch that has been reporting the truth on what is happening in Darfur, or to one of the organizations like CARE, Mercy Corps or Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières that has been assisting the refugees.

Can we really let this happen again?

Posted by Geodog at July 23, 2004 01:22 AM | TrackBack