World News Corner: Speaking tour about Dafurian crisis kicks off in Philly

By Nicole Woods
Collegian Staff
April 26, 2006

In the humble setting of Philadelphia’s oldest Quaker meetinghouse, Lou Ann Merkle explained her reason for becoming co-chair of the Darfur Alert Coalition, a Philadelphia-based activist group. She said she hopes “to assure that the disastrous world indifference during the Nazi Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide is never repeated.”

Merkle and other members of the Darfur Alert Coalition have organized a tour of eyewitness speakers to raise public awareness about the systematic genocide occurring in Darfur, a region in western Sudan about the size of Texas. They hope to inspire a massive response from government and private sectors.

“The tour will bring Darfurians and Americans together in face-to-face exchanges, ultimately building a network committed to working with the Darfurians to reclaim their land, their lives and their livelihoods,” Merkle said.

Audience members were urged to sign postcards that read: “Dear President Bush, During your first year in the White House, you wrote in the margins of a report on the Rwandan genocide, ‘Not on my watch.’ I urge you to live up to those words by using the power of your office to support a stronger multi-national force to protect the civilians of Darfur.”

The talk at the Arch Street Meetinghouse was one of six that occurred in religious venues around Philadelphia to kick off the tour during the first week of April. Jim Rensen, former religion editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, was inspired to help after he attended a talk by a U.S. marine who had taken photographs of children in Darfur. When Rensen heard about plans for the speaking tour, he thought to ask all of the religious leaders that he knew writing for the Inquirer to donate meeting places around the city as media outlets.

The tour will proceed to New York, New Jersey and Boston before culminating in Washington, D.C. with a “Million Voices for Darfur” rally on April 30.

Many Americans are unaware of the enormity of the problems that plague Darfur. Estimates say that as many as 400,000 people have died there as a result of murder, starvation and disease since ethnic conflicts began in 2003.

Sudan has had a violent history since it gained independence in 1956. Its Muslim government is based in the capital city of Khartoum in the north, and has consisted of a succession of military dictatorships. Peace conferences in 2005 were finally successful in ending a 21-year-long civil war between the Sudanese government and the rebel group the Southern People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). However, the current crisis began before the civil war was over, so Sudan has still not experienced peace.

The current conflict in Darfur is mainly between two groups of people; however, it is difficult to make generalizations about the characteristics of the groups because they are very similar and the cause of the fighting is complex. One group identifies as ethnically African, and the other ethnically Arab, but both have the same dark skin tone. Both groups are also Muslim. The main difference between the African and Arab Darfurians is their traditional professions. The Africans are typically farmers, and the Arabs are usually nomadic herders. Tensions developed between the two groups when dry conditions forced the herders off their path and onto farmers’ land, where they disputed over land and water.

In early 2003, African rebel groups accused the government of oppressing non-Arabs in favor of Arabs and staged attacks on government outposts. The government launched a crippling counteroffensive, using warplanes to bomb African villages. In addition to its Khartoumian troops, the government recruited Arabs from local tribes to form a militia, called the Janjaweed.

The Arab Janjaweed launched a “scorched-earth” campaign against the rebels and African civilians. They systematically raped, killed and tortured civilians while burning and looting their villages.

An estimated 2.5 million survivors have been categorized as internally displaced persons (IDPs) and driven to refugee settlement camps, many of which are surrounded by the Janjaweed. The Human Rights Watch says that the IDPs in the camps “live on the very edge of survival, subject to Janjaweed abuses…where the Janjaweed kill, rape and pillage—even stealing emergency relief items—with impunity.”

The Sudanese government has tried to deny its backing of the Janjaweed by citing the Arab group’s historical clashes and agricultural problems with the Africans as motivation for its attacks. However, according to a 2004 White House report, “A U.S. investigative team has found: a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities (killings, rapes, burning of villages) committed by the Janjaweed and government forces against non-Arab villagers; 74 percent of those interviewed in the investigation reported that the Sudanese military forces were involved in the attacks; and villages often experienced multiple attacks over a prolonged period before they were destroyed by burning, shelling or bombing, making it impossible for villagers to return.”

Congress has declared the Sudanese government’s counterinsurgency a “genocide,” and the UN has called its actions “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” The situation continues to worsen as the Janjaweed begin to cross into neighboring Chad to attack the refugees who have managed to escape to that country.

Ineffective peace talks between the Sudanese government and African rebel groups have resulted in a tentative ceasefire. However, because the Janjaweed has no member present at the negotiations, and the Sudanese government claims no responsibility for them, the Janjaweed continue attacking civilians.

The Sudanese government has refused international military and humanitarian aide, allowing only the newly formed African Union (AU) to enter in a peacekeeping mission. Although they have achieved some success in deterring rape and child recruitment and ensuring that humanitarian aid reaches refugees, only 6,700 AU troops are deployed. This number is highly inadequate for the task, as attested to by Salih Mahmoud Osman, a featured speaker of the Darfur Speaking Tour.

Osman is an internationally respected human rights lawyer from Darfur. He is currently a member of the Sudan National Parliament belonging to the opposition. He said that the Sudanese government has rejected involvement from the UN because it fears that the UN would find incriminating evidence that could lead to more charges by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Osman said that the survivors are confused that they haven’t received help from the international community when their plight has been called genocide. He said that a serious lack of political will is the cause for inaction,and believes that the United States must put pressure on the ICC to address the issue of protection for the survivors.

Osman’s 12-year-old daughter, Emtithal Mahmoud, is an especially poignant speaker on the tour. She was born in Darfur and has visited there twice. She recited a poem, “The War in Darfur,” which she was inspired to write after seeing two nine-year-old girls hand-washing clothes for money for food during her last visit.

When asked what American college students could do to help the situation in Darfur, Mahmoud said, “When you drop a stone into water, it makes little ripples that get bigger and bigger. Whenever someone helps a little bit, it keeps going and going like that.”

Rensen also offered concrete tips on how average Americans can help the citizens of Darfur: “We need to mobilize the public to pressure legislators to pressure UN to pressure NATO.” He said that this can be achieved through participation in grass-roots organizations like Darfur Alert, which was able to organize the speaking tour quickly and without many resources.

He said that the goal is to increase the AU troop force, and that no organization espouses the deployment of American soldiers in Sudan. A stronger AU presence would stop the fighting and create safe quarters so that humanitarian aid could get through to the people. He also said that a no-fly zone should be enforced to prevent any further bombings.

Rensen said that college students should urge their schools to divest from companies that do business with Sudan. Several schools and some states around the country have pulled their investments from Sudan. The practice of divestment in protest to a country’s policy was used to help bring an end to apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s.

A technological disturbance at one of the Philadelphia talks was a clear reminder of the present urgency of the group’s mission.

“Someone’s cell phone started ringing,” Rensen said. “It was one of the people from Darfur, being called with news about their families who are still over there.”

woodsn1@lasalle.edu