TUESDAY, 31 AUGUST 2004
101 Darfur Cries Out to Our Humanity, Says Activist Elie
Wiesel
(FR) (Holocaust survivor, others appeal for international response) (950)
*AEF101 08/30/2004
Darfur Cries Out to Our Humanity, Says Activist Elie Wiesel
(FR) (Holocaust survivor, others appeal for international response) (950)
By Bruce Greenberg
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- "Why now? Why so late? For years ... nothing was done while the killing and raping went on! ... What is at stake is our own humanity. We must tell the Sudanese victims that they are no longer alone, that we know what is happening to them, that we care, that we wish to save lives: theirs!"
With these words, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel opened an August 25 panel discussion on what the United Nations has termed the worst humanitarian issue facing the world today, the crisis in Darfur in western Sudan.
Wiesel was joined on a special telephone access for media and the public by John Prendergast, a former White House adviser for African affairs and outspoken critic of the Khartoum government, and Samantha Power, author of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," as well as an aid worker and a refugee at a camp in Chad.
The program sought to call further attention to the plight of the 200,000 to 300,000 black Africans scattered in makeshift refugee camps along the Chad-Sudan border. It was sponsored by True Majority and Faithful America, U.S.-based non-governmental organizations advocating personal responsibility and activism worldwide, and hosted by Fenton Communications, a prominent U.S. public relations and communications firm.
In the response to a local rebellion in late 2003, Sudanese military forces and their Arab militias, Jingaweit, have driven an estimated two million people from farms and villages in the western region of Darfur, killing an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people.
Wiesel charged the Khartoum government with a calculated long-term policy of racial cleansing. "This man-made catastrophe that we are witnessing now in Sudan was not begun yesterday, but almost a generation ago. Mass humiliation, mass rape, mass uprooting and murder were conducted by murderers in and out of uniform, and not in secrecy," the 76-year-old Holocaust survivor, author and humanitarian activist said. Government agencies and U.N. officials knew what was going on in Darfur, he said, but nothing was done to stop the killing.
He voiced cautious optimism, however. "Now," he said, "there are signs that the world is moving towards the victims ... the focus of the world is on Darfur. And the international community has begun to show a willingness to warn [the government of Sudan] to cease and desist. What have we all learned, if not that to be indifferent or neutral to other people's suffering is to help tormentors inflict on their victims more and more pain and fear, such that these tormentors can continue to do so with impunity?"
Prendergast echoed Wiesel's remarks, saying the Sudanese government had not met its commitment to protect the black populations in the region and had failed to disarm the Arab militias it sponsors and supplies with weapons.
"We must see a more robust humanitarian assistance effort," he said. "The African Union has offered to deploy upwards of 3,000 troops to Darfur and that is an adequate force to build upon -- to begin to protect civilians in Darfur. The problem, though, is that the [Sudanese] government has not and will not accept this offer until additional leverage is built up by the international community."
"We know now what not to do," he said. "We can no longer apply threats of sanctions, nor endless deadlines. This government is only responsive to direct international action. What we must do is go after the regime's leadership and the businesses they control abroad, impose a general arms embargo, and set up an international commission to try these perpetrators and their allies as war criminals."
Power spoke of a sense of powerlessness among some Muslim Sudanese who told her they were afraid to speak out against the treatment of their fellow citizens lest they be targeted as well. She described a prominent Arab, widely regarded as the coordinator of the Jingaweit, as asserting that he was merely "a tribal leader" who responded to the government's call "to take up arms against this African rebellion led by the SLA [Sudanese Liberation Army]."
Speaking on a phone hookup from the largest refugee camp in eastern Chad, an international aid worker explained how a camp designed to accommodate no more than 18,000 people now holds upwards of 40,000, mostly women and children, with 100 to 200 new arrivals coming into the camp each night under the cover of darkness.
"Basically," she said, "all men between the ages of 15 to 25 are nowhere to be found. They may have been killed. There are very few adolescent women, which leads one to believe that most have been abducted by the militias." And, she added, "we are frantically looking for housing, food supplies and medical equipment."
Also on the telephone link from Chad was a farmer from Darfur named Alhaj Abdulah who described his sudden flight from that region to safety in Chad after an aerial attack on his village. "I escaped. The government is destroying everything we own," he said through an interpreter.
"We hid nearby and returned to find that everything had been burned. We saw 16 bodies that had been burned. Now we are in Chad. We didn't have anything to cover ourselves, no food for four months. We had a very difficult time. Now we have food and I feel better now. I hope and pray to Allah to support us, and all those people who support us."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs,
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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