Sunday, September 30, 2007

Before Rockets training camp, a refugee camp

It all seemed so innocent at first. Last week — just a few weeks before the Rockets training camp begins — we got off a plane in a sleepy town called Goz Beida in the eastern part of Chad, a country in Central Africa that borders the Sudanese region of Darfur. It was during what they call the "rainy season" in that part of the world, so the hills surrounding the town were a deep shade of green.
By: By TRACY MCGRADY and JOHN PRENDERGAST

The first signs that things weren't completely normal in the place we visited were the makeshift huts made out of sticks, mud and plastic sheets that we saw right outside of town — literally thousands of the flimsy structures.

But it wasn't until we started talking to the people living inside those huts that we had — without realizing it — entered the gates of hell on Earth.

Let us introduce you to Isaac, a young man whom we met sitting on a mat in a humble community center in a refugee camp for people escaping the genocide being committed in Darfur. Genocide is defined as the attempt to destroy a group of people on the basis of their race, ethnicity or religion. Isaac happens to be from one of the non-Arab ethnic groups the government of Sudan has targeted for extinction. We listened closely to his story to understand why a government would try to wipe out entire groups of its own people. Read more >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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