Worse than a FEMA trailer

Times are hard, no doubt about it, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
But it could be worse.

We could be living in the Darfur region of Sudan, where women are raped while getting firewood and at least 200,000 people, many of them Christians, have been killed. Two million more are displaced, living in squalid refugee camps.

Children are being forced into slavery. It is an international nightmare.

Half of the region's 6 million people rely on outside assistance for food.

The Darfur crisis has been bumped off the world stage, by a mushbrained world worried about the latest Britney Spears brouhaha and the pontifications of George Clooney. Full story >>>

Many lives at stake

EDITORIAL


Our position: NATO forces are needed in Darfur now to try to stop the genocide.

At least 200,000 men, women and children have died in the Darfur region of Sudan in the past three years, the victims of what the United States has rightly labeled genocide. The toll will keep climbing if the world does not do more to stop the carnage.

It was heartening that President George W. Bush, in a recent visit to Central Florida, called for more international action in Darfur, and for NATO to take a leading role.

Sudan's government has responded ruthlessly to a rebellion in Darfur, backing Arab militias that have burned, raped and killed their way through villages in the region. More than 2 million people have been driven from their homes. For the full story click here >>>

The Sudan & The Darfur

[from CAQ #78]
By:Gillian Lusk


And they keep on dying. Over a year since Sudan’s Islamist1 government began slaughtering its own citizens in the remote western region of Darfur, those citizens continue to be killed by a government that claims to represent them. In April 2004, many people marked the commemoration of the Rwandan genocide of April 1994 by saying “Never again!” Yet Darfur’s genocide is still underway.2

Among those warning that “Rwanda in slow motion” was taking place were Sudanese, journalists, human rights activists and the Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, who had helplessly watched his own United Nations troops helplessly watching Rwanda’s genocide unfold.3 Also among them was the man who had headed the U.N. Peacekeeping Operations Department at that terrible time and who is now head of the entire U.N. machine, Kofi Annan.4 For more click here >>>

Darfur issue presents chance to think globally

by Carlo Romero

Someone tell Kanye West: George Bush does care about black people.

So does U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, actor Don Cheadle, Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel, evangelist Billy Graham, actress Angelina Jolie, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Harvard President Larry Summers, Olympic speedskater Joey Cheek and thousands of students at OU.

All these individuals comprise a growing coalition calling for an international intervention to stop the genocide that has been taking place since 2003 in Darfur, Sudan. Click here for the rest of the story >>>

Living a restricted life in Darfur

Source: IRIN

KABKABIYA, 22 February (IRIN) - On the plains of Kabkabiya town in North Darfur, numerous abandoned villages dot the empty landscape. Their burned remains bear witness to the escalation of the Darfur conflict in 2003.

"When the conflict began here," said a community leader who requested anonymity, "the Janjawid [militias] attacked the villages around Kabkabiya, especially to the east and south. They killed many people, took their animals and destroyed their belongings." For the entire picture >>>

Darfur crisis deepening, says Benn

On a visit to Sudan, the international development secretary said the situation in Darfur is worsening.

Hilary Benn was in the region on Wednesday, where he inspected the situation on the ground for the second time in eight months.

The cabinet minister told the BBC that, following the fallout from the refugee crisis sparked by civil war, security had got worse in the intervening period. Read more >>>

Sudan hindering peace mission in Darfur

AU says Sudan curfew hinders peace force in Darfur
By Opheera McDoom

EL-FASHER, Sudan, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Sudan is hindering an African Union peace mission's ability to monitor a tentative truce in the Darfur region by imposing a curfew and restricting airport access, the head of the mission said on Tuesday. For the full story, click here >>>

Rhetoric isn't ending the killing in Darfur

By Rabbi Rudin
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE

Never Again!" is a well-worn mantra invoked by many people when they remember the mass murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. The phrase is meant to indicate that we have learned the disastrous effects of remaining silent or indifferent in the face of genocide, the systematic killing of an entire people.

But have we truly learned such a lesson? Or is "Never Again!" rhetorical comfort food for our souls? Somewhere in the answers to those questions must come a mention of Darfur, a region about the size of France that is in the African nation of Sudan. Click here for the rest of the story >>

On the continuing misery in Darfur

By EMMA ELLIS


The Holocaust. Rwanda. The Armenian genocide. These words evoke thoughts of ineffable death and suffering. After these tragedies, the world vowed "never again." Genocide is a problem of the past, right? But what about Darfur? Do you even know where it is?

In Darfur people are being systematically eliminated. However, only a fraction of what could be done to help has been done. The general public is not demanding further action, but we are the very group that could make the difference.

The time is long passed when we could say that just because it isn't happening to us it is not our problem. Genocide is the world's problem. Read more >>>>

SUDAN: Tension still high in Kutum town

Source: IRIN

KUTUM, 20 February (IRIN) - At the Monday market in Kutum town, North Darfur, heavily armed Janjawid militia openly stroll between the fruit and vegetable stalls, closely watched by Sudanese soldiers.

It is the first day the market is open again after a week of unrest. Unease and fear are palpable.

On 1 February, rebels of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) killed a lieutenant of the Sudanese military in the town. In retaliation, the Janjawid militia took over the town's streets for a week, culminating in a violent assault on the local population on 6 February. Click here for the full story >>>

Pali Students Step Up Support for Darfur

Alyson Sena , Reporter

An ongoing community effort to halt the genocide in Darfur, Africa, continues at Palisades Charter High School, where four Human Rights Watch Student Task Force groups met with Darfur activists last week. Students from four high schools joined the national Million Voices campaign to help collect one million signed postcards urging President Bush to take action.

PaliHi's HRW Student Task Force alone projected it could gather 4,760 postcards by targeting mass-attendance events at the school, doing outreach in the larger community and publicizing their mission through media and networking systems. The nationwide goal is to deliver one million postcards to the president by April 30. Click here for more >>

Break the Silence, and Speak Up on Darfur

Burt Siegel

Many who have no idea who the 18th-century British parliamentarian and essayist Edmund Burke was are probably familiar with his observation that all that is needed for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing.

As the toll of murdered Darfurians in the nation of Sudan rises each day, I can't help think that the world has learned very little. Neither the Holocaust - in which six million Jews were killed - nor the Hutu massacre of co-religionist Catholic Tutsis, nor the murder of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo by Eastern Orthodox Serbs or Catholic Croats seems to have reached that part of our souls where we are so horrified that we demand that steps be taken to stop another genocide.

According to estimates, since February 2003, more than 400,000 African men, women and children have died, while another 2.5 million civilians have been forced into refugee camps in Sudan and neighboring Chad. Read the full story >>

No more talk on Darfur

A Register-Guard Editorial


Two years have passed since the Bush administration first acknowledged that genocide was occurring in Sudan's Darfur region. Yet the world has done little more than talk eloquently about the suffering.

There was more talk in Washington, D.C., Monday as President Bush and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan discussed the need for an effective peacekeeping force in Darfur. Bush made no commitments of military support or additional funding. Afterward, Bush made no mention of Annan's proposal for an international mission and would only say that they'd had "a good discussion." Click here for more >>>

Our friend, an architect of the genocide in Darfur

The U.S. sacrifices moral leadership when it cozies up to killers for snippets of counterterrorism information.

IT HAS BEEN 18 months since the United States concluded that genocide was taking place in Darfur. Yet President Bush, the only president to declare an ongoing genocide since the term was coined 50 years ago, has done little to stop this crime against humanity.

Why not? The answer may lie in the complex story of Salah Abdallah Gosh. Gosh isn't exactly a household name, but there are two groups of people for whom his name is exceedingly important: U.S. counterterrorism officials and victims of atrocities in Sudan. For the entire picture click here >>

Stop genocide in Darfur

The Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda — if the world community could undo or at least lessen any of those historic horrors, would it?

If the answer is yes, then the world must train its energy on Darfur in Sudan, where a slaughter that President Bush called a genocide two years ago is getting worse. For the full story click here >>

Children of Darfur reveal their pain with pictures of rape and murder

By Kim Sengupta
Published: 13 February 2006

The images are of murder and rape, burning villages, helicopter gunships and terrified, fleeing refugees. They have been drawn by children, some as young as eight, who are victims of a wave of bloody ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

Two years after the international outcry over the man-made catastrophe in Sudan, the Janjaweed militia have returned with a vengeance, bringing death and destruction, backed by forces of the Khartoum government. Click here for the full story >>

Mr. Bush and Genocide

Sunday, February 12, 2006; B06

FOR THE PAST 18 months, the Bush administration and its allies have clung to the fiction that they could stop the genocide in the Sudanese territory of Darfur by sending in African Union forces. On Thursday United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan spoke the truth about these troops: "They didn't have the large numbers that would have been required for a region the size of Darfur. They didn't have logistical support. They didn't have the mobility, either on the ground or in the air." Mr. Annan went on to say that the U.N. force that may replace the African Union had better be "a completely different force and have a completely different concept of operation." The issue is whether President Bush, who is due to meet Mr. Annan tomorrow, is willing to hear this message. Click here for the entire story >

Desperation in Darfur

Can the United Nations now succeed where African peacekeepers have failed?
By Dan Morrison



NYALA, SUDAN--The murderous Janjaweed militia are camped in a dusty swirl 6 miles outside the South Darfur town of Gereida, where the 60,000 residents fear an attack could come at any moment. With armed horsemen practically on their doorstep, the women of Gereida took an unusual step--they wrote a letter swearing to rampage with knives and machetes unless a group of outsiders leaves within 72 hours. Click here for the whole story >>

Genocide is not negotiable

By John Morlino

Humanitarian aid notwithstanding, the international community has done little more than watch while the Sudanese military and its government-sponsored militias have killed 400,000 people and violently displaced 2 million more in Darfur. On top of this nightmare, women and young girls who have, thus far, survived continue to face the terrifying prospect of rape whenever they leave their refugee camps in search of firewood or water. Read the full story >>>>>>

Bring on the blue helmets

Feb 9th 2006 | NAIROBI
From The Economist


Thousands of defenceless people in western Sudan still need protecting


SINCE the tragedy in Darfur, Sudan's western region, began three years ago, at least 200,000 people—some say more than 300,000—have died; another 2m, in a population of 6m, have been displaced, many of them fleeing across the border into Chad; peace talks in Nigeria between the rebels and the Sudanese government have stalled yet again; there is a risk of a proxy war breaking out between Chad and Sudan; and the African Union (AU), with some 7,000 ill-equipped troops, admits it cannot keep the peace. Now, belatedly, the UN is likely, as a last resort, to send blue helmets to Darfur. Click here for the full story >>>>>