I'VE NEVER BEEN TO A GENOCIDE
Who would go to the location of a genocide?
Not a tourist destination.
So, you would have to be a humanitarian
who really cares for those who need us to care.
The pictures are from Mia Farrow's most recent trip to the Darfuri refugee camps, which are becoming death camps like the concentration camps at Hitler's hands.
Only the brave and compassionate could go here Kalma Camp
More pictures at miafarrow.org
And more picures at miafarrow.org/eastern_chad
A child's drawing of life
or death
Waiting for food
Food distribution
Distributing soap
14 year old Adam draws pictures of attacks
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This article was picked up by the Sudan Tribune
Activists rally in US cities against aid expulsion
Source: www.sudantribune.com
March 24, 2009 (WASHINGTON) – A new round of protests was undertaken against the United States government for failing in its appeal on behalf of 16 aid groups ousted from Darfur by the Government of Sudan.
- Activists protest to US State Department at Boston City Hall Plaza, March 18, 2009 (photo Pax Communications)
Protesters appeared at the Federal Buildings in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and at Boston’s City Hall Plaza. Activists used their cell phones to send text messages to a State Department number for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as did a number of church congregations that took part Sunday.
The first event started March 23 in Los Angeles, said Susan Morgan, a spokeswoman and member of both the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition and Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur.
“There’s a really incredible network of grassroots activists,” said Morgan, who estimated that 200 to 300 people participated in the Boston protest, as well as 50 in New York and smaller groups in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco.
The activists presented a united appeal on behalf of the 16 expelled aid groups, said Morgan, referring to humanitarian agencies accused by the Sudan government of collaborating with the International Criminal Court.
The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Ameerah Haq, said in Khartoum today that up to 650,000 people in Darfur currently do not have access to full health care, nutritional surveillance and supplementary feeding programmes for malnourished children and for pregnant and nursing women have been interrupted and access to those in need is hampered by administrative hurdles such as the lack of travel permits and technical agreements.
“To call the situation in Darfur a grave emergency is an understatement,” said Mohamed Suleiman, a Darfuri and a member of the Executive Committee of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition.
He added that two camps in the Zalingei area, Hassa Hissa and Khamsa Dagaig, have cut food rations to 60%. The camps, which are being managed by local sheiks in the absence of aid organizations, are also running out of chlorine for purifying water, he said. Oil generators for water pumps, which used to run ten hours per day, now are running only six hours per day.
Medical clinics for the camp residents now provide treatment only three days a week, as opposed to five days a week prior to the expulsion order, and medical supplies are dwindling, said Suleiman. He cautioned that it would be too dangerous for camp residents to venture into the city of Zalingei for treatment at the hospital, since in the past there has been a lot of harassment from Janjaweed in the area.
“Grassroots activists have worked closely with both Save Darfur Coalition and ENOUGH on this and they have helped move things forward,” stated Morgan, referring to Washington-based lobbyist groups. “However, we want the Administration to understand that this concern is fueled by the concern of ordinary Americans in many parts of the country.”
In Los Angeles, activists representing Stop Genocide Now pitched a tent in front of the Federal Building in order to draw attention to their position on Darfur. Three leaders of the group subsequently departed for Chad, according to their website.
“Activists want Secretary Clinton to make the Darfur emergency and peace in Sudan a top priority immediately,” explained Morgan.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said that he intended to implement a no-fly zone over Darfur. State Department officials have declined to comment on the campaign promise, which is endorsed by Darfur rebel groups.
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SPECIAL NOTE: The Los Angeles demonstration referred to in the above article was spear-headed by Gabriel and Katie-Jay, who are in the videos below.
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Day 2 of iACT 7 team of three USA citizens sit out a sandstorm in NDjamena, Chad
Uploaded by iACTivism
Text from the upload
The i-ACT team sits out a sand storm in NDjamena as they wait for permits to travel to the East. News from Darfur requires urgent and consistent action that reaches our leaders from all angles.
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Day 1 0f i-ACT team of three USA citizens in NDjamena, Chad
Uploaded by iACTivism
Text from the upload
Yuen-Lin, KTJ, and Gabriel make it to NDjamena, Chad safely, but without luggage. They are received by new friends at UNHCR and old friends at Le Meridien hotel! The day is spent gathering the usual permits needed for the refugee camps and charging all equipment.
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Preparation of i-ACT team of three USA citizens for going to Chad - Darfuri refugee camps
April 23 through April 1, 2009
Uploaded by iACTivism
Text from the upload
Gabriel, Katie-Jay and Yuen-Lin are heading back to Chad amidst the chaos of humanitarian groups being forced out of Darfur. Join them (and get your friends to join us too!) on their journey back to the camps, to meet new friends, and rejoin old ones. As usual, we will have daily actions which are even more important in these pressing times.
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This Letter to the Editor has been accepted for publication in The Newport Daily News, Newport, Rhode Island. Hopefully, it will be published in the next day or two since the timeframe of the letter is March 23 - April 1, 2009.
It will be interesting what heading is selected by the editor for the letter.
Written March 22, 2009
Dear Editor,
March 4, 2009 Judges at The International Criminal Court (ICC) ordered the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with war crimes and crimes against humanity for playing an essential role in the murder, rape, torture, pillage and displacement of large numbers of civilians in Darfur.
March 4, sixteen humanitarian aid organizations that have been providing potable water, food and medical care to refugees were abruptly ordered to leave. Now 4.7 million Darfuris are without help.
The government of Sudan ordered banks in Sudan to freeze bank accounts of the aid organizations.
After al-Bashir expelled the humanitarian organizations, the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed took over the roles that the organizations had been doing at the camps. Not only is there a critical lack of water, food and medical attention, there is no milk for the babies. Now, the Darfuris must stand by and watch their usual rations of food, medicine and shelter get sold in the market.
Families as large as seven get one small plastic container of water. Each person gets less than 2 liters a day to drink with no water left over for cleaning or showering. The projections for one week from now are far worse.
Camps were attacked by the government and the Janjaweed the day after the arrest warrant was issued in retaliation for cheering upon news of the ICC’s decision. All survivors were driven out of the camps with no place to go.
Thousands are fleeing to the Chad border with anywhere from 30,000 to 4 million more refugees expected to follow. All have been met by the Sudanese government guarding the borders, intent on forced starvation in the Darfur desert.
There are 63,000 newcomers to the camps since January without any registration. They gather on the bare ground.
In Darfur camps Kalma and Domaya disease is already rampant. Meningitis, cholera and diarrhea have infected hundreds already. Most doctors have left and the few remaining who are treating entire camps are leaving any day.
Starting March 23 through April 1, 09 Gabriel, Katie-Jay and Yuen-Lin of Stop Genocide Now will connect us through the internet with the faces and lives of Darfuri refugees who have escaped, for now, genocide in their homeland. They will talk to the Darfuri people and allow us to hear what they say about justice and peace, enabling us to see and understand the situation on the ground right now. Daily videos from Darfuri refugees will be posted on their website http://www.stopgenocidenow.org/iact/iact7 And they can be followed at http://twitter.com/iact Actions that we citizens can do to help change the way the world responds to genocide will be offered.
We can do something. People are dying to be heard.
Sandra Hammel
www.newportdailynews.com
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Check out this cartoon (or as I prefer to call it ~ a"short film") about Darfur
www.markfiore.com/political/cops-darfur
Omar al-Bashir accused of "exterminating" refugees by expelling international aid agencies.
from miafarrow.orgThe chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court has accused Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir of "exterminating" refugees by expelling international aid agencies.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that by blocking aid the president was attacking the civilians in the giant camps that dot Darfur.
He called for President Bashir to be arrested as soon as he leaves Sudan. The president is due to attend this month's Arab League summit in Qatar. Speaking to the BBC's Network Africa, Mr Moreno-Ocampo said that by expelling the international aid agencies the president was "confirming that he is exterminating his people".
Mr Moreno-Ocampo said that he would work for the arrest of President Bashir as soon as he leaves Sudan.
Judges at the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges earlier this month. Mr Moreno-Ocampo said that entering international airspace would be enough, since UN Security Council resolution 1583 urges all UN members to co-operate with the court.
Qatar, which invited President Bashir to the Arab League summit, has not signed the statute that brought the ICC into being.
Some Sudanese leaders, concerned about the president's safety, have urged him not to visit the annual Arab summit, due to start on 29 March. Earlier this week the Sudanese former president Siwar Al-Dahab urged President Bashir to exercise "patience and wisdom" and not risk travelling to Qatar "for his safety and the safety of Sudanese people".
The United Nations and the Sudanese authorities concluded a joint assessment mission to Darfur to investigate how best to deal with the camps after President Bashir's expulsion of the 13 international aid agencies.
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Ejected from Darfur, aid workers fear for people there
NAIROBI, Kenya — On her last day in the war-torn Darfur region of western Sudan , Gemma Davies , a 29-year-old British staffer with Doctors Without Borders, helped arrange for a gunshot victim to be transferred from the charity group's remote mountain clinic to a faraway state hospital. She watched as doctors discharged a young mother a day after a difficult delivery.
Then she and about a dozen colleagues lifted off in a helicopter, leaving behind a small local staff, a few weeks' worth of supplies and a promise to make radio contact twice a day. Their departure, three days before the International Criminal Court was due to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al Bashir in connection with atrocities in Darfur , was a security precaution, and Davies figured she'd return to the clinic in a couple of weeks.
Now, however, Davies and her team, part of the Dutch arm of Doctors Without Borders, are banned from Darfur after Sudan expelled 13 international humanitarian agencies and three domestic groups last week who were working in the troubled region. Soon after the warrant was announced, Bashir accused the foreign agencies of collaborating with the court — which they deny — and Sudanese authorities began freezing their bank accounts and confiscating computers, telephones and radios.
The future of the clinic where Davies worked — and that of scores of programs throughout Darfur that provided clean drinking water, sturdy latrines, prenatal care, vaccinations, schooling and emergency food for malnourished children — is in doubt. The clinic and many other sites are cut off from communication and supply lines, reduced to islands in a harsh, sprawling scrubland the size of Texas .
Relief groups are scrambling to shutter their offices, pay off local staff members and vacate the country, with no idea how — or whether — their programs will continue. The United Nations estimates that the expulsions will affect 1.1 million people.
"We're very concerned that we've left patients behind," Davies said in an interview in Nairobi , in neighboring Kenya , where many expelled aid workers are beginning to arrive.
Read the rest of the article from mcclatchy~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Al-Bashir's Revenge
By humanitarian Mia FarrowFrom www.huffingtonpost.com/mia-farrow/al-bashirs-revenge
Yesterday the International Criminal Court charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with war crimes and crimes against humanity for his 'essential role' in the murder, rape, torture, pillaging and displacement of millions in the Darfur region of Sudan.
It is less widely known that within hours of the ICC's call for his arrest, al-Bashir expelled 13 key humanitarian agencies from Sudan. They include Oxfam, Solidarities, Mercy Corps, Doctors Without Borders, CARE, Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee. Armed men have forcibly shut down aid compounds, seizing computers, cameras, personal phones and vehicles.
These agencies provided life saving food, water, health care and sanitation to more than two million displaced people. Humanitarian operations in Darfur are now facing total collapse.
Since 2003 the world watched hundreds of thousands die in Darfur. Are we now prepared to watch millions of innocent men, women and children perish of hunger and disease?
(photo by Mia Farrow)
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From miafarrow.org
Sudanese soldier ordered to rape children
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/03/04/sudan.expel/#cnnSTCVideoWhat do the refugees say about justice?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Puv36vgY_lwIRC one of the finest aid organizations:
Today, the Government of Sudan ordered the closure of our humanitarian aid programs in Darfur as well as North and East Sudan. This decision puts at risk the lives of 1.75 million men, women and children who depend on the IRC's lifesaving programs.Other aid organizations received similar orders to suspend their services.
Help us call on the international community to urge the Government of Sudan to reconsider this deplorable decision and ensure the delivery of lifesaving aid to vulnerable men, women and children in Sudan. Please make your voice heard now http://ga3.org/campaign/aid_sudan
Write President Obama
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
You can also call or write to the President:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
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Comments to President Obama:
202-456-1111
or
1-800-GENOCIDE
The White House comment line is available
9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. weekdays
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Find USA elected politicians contact information at this link:
www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
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Labels: Bashir, Chad, Change, Darfur, Genocide, GENOCIDE NEEDS YOUR SILENCE TO WORK WELL, ilovemylife, MORAL IMPERATIVE, Omar al-Bashir, Political Will, PRESIDENT OBAMA, Sandra Hammel, STOP, Sudan
posted by ilovemylife @ 11:10 PM
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