World
Cover Story
SUDAN'S CRY from page 23
dills
Eyewitness
Jewish aid official reports on efforts to help.
RUTH W MESSINGER
Special to the Jewish News
New York City
ith Chanukah just past
and a new calendar year
around the corner, most
of us are reflecting on all there is to
be thankful for and embracing our
freedom as Jews and Americans.
As we count our blessings, it is my
hope that more American Jews will
think of those denied what we have
come to expect as basic human
rights — particularly those suffering
from genocidal campaigns in
Darfur, Sudan.
In this remote region, more than
1.5 million African tribal farmers
have been violently driven from
their homes by the gov-
ernment of Sudan and
the militias they armed,
called Janjaweed (evil
men on horseback).
Despite repeated calls
from humanitarian organizations
and U.N. agencies that warn of the
worst humanitarian crisis in the
world today, the systematic program
of expulsion, rape and murderous
violence that has taken at least
100,000 lives continues.
As Jews, we have an increased
moral obligation to respond, to
speak out and take action against
ethnic cleansing. The epithet "never
again" must not be reserved for Jews
alone. In fact, Jews must be the
guardians of this call for action,
highly sensitive and responsive to all
attempts by any people to annihilate
another people.
W
Displaced children sit in front of a but in a camp in Sudan's Darfur region
in August.
were ill with life-threatening diar-
rhea. I met a 10-year-old boy —
clinging to the leg of a medical assis-
tant — who had seen his parents
and two brothers shot dead.
I met the mother of twins who
gave birth the day the militia came to
her village. She saw her brother, aunt
and uncle killed but she managed to
escape with her family, her newborn
babies tucked into a straw mat.
They and more than a million
others fled in terror and came gradu-
ally to camps being set up to receive
them --- now about 158 scattered
throughout Darfur (a region the size
of California).
These camps contain tens of
housands of families packed into tent
cities, fighting hunger, illness,
displacement, boredom
and depression. People
whose simple agricul-
tural life had allowed
them to remain self-suf-
ficient now have no
means of support.
Currently, the situation is deterio-
rating. The populations coming into
the camps keep growing, and there is
not enough food. There are too
many cases of dehydration, malnu-
trition and deadly diarrhea.
Living in close quarters like this
breeds its own set of sanitation,
physical and mental health prob-
lems. Mortality rates — already at
about 10,000 a month — could rise
suddenly.
ANALY SIS AND
COMM TART
A girl caring a baby on her back waits in a camp in Sudan's Darfur region.
The United Nations reports 1.5 mil-
lion people have been driven from
their homes. By current estimates, at
least 120,000 are living in tent camps,
where disease and malnutrition have
already claimed more than 70,000
lives (as of last March). A reported
200,000 Darfuri refugees are
encamped in neighboring Chad.
After 21 years of civil war in Sudan,
it is reported that more than 2 million
have died, many as a result of famine
induced by the fighting. The govern-
ment-backed Arab militia, known as
Janjaweed, has wiped out communities
of African tribal farmers, razed vil-
lages, raped and branded women and
12/31
2004
24
girls, murdered men and boys and
destroyed or tainted food and water
supplies.
In a Dec. 13 candlelight vigil in
New York City to protest the Darfur
genocide, the New York Board of
Rabbis and the Students of Yeshivat
Chovevei Torah joined other groups,
including New York University Law
Students for Human Rights, the
United Methodist Commission on
Christian Unity and Interreligious
Concern and the Columbia Coalition
for Sudan.
Locally, rabbis incorporated infor-
mation on Darfur in their Shabbat
Chanukah sermons to raise awareness
SUDAN'S CRY on page 26
Chilling Accounts
I went to Darfur in August to bear
witness, to assess humanitarian needs
and to ensure that funds provided by
the American Jewish community are
being and will be used effectively.
I met many of the displaced farmers
and listened to their chilling stories.
The government bombed their
villages; men on horses rode in,
often yelling ethnic slurs and shoot-
ing wildly. They stole; they raped;
they killed. They stuffed wells with
dead bodies or carcasses and burned
villages to the ground.
I met Fatima, whose five children
Outside Pressure Needed
Some of the Janjaweed have been
outfitted by the government as
"police" to provide "security" for the
camps. Women still disappear or are
raped when they venture out to
collect firewood to use for cooking
or to sell to buy food.
The U.S. Congress labeled the crisis
genocide in July, and the Bush admin-
istration followed suit in September,
but members of the U.N. Security
Council, particularly Russia, China
and Algeria, continue to block sane
tions and other strong actions, creat-
ing deadlines and weak resolutions
that are unenforceable and unheeded.
U.N. Secretaryy General Kofi Annan
reported that security is declining and
violence is on the upsurge.