Group seeks help for Darfur
By Jim Welte, Marin Independent Journal.
Sept 4, 2005 — As one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history unfolded on the Gulf Coast, more than 200 local residents packed into a Marin City church Wednesday night to hear about human tragedy of a different sort.
Spurred by horrible stories of government-supported genocide in the African nation of Sudan, Tiburon resident Gerri Miller formed Dear Sudan, Love Marin more than a year ago. She sought to raise money for humanitarian aid, raise awareness here about the situation in the Darfur region of western Sudan and to urge U.S. political leaders to do more to halt the crisis there.
To educate Marin residents about the Darfur situation, in which more than 180,000 have died and another 2 million have been displaced, the group and U.S. Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, invited one of the top experts on Sudan, U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., to speak on the matter.
“I’m so proud, but not at all surprised, that Marin County is rising to the challenge of doing something about Darfur,” Woolsey told the crowd. She called Payne “the conscience of the Congress when it comes to Africa.”
Payne has traveled to Sudan, a massive country nearly two-thirds the size of the U.S., several times in recent years and was on hand when the Sudan Peace Accord was signed in January, an event that was thought to quell much of the civil unrest that has stricken the country for decades.
He described the history that led to the current crisis, noting that Sudan, like many central African countries, has had a long-standing civil war between the Arabic north and the black south. When the peace accord was being brokered in early 2003, some Darfur residents felt that they were being excluded from the process and attacked some government soldiers.
At that point, “the government of Sudan turned on its own people,” seizing an opportunity to move the black farmers out of the Darfur region, freeing up more fertile land for Arabic herders from the north, Payne said. “The government came back with overwhelming force.”
The government then turned over the “real destruction:” to the Janjaweed, bands of Arabic men on horse- and camel-back who are thought to be largely responsible for the killing, rapes and burning of villages in a scorched-earth campaign to drive the settled, farming population from the region.
“The government wants the blacks to leave Sudan – period,” Payne said.
More than 1 million were pushed to Sudan’s border with Chad, according to the United Nations. The killings and burnings of homes have diminished in recent months. In the past 15 months, approximately 20,000 people have returned permanently to their villages in West Darfur, although more than 700,000 people remain displaced.
Payne said the time to act is now. He suggested several possibilities, the most immediate of which is for Congress to appropriate money to help fund a group of African Union peacekeeping troops. The troops can do the job, but the union can’t afford to pay them or move them around the country, he said.
He urged the gathered audience to write letters to elected officials and the media to push the plight of the Darfurians to the forefront. He also urged people to lobby their state legislators to pass a law to divest state pension funds from any companies doing business in Sudan, a move Payne’s state made three weeks ago.
Both Miller and Payne said we need to avoid repeating what happened in Rwanda in 1994, when Hutu loyalists killed 800,000 Tutsis over a three-month period. In that case, the U.S. government did not intervene militarily.
Former President Bill Clinton has called not acting in that case the greatest regret of his presidency.
“I would rather prevent what happened than issue an apology afterwards,” Payne said.
Payne assailed the Bush administration’s policy on Sudan.
“The policy now seems to be that ‘if you say you are friends with us in the war on terror, we’ll forget about what you do to your own people,’” Payne said. “That’s unbelievable to me. There is absolutely no shame – it’s disgraceful.”
Miller’s group, under the auspices of the Marin chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council, started after the successful launch of Dear Sudan, Love Petaluma, which raised more than $10,000 for humanitarian relief there – enough to feed 55,000 refugees there.
Payne applauded the turnout for the event and urged the audience to lobby for government intervention.
“People like yourselves can change the political climate even more than our leaders can in some cases,” he said. “We really have to keep this issue before the world.”