Darfur Activists to protests at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington

Contacts:
– Esther Sprague : 415-750-9257 or (cell) 415-713-2495
– Martina Knee: 415-221-8400 or (cell) 703-989-1955

Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—December 7, 2006—Darfur grassroots activists from across the country will hold nonviolent protests at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC to demand the immediate protection of innocent civilians in Darfur, Sudan. The actions will include large-scale nonviolent civil disobedience and will begin at 12 Noon on December 9, 2006, the 58th anniversary of the UN Genocide Convention’s adoption.

Since 2003, the Government of Sudan has waged a brutal genocide against its own civilians in Darfur, killing over 450,000 and displacing more than 2.5 million people from their homes. President Bush has declared the crisis a genocide but has failed to stop the atrocities. I Stand with Darfur demands that President Bush stop trading Darfuri lives for Sudan’s intelligence information and, instead, protect the people of Darfur with an effective international peacekeeping force—with or without the Government of Sudan’s consent.

The Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, Chairwoman of the Save Darfur Coalition’s Million Voices for Darfur campaign, intends to be arrested on December 9, and will deliver public remarks on this day at 12 Noon at the Sudanese Embassy. Dr. White-Hammond, who visited the Darfur region last month, vowed, “We will not strategically tiptoe around the issue of genocide only to go comfortably to our own graves.”

The protest on December 9 is the first of an ongoing series of actions involving nonviolent civil disobedience. Activists will gather at the embassy on designated days until an effective multinational peacekeeping presence is deployed to Darfur. More information and online registration is available at http://www.istandwithdarfur.org.

“While the U.S. government refuses to take the political risks required to protect the people of Sudan from genocide, we are taking personal risk to stand with the victims,” said Gabriel Stauring, of StopGenocideNow and the leader of the I Stand with Darfur campaign. Gabriel, a resident of Los Angeles, plans to be arrested in Washington this weekend before embarking on his second trip to Darfuri refugee camps in Chad later this month.

Nikki Serapio, Director of Americans Against the Darfur Genocide and a Palo Alto resident, hopes the protests will bring attention to what he calls “the tragic hypocrisy” of the Bush administration’s relationship with Khartoum. “In front of reporters, President Bush rebukes the perpetrators of this genocide. In truth, however, his administration has gone out of its way to roll out a big red carpet for the murderers.”

Among other things, campaign organizers cite Bush’s secret hosting of Major General Salah Gosh, Sudan’s intelligence chief and a man whom many analysts contend is a primary architect of the ongoing atrocities in Darfur. Last year, after determining that he was responsible for committing genocide, the White House shuttled Gosh to CIA headquarters on a private executive jet. On November 19, 2006, in a Washington Post Op-Ed, the non-partisan think-tank International Crisis Group confirmed the Bush administration and the Sudanese government continue to exchange intelligence information.

Co-sponsors of the campaign include Africa Action, Americans Against the Darfur Genocide, Camp Darfur, Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy, Dear Sudan, All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Genocide No More–Save Darfur, The Peace and Justice Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, The San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition, Stop Genocide Now, Sudan Divestment Task Force and The ETHIC (The Essence of True Humanity Is Compassion). ##