Celebrities, activists call for Darfur ceasefire
September 15, 2007 (LONDON) — Female celebrities and activists urged world leaders on Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire in Sudan’s Darfur region and the swift deployment of an expanded peacekeeping force there.
The women, including American actress Mia Farrow and Australian writer Germaine Greer, made the statement in an open letter to newspapers around the world ahead of next week’s U.N. General Assembly meeting to discuss the Darfur crisis.
The letter also came just before the Global Day for Darfur, street protests planned on Sunday in countries such as Britain, the U.S., New Zealand, South Africa and Japan to call for action in Darfur.
Organizers of the protests include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Save Darfur Coalition, and some of the demonstrators are expected to wear blindfolds while urging world leaders not to “look away now.”
“The crisis in Darfur and eastern Chad remains one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. The international community must not look the other way as the situation deteriorates,” said the letter by the 26 activists, eight of whom recently traveled to the western Sudanese region.
More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been uprooted since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in 2003, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan’s government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed, a charge it denies.
Efforts also are under way to speed up the deployment of a 26,000-strong African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur that is to replace a smaller, ineffectual mission of African Union troops.
Saturday’s letter urged politicians meeting at the U.N. to “move beyond sympathy for the suffering” and to “step up the pressure on all parties in the conflict to agree to an immediate cease-fire.”
Other signatories of the letter included Dame Anita Roddick, the Body Shop founder who died in England earlier this week; Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Kerry Kennedy, the founder of America’s Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights; models Elle Macpherson and Eva Padberg; and actress Cate Blanchett.
(AP)
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On the Net:
Globe for Darfur: http://www.globefordarfur.org