Darfur Crisis Update: "We are saying to the Chinese and the Russians: Please stop your guns."
Here is a statement that Bob Costas won't be reading you from the Olympic Village in Beijing; instead, Mia Farrow has brought it forth from the desolation of Darfur -- Richard Power
The Oumda Al-Fathi and the other Oumdas (Leaders) of the refugees in the camp presented me with a document. It is in Arabic but this is the translation:
1. We agree with the decision of the International Criminal Court.
2. The refugees have no link to the International community. But they must listen to our voices, not the voice of Omar Al-Bashir.
3. Arrest all the guilty people immediately.
a We are connected to the IDP community in Darfur. They do not have the freedom to speak.
b We do not like African forces. We do not like the AU.
4. Disarm the Janjaweed and the military.
5. Those who occupied our land and homes must leave. Our homes must be returned to us, and our belongings.
6. We refuse to accept Government of Sudan in any humanitarian agency.
7. Stop infiltration of camps. People are entering, representing themselves as Chadians but they are Sudanese spies.
8. We need secondary schools. Our children are only given schooling up to 8th grade. If they are uneducated this means there will be more war in the future. (Education is the way for people to find things in common other than their ethnicity.)
9. We are requesting (demanding) other return of our belongings which have been taken from us. Compensation
10. They must arrest Omar Al-Bashir as quickly as possible or he will kill more. Just now we have heard many people are being killed.
Those who refused to celebrate Omar Al-Bashir during his visit to Darfur, he has killed them.
We are saying to the Chinese and the Russians: Please stop your guns.
We are very poor Darfuri people. We are trying to survive. This is our right. Our right must be before other things.
To the African people. Where have they gone? Where were they when we were being killed, when we have been violated? They have to see things with our eyes. Today it is the Darfurian people but tomorrow it could be them. Oumda Al-Fathi and Other Oumdas (Leaders) via Mia Farrow, 8-10-08
I encourage you to follow events in Darfur on Mia Farrow's site, it is the real-time journal of a humanitarian at work; the content is compelling, insightful and fiercely independent.
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For a Words of Power Archive of posts on the Crisis in Darfur, click here.
Here are other sites of importance:
Dream for Darfur
Enough: The Project to End Genocide and Mass Atrocities
Genocide Intervention Network
Divest for Darfur.
Save Darfur!
Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.
Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Olympics, Divestment, G8, UN, Genocide, Eric Reeves, Mia Farrow, Dream for Darfur, China, Sudan, Investors Against Genocide, Richard Power, Words of Power
