Stop Genocide in Sudan

Urge George W. Bush, Colin Powell and others to take action now

The AJWS has an online form which you can use to send a letter to George W. Bush, Colin Powell (Secretary of State), John Negroponte (Ambassador to the U.N.), and your U.S. senators and representatives.

So, go fill out that form: it just takes five minutes - and your actions will help persuade the people with power to take action to stop the impending genocide in Sudan

Those living in Brooklyn, NY may want to keep the names of the following people on file (in order to send similar letters to them in the future):

Representative Vito J. Fossella (13th Congressional District Residents)

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

Senator Charles Schumer

Nicholas Kristof's third article

Nichoal Kristof has written a third article in the Darfur series.

June 23, 2004

Magboula's Brush With Genocide

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

ALONG THE SUDAN-CHAD BORDER � Meet Magboula Muhammad Khattar and her baby, Nada.

I wrote about Ms. Khattar in my last two columns, recounting how the Janjaweed Arab militia burned her village, murdered her parents and finally tracked her family down in the mountains. Ms. Khattar hid, but the Janjaweed caught her husband and his brothers, only 4, 6 and 8 years old, and killed them all.

Ms. Khattar decided that the only hope for saving her two daughters and her baby sister was to lead them by night to Chad. They had to avoid wells where the Janjaweed kept watch, but eight days later, half-dead with hunger and thirst, they staggered across the dry riverbed that marks the border with Chad.

That's where I found Ms. Khattar. She is part of a wave of 1.2 million people left homeless by the genocide in Darfur.

Among those I met was Haiga Ibrahim, a 16-year-old girl who said her father and three older brothers had been killed by the Janjaweed. So Haiga led her crippled mother and younger brothers and sisters to Chad. But the place they reached along the border, Bamina, was too remote to get help from overtaxed aid agencies.

So when I found her, Haiga was leading her brothers and sisters 30 miles across the desert to the town of Bahai. "My mother can't walk any more," she said wearily. "First I'm taking my brother and sisters, and then I hope to go back and bring my mother."

There is no childhood here. I saw a 4-year-old orphan girl, Nijah Ahmed, carrying her 13-month-old brother, Nibraz, on her back. Their parents and 15-year-old brother are missing in Sudan and presumed dead.

As for Ms. Khattar, she is camping beneath a tree, sharing the shade with three other women also widowed by the Janjaweed. In some ways Ms. Khattar is lucky; her children all survived. Moreover, in some Sudanese tribes, widows must endure having their vaginas sewn shut to preserve their honor, but that is not true of her Zaghawa tribe.

Ms. Khattar's children have nightmares, their screams at night mixing with the yelps of jackals, and she worries that she will lose them to hunger or disease. But her plight pales beside that of Hatum Atraman Bashir, a 35-year-old woman who is pregnant with the baby of one of the 20 Janjaweed raiders who murdered her husband and then gang-raped her.

Ms. Bashir said that when the Janjaweed attacked her village, Kornei, she fled with her seven children. But when she and a few other mothers crept out to find food, the Janjaweed captured them and tied them on the ground, spread-eagled, then gang-raped them.

"They said, `You are black women, and you are our slaves,' and they also said other bad things that I cannot repeat," she said, crying softly. "One of the women cried, and they killed her. Then they told me, `If you cry, we will kill you, too.' " Other women from Kornei confirm her story and say that another woman who was gang-raped at that time had her ears partly cut off as an added humiliation.

One moment Ms. Bashir reviles the baby inside her. The next moment, she tearfully changes her mind. "I will not kill the baby," she said. "I will love it. This baby has no problem, except for his father."

Ms. Khattar, the orphans, Ms. Bashir and countless more like them have gone through hell in the last few months, as we have all turned our backs � and the rainy season is starting to make their lives even more miserable. In my next column, I'll suggest what we can do to save them. For readers eager to act now, some options are at www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds, Posting 479.

Nicholas Kristof's follow-up piece: Sudan's Final Solution
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has posted a follow-up article to his original one which brought news of the impending genocide in Sudan to the world's attention.

June 19, 2004

Sudan's Final Solution

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

ALONG THE SUDAN-CHAD BORDER � In my last column, I wrote about Magboula Muhammad Khattar, a 24-year-old woman whose world began to collapse in March, when the Janjaweed Arab militia burned her village and slaughtered her parents.

Similar atrocities were happening all over Darfur, in western Sudan, leaving 1.2 million people homeless. Refugees tell consistent tales of murder, pillage and rape against the Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit tribes by the Arabs driving them away.

As this genocide unfolded, the West largely ignored it. That was not an option for Ms. Khattar and her husband, Ali Daoud.

The night after the village massacre, survivors slipped out of the forest to salvage any belongings and bury their dead. They found the bodies of Ms. Khattar's mother and father; her father's corpse had been thrown in a well to poison the water supply. Ms. Khattar was now responsible for her 3-year-old sister as well as her own two children.

Then, as they prepared the bodies, one moved. Hussein Bashir Abakr, 19, had been shot in the neck and mouth and left for dead, but he was still alive. His parents had both been killed, along with all his siblings except for one brother, who had been shot in the foot but escaped.

That brother, Nuradin, gave up his duty to bury their parents, choosing instead to carry Hussein into the forest and to try to nurse him with traditional medicines. Nuradin's bullet wound made every step agonizing, but he was determined to save the only member of his family left. Over the next 46 nights, Nuradin dragged himself and his brother toward Chad.

Finally, they staggered over the dry riverbed marking the border, where I found them. Hussein has lost part of his tongue and many of his teeth and cannot eat solid food. He is sick and inconsolable; his wife and baby were carried off by the Janjaweed and haven't been seen since. As I interviewed him, he bent over to retch every couple of minutes, Nuradin still cradling him tenderly.

Ms. Khattar and most of the other villagers decided they could not make the long trek to Chad. So they inched forward at night to find refuge on a nearby mountain.

Every other night, she crept down the mountain to fetch water, risking kidnapping by the Janjaweed. "It was so hard in the mountains," Ms. Khattar recalled. "There were snakes and scorpions, and a constant fear of the Janjaweed." Six-foot cobras have killed some of the refugees. To feed her children, Ms. Khattar boiled leaves and plants normally eaten only by camels. Even so, her mother-in-law died.

Officially, Sudan had agreed to a cease-fire in Darfur. But at the end of May, a Sudanese military plane spotted the villagers' hideout, and soon after, the Janjaweed attacked.

"Ali had told me: `If the Janjaweed attack, don't try to save me. You can't help. Don't get angry. Just keep the children and run away to Bahai [in Chad]. Don't shout or say anything,' " Ms. Khattar said. So she hid in a hollow with the children, peeking out occasionally. She saw the Janjaweed round up all the villagers, including her husband and his three young brothers: Moussa, 8, Mochtar, 6, and Muhammad, 4. "Even the boys," she remembers. "They tied their hands like this" � she motioned with her arms in front of her � "and then forced them to lie on the ground." Then, she says, the males were all shot to death, while women were taken away to be raped.

There were 45 corpses, all killed because of the color of their skin, part of an officially sanctioned drive by Sudan's Arab government to purge the western Sudanese countryside of black-skinned non-Arabs.

The Sudanese authorities, much like the Turks in 1915 and the Nazis in the 1930's, apparently calculated that genocide offered considerable domestic benefits � like the long-term stability to be achieved by a "final solution" of conflicts between Arabs and non-Arabs � and that the world would not really care very much. It looks as if the Sudanese bet correctly.

Perhaps Americans truly don't care about the hundreds of thousands of lives at stake � we have other problems, and Darfur is far away. But my hunch is that if we could just meet the victims, we would not be willing to acquiesce in genocide.

After two Janjaweed attacks, Ms. Khattar was left a widow, responsible for three small, starving children in a land where showing her face would mean rape or death. I'll continue her saga in Wednesday's column.

MSF on Darfur Crisis and other relevant organisations
MSF on Darfur Crisis:

A Path of Scorched Earth

Donate to MSF

Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times has posted some relevant resources related to donating to organizations working in the Darfur area:

nicholaskristof - 4:32 PM ET June 22, 2004 (#479 of 482)

Readers keep asking me what they can do about the genocide unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, or who they can write to. I�m in the reporting business, not the lobbying business. But for those readers desperate for some ideas, here are some that have been passed on to me:
For readers who want to contribute financially, one of the main aid organizations active in Darfur itself is Doctors Without Borders. Its website is http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org . Another key group is the International Rescue Committee, which was building wells in one of the areas that I visited; its website is http://www.theirc.org .
For readers who want to engage their member of Congress or pursue the matter politically can find more information at this link from the International Crisis Group:
http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=2700& [...]
In addition, Africa Action is sponsoring an on-line petition calling for tougher action against the killings in Darfur:
http://www.africaaction.org/newsroom/release.php?op=read&documentid=572&
Human Rights Watch has produced superb reports on the crisis here:
http://hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/
Finally, for those who want to stay informed about the crisis in Darfur, there are several websites that have regular updates of news there. One is http://www.gurtong.com , another is http://www.reliefweb.it and another is http://www.allafrica.com/sudan/
This is just a small sampling of what�s out there. Most big aid groups, including all the major faith-based ones, are helping, from Catholic Relief Services ( http://www.catholicrelief.org ) to World Vision ( http://www.worldvision.org )to American Jewish World Service ( http://www.ajws.org ). Indeed, one of the big gaps has been Islamic charities, which have tended -- inexcusably -- to show sympathy for Sudan's Arab government. So the sad and ironic outcome is that the people of Darfur, who are virtually all Muslims, are getting significant help from Christians and Jews but almost nothing from fellow Muslims. I hope some Muslim aid groups will quickly remedy that.

Sample message to send to your mayor, governor or president
Amnesty International has a sample letter you can send to government officials such the mayor of your city, the governor of your state, or the president of your country.

Here is that sample letter:

Dear Sir/Madam:
I am writing to express my alarm over the appalling situation in Darfur, western Sudan, and to appeal to you to help protect the people of Darfur by introducing a resolution condemning the Government of Sudan�s slaughter of innocent civilians, blocking of humanitarian assistance, and support for militia groups.

Over the last year Amnesty International has reported on gross human rights abuses committed by the Sudanese government forces and by the government supported Janjawid militia as part of an effort to crush two armed opposition groups. Since then, thousands of men, women and children have been killed and wounded, villages burnt and livestock and goods plundered, mostly by the armed militias supported by the Sudanese government. In addition to the forced displacement of civilians, members of the Janjawid have raped women and girls and abducted children and adults. Over one million civilians from Darfur have been forced to leave their homes. Most have taken shelter within the region, swelling towns or forming vast camps outside the towns. Some 130,000 people have taken refuge in Chad. An unknown number - the UN puts the figure at 10,000 - have died at the hands of the Janjawid and Sudanese soldiers, including by indiscriminate or deliberate bombing by military planes, or by diseases which are spreading in overcrowded camps with limited water, food and medicine. Hundreds of people from the Darfur region, including human rights defenders and lawyers, have been detained and some tortured by the Sudanese security services.

I urge you to help end this crisis and pressure the Sudanese Government to protect the lives of the people of Darfur and ensure that their human rights are respected, to facilitate the immediate and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance, and to bring to justice to those responsible for committing human rights abuses. Please introduce the Darfur Hope Resolution and help bring peace and justice to the people of Darfur. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your response.

To read the Darfur Hope Resolution, go to:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/
sudan/darfur_hope_resolution.html

Sincerely,

Organizations working against genocide
Here are some organizations working against the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan:

World Vision's Help Sudan Drive
Passion of the Present weblog on the Darfur crisis
Amnesty International on human rights concerns in Sudan
UNHCR drive to help the neighboring country of Chad

Updated news on the situation in Darfur
Updated news on the Darfur genocide crisis:

Sudan under growing international pressure over Darfur
Sudan: Unicef Head Says Crisis Worsening in Darfur
UN appeals to donors to contribute to Darfur refugees

Sign the petition against genocide
Please add your name, email, and message to this petition against the ongoing genocide in Sudan.

There is another petition online for worldwide action. It already has over 450 signatures. Please add yours there too.

Or read more about what is going on.

About the ongoing Genocide in Sudan

Stop the genocide in Sudan

June 16, 2004
According to an article in the New York Times today, it is possible that 320,000 people will be killed in the ongoing genocide in Sudan by the end of the year. Please write to your governmental representative to urge that the United States and other countries intervene to stop this genocide before it is too late.

Take action:

Sign the online petition urging world goverments to intervene immediately to stop this genocide in Sudan.

Names and addresses of governmental representative whom you can contact (Coming Soon).

Here is the article from the New York Times about what is happening:

Dare We Call It Genocide?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: June 16, 2004

ALONG THE CHAD-SUDAN BORDER � The Bush administration says it is exploring whether to describe the mass murder and rape in the Darfur region of Sudan as "genocide." I suggest that President Bush invite to the White House a real expert, Magboula Muhammad Khattar, a 24-year-old widow huddled under a tree here.

The world has acquiesced shamefully in the Darfur genocide, perhaps because 320,000 deaths this year (a best-case projection from the U.S. Agency for International Development) seems like one more boring statistic. So listen to Ms. Khattar's story, multiply it by hundreds of thousands, and let's see if we still want to look the other way.

Just a few months ago, Ms. Khattar had a great life. Her sweet personality and lovely appearance earned a hefty bride price of 40 cattle when she was married four years ago to Ali Daoud, a prosperous farmer. The family owned 300 cattle and 50 camels, making them among the wealthiest in their village, Ab-Layha in western Sudan. Ms. Khattar promptly bore two children, the youngest born late last year.

About the same time, though, the Sudanese government resolved to crush a rebellion in Darfur, a region the size of France in western Sudan. Sudan armed and paid a militia of Arab raiders, the Janjaweed, and authorized them to slaughter and drive out members of the Zaghawa, Masalit and Fur tribes.

On March 12, Ms. Khattar was performing her predawn Muslim prayers about 4 a.m. when a Sudanese government Antonov aircraft started dropping bombs on Ab-Layha, which is made up of Zaghawa tribespeople. Moments later, more than 1,000 Janjaweed attackers rode into the village on horses and camels, backed by Sudanese government troops in trucks.

"The Janjaweed shouted: `We will not allow blacks here. We will not let Zaghawa here. This land is only for Arabs,' " Ms. Khattar recalled.

Ms. Khattar grabbed her children, and, as shots and flames raged around her, raced for a nearby forest. But her father and mother tried to protect their animals � they were yelling, "Don't take our livestock." They were both shot dead.

The attack was part of a deliberate strategy to ensure that the village would be forever uninhabitable, that the Zaghawa could never live there again. The Janjaweed poisoned wells by stuffing them with the corpses of people and donkeys. They also blew up a dam that supplied water to the farms, destroyed seven hand pumps in the village and burned all the homes and even the village school, the clinic and the mosque.

In separate interviews, I talked to more than a dozen other survivors from Ab-Layha, and they all confirm Ms. Khattar's story. By most accounts, about 100 people were massacred that day in Ab-Layha, and a particular effort was made to exterminate all men and boys, even the very young. Women and girls were sometimes allowed to flee, but the prettiest were kidnapped.

Most of those raped don't want to talk about it. But Zahra Abdel Karim, a 30-year-old woman, told me how in the same attack on Ab-Layha, the Janjaweed shot to death her husband, Adam, and 7-year-old son, Rahshid, as well as three of her brothers. Then they grabbed her 4-year-old son, Rasheed, from her arms and cut his throat.

The Janjaweed took her and her two sisters away on horses and gang-raped them, she said. The troops shot one sister, Kuttuma, and cut the throat of the other, Fatima, and they discussed how to mutilate her. (Sexual humiliation has been part of the Sudanese strategy to drive out the African tribespeople. The Janjaweed routinely add to the stigma by branding or scarring the women they rape.)

"One Janjaweed said: `You belong to me. You are a slave to the Arabs, and this is the sign of a slave,' " she recalled. He slashed her leg with a sword before letting her hobble away, stark naked. Other villagers confirmed that they had found her naked and bleeding, and she showed me the scar on her leg.

By comparison, Ms. Khattar was one of the lucky ones. She lost her parents, her home and all her belongings, but her husband and children were alive, and she had not been raped. Unfortunately, her luck would soon run out.

I'll tell you more of her story on Saturday, because if she and her people aren't victims of genocide, then the word has no meaning.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/opinion/16KRIS.html