Today's DARFUR posts: Getting Worse by the Minute

applegrove

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Tue May-24-05 08:06 PM
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Today's DARFUR posts: Getting Worse by the Minute

Edited on Tue May-24-05 08:49 PM by applegrove

Open Letter to President Bush on Darfur - 3/24/05 - posted by WesDem

Link to DU Thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3721673

National Leaders Release Open Letter to President Bush on Darfur
Tuesday May 24th, 2005 21:14.

Open Letter Signed by Scores of National Advocacy Groups, Members of Congress, Interfaith Leaders & Women's, Youth & Labor Organizations

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 (Washington, DC) -- Africa Action this morning hosted a media briefing, along with other national advocacy groups, to demand that President Bush take specific steps to stop the genocide in Darfur. The groups released an Open Letter to the President on Darfur, signed by 80 prominent national organizations and leadership figures, representing millions of Americans. The letter lays out the most important immediate steps that leading advocacy groups and leadership figures from across the U.S. believe the Bush Administration must take to stop the genocide & protect the people in Darfur.

At this morning's briefing, heads of leading advocacy organizations spoke about the urgency of the situation in Darfur and the necessary U.S. and international response. Salih Booker, Executive Director of Africa Action, said, "The President of the U.S. has recognized that genocide is occurring, but apparently there are more pressing matters requiring his attention. We must ask, what could possibly be more pressing than genocide? Unless there is an immediate international intervention in Darfur, up to a million people may be dead by the end of this year."

The Open Letter to the President on Darfur asserts the need for an urgent international intervention to support the African Union's mission in Darfur, in order to: (1) stop the killing and provide security for millions of internally displaced people (IDPs); (2) facilitate the urgent delivery of humanitarian assistance; (3) enforce the cease fire and provide a stable environment for meaningful peace talks to proceed; and (4) facilitate the voluntary return of IDPs to their land and the reconstruction of their homes by providing a secure environment.

The letter calls on the Bush Administration to (1) work through the United Nations (UN) to achieve a stronger civilian protection mandate for the African Union mission and for a broader international force, and (2) encourage the UN to quickly approve and assemble a robust international force to integrate or co-deploy with the African Union and reinforce its efforts.

-more-

http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=9745

Sudan-CIA relationship preventing intervention? posted by Terran1212

Link to DU Thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3722136

http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=9686

Excerpt:

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute reminds us that "eportedly, when President George W. Bush first read reports of former-President Clinton's indifference to the genocide that left roughly 800,000 dead in Rwanda, he scribbled 'not on my watch' in the margins."

Now, very much on his watch, to nurture his partnership with the genocidal government of Sudan, Bush has become an accomplice in that genocide by not mobilizing action against it.

Next week: unmistakable evidence that Sudan's equivalent of the CIA, the Mukhabarat, is indeed providing the CIA with exceptionally valuable information on terrorists' organizing, and their planned actions, against the United States. Can the Bush administration make a reasonable survival argument that for America's self-defense, it has no choice but to continue its "fruitful relationship" with this ruthless force of evil-even if more white-robed children, like those outside the school in Um Seifa, are raped and murdered?

I'll be very interested in your reactions.

Genocide Update: Sudanese Forces Arrest Hundreds Of War Refugees! posted by DistressedAmerican

Link to DU Thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3718634

Leave it the the BBC to keep up INTERESTED AND CARING Americans up to date!

They should get themselves some oil fields! Them we'd give a shit!

==================================================================

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4574919.stm

Sudan forces surround southerners

Rumours of forced resettlement prompted clashes last week
Sudanese security forces have arrested 250 people after surrounding an illegal shanty town full of southerners displaced by two decades of civil war.

Rumours of forced resettlement prompted clashes last week

Machine guns mounted on pick-up vehicles pointed at the ramshackle houses in Soba Aradi which is in a suburb of the capital, Khartoum.

Several lorry loads of men and women were beaten with sticks and then taken away to a local police station.

Last week, 14 policemen died during an attempt to resettle residents.

-More At The Link-

From DU thread Genocide update: "NATO on alert to provide help in Darfur" (Bush silent) : http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3692135

posted by Nothing Without Hope

(Repost halfway down yesterday's thread - and posted again by Nothing Without Hope)

These are the points that are off the top of my head. I invite you to discuss them and put forward your own:. I will number them to make them easier to refer to, but they are in no particular order. Please read them, think about them, put your own into play, and start the process that will lead to better understanding.

1) Donation/Charities: Which are the best places to donate? There needs to be a complete and efficient conduit to the people who need it most. This in turn requires not only a well-run and honest organization, but ACCESS and COMMUNICATION. I don't know what the various aid organizations are doing in this arena. We need to find out.

2) Legislation: Upthread I have given summaries of three bills and a resolution in the US Congress that are specifically directed at the Darfur situation http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3692135&mesg_id=3695339 - and both of the "Darfur Genocide Accountability" bills are still in play). We need a legal/legislative maven to look at these and give us advice on what are the most important provisions, what needs to be pushed, and how to push it. Even I can see significant differences between the Senate bill and the House one, with the latter being more powerful. There are also about 10 additional hits in Thomas on a search with "Darfur." That means that Darfur is mentioned somewhere in them, even though their titles don't seem directly related. We need to know what is going on with those - there may be sections that are important.

3) Political associations with Darfur: Upthread entries also deal with the unsavory interaction of the Bush Administration and the butchers responsible for the policies driving the killing. We need to understand this interaction fully and unmask the connections. If our own government is in fact promoting the power of the butchers, we need to know it and expose it for what it is.

4) Disinformation by the Bush Administration: The Bush Administration has misinformed the American public about important aspects of the Darfur situation, such as consistently giving mortality estimates that are far too low http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3692135&mesg_id=3695339 . They also have a relationship with a faction there that has primary responsibility for the genocide see the previous entry in this list). What other lies are they telling? And how are these being spread by the compliant news media?

5) Global response: How can the rest of the world best act to stop the horrors in Darfur? Specific requests have been made and some countries, like Canada, are already responding to them (Canada's response was described at the beginning of the first post). The US should not be a lone cowboy blundering around, we need to coordinate with other countries in a wise and well-planned way to alleviate the suffering and stop the horror. What should be the US priorities in dealing with Darfur? And how can we coordinate with other countries and with people within Darfur to best address this crisis?

6) Events and organized activism: There are sites with Darfur/Sudan-related events listed. We need to provide consistent and comprehensive links to such events. We also need to help spread the word on them through the media and blogs - one of our strengths. And we need to consider what forms of activism, with what specific target audiences and goals, we might initiate ourselves.

7) Reports and first-hand observation: To plan wisely, we must know what is going on in Darfur, a complex and ever-evolving situation. We need to find out sources for this information and organize a way to link to and report on it in a way that concerned but busy people can grasp and respond to appropriately.

8)Liaison/Cooperation among aid-giving organizations: What are the various Christian organizations doing in the Sudan? The Jewish? The Muslim? Other religious organizations? Other philanthropic organizations? The right and left hands need to know what each other is doing. This must be done in a way that reinforces the flow of aid into a smooth-flowing river, not a tangled miscellany of little rivulets. There needs to be a central place where all these good people can keep track of what is being done so that all needs are met without duplication or omission.

9) At Democratic Underground: On a much smaller but still important scale, we need to consider, with input from the admins at some point, how we can most efficiently organize here at DU to spread and maintain awareness of what needs to be done for the Darfur people and what can be done by the DU community. People here have good hearts but generally little time to try to figure out what they should do in a complex situation like this. Specific, practical goals need to be identified and plans made to facilitate reaching them. We all want to help the people of Darfur, but we need more practical and specific goals if we are to aim at them accurately and efficiently.

/

I invite you to discuss these points and put forward your own. I believe the format and size of DU as an activist community and communications network can make a significant contribution toward aiding the suffering people of Darfur, but we need to do some work to figure out exactly how we can best approach this.

I'm thinking that perhaps I should post this as a new thread later today. I think something like this needs to be done in order to facilitate discussion, taking care to cross-link to key posts within this thread and other info. This thread is getting pretty long for people with dialup modems anyway.