Urge the next U.S. president to make Darfur a day 1 priority.
Don't let Al-Bashir escape justice.
Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition, recently returned from Tanzania where he attended a workshop on re-energizing the Darfur peace process. He recorded the following video at the conference:
Stay tuned for more reports from the conference and to hear from Darfuri civil society leaders.
Samantha Power, award-winning journalist, anti-genocide advocate and Harvard University professor, recently participated in Esquire magazine’s "Portrait of the 21st Century." The project, a creation of sculptor and new-media artist Lincoln Schatz is "an evolving video portrait of the most influential people of the coming decades."
Below is Samantha Power’s video portrait
Please see the note below from Mia Farrow:
Dear Friends,
I am currently visiting the Darfur region for the tenth time since 2004.
On this trip, I will once again listen to people tell me their stories and again they will plead for protection. Yet again I will promise them that I will tell the world what has happened to them.
Joey Cheek, 2006 Olympic gold medalist and co-founder of Team Darfur, has been denied entry to China for the 2008 Olympic Games.
Joey, who has also contributed to this blog, had been granted an entry visa to attend the games and support Team Darfur, an international coalition of Olympic athletes helping to raise awareness about the Darfur genocide. Last night, however, the Chinese government revoked the visa.
According to the Washington Post (registration required):
A Chinese official informed Cheek that it was not necessary to give a reason for revoking his visa less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to fly from Washington to Beijing.
In a statement published on the LA Times web site, Cheek said:
I am saddened not to be able to attend the Games. The Olympic Games represent something powerful: that people can come together from around the world and do things that no one thought were possible. However, the denial of my visa is a part of a systemic effort by the Chinese government to coerce and threaten athletes who are speaking out on behalf of the innocent people of Darfur.
Yesterday, I wrote about a Darfur Consortium report that illustrates the effects of the international community’s inadequate efforts to deploy UNAMID, the A.U.-U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur.
The report received a high-level endorsement today. Rodolphe Adada, the Joint A.U.-U.N. Special Representative for Darfur, expressed his appreciation for the Consortium’s effort to produce the report.
As the one-year anniversary of the authorization of UNAMID approaches, we are constantly reminded of the world’s failure to protect the people of Darfur.
The Darfur Consortium released a report today that provides a view of Darfur from the ground, the miserable conditions that Darfuri civilians are enduring, and the inability of a long-delayed and ill-equipped peacekeeping force to protect them.
Journalist Diana Mukkaled wrote an interesting piece last weekend in the Arabic Daily, Asharq Alawsat, about ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s charges of genocide against Sudanese president Omar
al-Bashir.
She suggests that many in the Arab media have been too quick to condemn the charges, saying:
Confronting the indictment must be preceded by proving the injustice that surrounds it. But for sovereignty to precede justice, this is a violation of the rights of those groups and victims, estimated at tens of thousands, as they remain in their [refugee] camps with no real indications of when their ordeal will be dealt with.
David Sullivan, Research Associate at Save Darfur’s partner organization, the ENOUGH Project, wrote for the Wonk Room about China’s support for the brutal dictatorships in Sudan in Zimbabwe.
David suggests that China’s defense of Al-Bashir and Mugabe may soon exhaust the patience of the rest of the U.N. Security Council. But in order to make a difference in Darfur, it’s time for the U.S. to act.
Darfuris in London rallied in support of ICC prosecutor, Moreno-Ocampo’s charges against President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan.
A video of the rally, which took place in front of the Sudanese embassy in London, is available on Friction TV.
