(C) Common Dreams
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Divisions Cast Aside in Cry for Darfur [1]
['Sudarsan Raghavan']
Date: 2006-05-01
Clutching signs that read "Never Again," thousands of protesters from across religious and political divides descended on the Mall yesterday along with celebrities and politicians to urge President Bush to take stronger measures to end the violence in Sudan's Darfur region that the United States has labeled genocide. They wore skullcaps, turbans, headscarves, yarmulkes, baseball hats and bandanas. There were pastors, rabbis, imams, youths from churches and youths from synagogues. They cried out phrases in Arabic and held signs in Hebrew. But on this day, they said, they didn't come out as Jews or Muslims, Christians or Sikhs, Republicans or Democrats.
They came out as one, they said, to demand that the Bush administration place additional sanctions on Sudan and push harder for a multinational peacekeeping force to be sent to Darfur.
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By Washington standards, where protests often draw more than 100,000 people, yesterday's rally -- estimated by organizers at between 10,000 and 15,000 -- was not huge. Yet the Rally to Stop Genocide appeared to be distinctive for being one of the more diverse rallies the capital has seen in years. Most demonstrations attract fairly homogenous crowds, who often share political, religious and ethnic makeup, as was the case when Latinos dominated immigration protests last month.
But yesterday's rally brought together people from dozens of backgrounds and affiliations, many of whom strongly disagree politically and ideologically on many issues. Judging from T-shirts and banners identifying the various groups, Jews appeared to be among the largest contingent of demonstrators.
Among the speakers were Rabbi David Saperstein; Al Sharpton; Joe Madison, a liberal black radio talk-show host who has been pushing the issue; Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention; rap and fashion mogul Russell Simmons; and former basketball star Manute Bol, who is himself Sudanese.
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"This is one world, and we are all one family," said Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of the Washington Archdiocese. "What happens to the people of Darfur happens to us."
Speaking later before the crowd, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said: "Paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong. . . . If we care, the world will care."
Lawrence B. Mogga, a former Sudanese diplomat who was forced to flee his country, stared at the crowd from his perch backstage and said: "I have never seen this type of organizational arrangement. I think this is the first of its kind."
Yesterday's rally, along with protests planned in 17 other cities, was the largest public outcry for Darfur since the conflict began three years ago. It underscores growing public support across the nation to end the bloodshed, in much the same way activists in the 1980s launched a social justice campaign to end South Africa's apartheid system.
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"The world policy on Sudan is failing," said actor George Clooney, who recently visited the Chad-Sudan border, where hundreds of thousands of Darfuris live in refugee camps. "If we turn our heads and look away and hope it will all go away, then they will, and an entire generation will disappear."
His father, Nick Clooney, a veteran journalist, said: "We didn't stop the Holocaust. We didn't stop Cambodia. We didn't stop Rwanda. But this one, we can stop."
In recent months, universities, states and municipalities have divested some of their investments from companies doing business with Sudan. Last month, Providence, R.I., became the first city to stop investing in Sudan. There are divestment campaigns underway at the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia. And Maryland is considering a formal request by Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (R) to have the state's pension plan divest billions of dollars from firms with ties to Sudan.
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The Darfur conflict began in February 2003, when mostly non-Arab rebels launched attacks seeking greater political autonomy. Sudan's Arab-dominated Islamist government, in response, dispatched troops and pro-government Arab militias known as the Janjaweed to quell the uprising. The militias embarked on a campaign of terror, killing and raping civilians mostly from non-Arab ethnic groups, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their villages. In 2004, the United States labeled the atrocities as genocide.
At about the same time, the villagers, who like their attackers are mostly Muslim, got an unlikely ally. American Jewish groups were growing alarmed by the atrocities. They drew parallels to the Holocaust and how the world remained silent as Jews were killed. Many also said they were disturbed by the world's failure to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. They were determined not to let it happen again and soon launched the Save Darfur Coalition.
The coalition has grown into a broad-based alliance of more than 160 faith-based groups that include religious and secular Jews, evangelical Christians, Catholics, Muslims, human rights organizations, Arab groups, black churches and Buddhists.
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Yesterday, demonstrators came from as far as Maine and as near as Tenleytown. More than 200 buses, from as many as 41 states, arrived in the District. They wore T-shirts with slogans like "Not on Our Watch" and "Save Darfur."
As the rally began, the crowd sang a message to the children of Darfur:
"You are not alone."
"You are not alone."
The rally comes as the humanitarian situation is worsening, the United Nations and human rights groups say. At least 200,000 have died and 2.5 million, most of them non-Arabs, have fled to refugee camps inside Darfur or to neighboring Chad, including 60,000 in the last month, according to the United Nations. U.S. and international diplomatic and political efforts have so far failed to stop the violence.
President Bush, who met with Darfur advocates at the White House on Friday, praised the protesters and said the United States is serious about solving the problem.
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But protesters said he needs to do more.
The urgency, as well as a sense of the past, was not lost on many of the speakers yesterday.
The speakers' podium was thick with the sweep of history, as survivors of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and the ethnic conflict in Bosnia drew parallels to Darfur.
As the rally's first speaker, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel drew a direct comparison to his own suffering in Nazi concentration camps.
"As a Jew, I'm here because when we needed people to help us, nobody came," Wiesel, the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner, told the applauding crowd. "Therefore, we're here."
Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan hotel manager who is credited with saving 1,200 Rwandans from slaughter, spoke later.
"Twelve years ago, a militia was slaughtering innocent civilians in cities and towns in Rwanda," said Rusesabagina, whose story was depicted in the movie "Hotel Rwanda."
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"As Rwanda has been abandoned, Darfur is also abandoned," he said. "The world is still standing by when a genocide was taking place."
Several speakers urged universities and governments to divest their assets from Sudan.
Younis Tagelalla, 40, was among a small contingent of immigrants from Darfur. He looked around in awe at the sea of black, white and brown faces showing their support for his homeland.
When he lived in Sudan, he said, he was told that Jews were the enemies of Muslims.
Yesterday, he knew different.
"This is not about religion. This is about saving humanity," said Tagelalla, a cabdriver, who got on a bus from New York that was funded by a Jewish group.
"The whole world is behind us. We are so grateful."
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[1] Url:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/05/01/divisions-cast-aside-in-cry-for-darfur-span-classbankheadmall-rally-highlights-growing-concernspan/e7026030-2030-4e1f-a92b-c955fcf9ebcc/
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