Exhibit seeks to raise awareness of ongoing genocide in Darfur

Saturday, May 5, 2007
Reformer
By PATRICK J. CROWLEY, Reformer Staff

Turkey participate in the struggle against genocides. Stop denying the Armenian genocide. Ambassador Gunduz Aktan said at a November 9, 2006 lecture in Ottawa, Canada in answer to my question, that Turkey only recognizes eight genocides, that Armenia, Cambodia and Darfur among others are not genocides.

BRATTLEBORO -- Five canvas tents sat in a semi-circle on the lawn of the Centre Congregational Church on Main Street on Friday.

Banners hung near each tent gave an idea as to the information hanging inside each tent.

The first one read "1915, Armenia." Inside the tent, another banner: "1,500,000 killed." The tent showed maps and articles relating to the Armenian genocide and acts as a quick, educational opportunity for a grim historical event.

The tents continued with this theme:

* 1938, Holocaust ... 6,000,000 killed.

* 1957, Cambodia ... 2,000,000 killed.

* 1994, Rwanda ... 800,000 killed.

Now, Darfur ... 400,000 killed and counting.

Each tent had written messages covering most of the tan canvas from various stops the tents have made around the country over the past year.

Gabriel Stauring, from the Los Angeles area in California, first set up the "refugee camp" in Los Angeles last April.

At first, Stauring had no intention of carrying the tents around the country in an effort to increase awareness on the increasingly gruesome tragedy in Darfur, Sudan. He thought it would be a one-time event.

But soon, he had more and more invitations to set up camp in another area. In the past year, Stauring has wound up in places around California, Las Vegas, New York City, Washington, D.C., Florida, Delaware, Michigan, Tennessee and now Brattleboro.
He was invited by the School for International Training's Net Impact group to set up during their "Race for a Reason" on May 12, but when Stauring said he couldn't make it on that date, they set him up to come on Gallery Walk.

"It wasn't planned to become a traveling exhibit," Stauring said.

Stauring first got the idea of the exhibit when he was in Chad, just over the border from the Darfur region of Sudan. Refugees who escaped the bloodshed in Sudan are put in canvas tents much like the ones Stauring uses in his exhibit. One family is put up in one small tent, he said.

"It lets people know the enormity of what's happening now," he said, later adding, "there's still millions of lives we can save."

Stauring said over the past year, he's been able to see awareness increase as time goes on and as lives continue to be lost. In particular, he said, young people like middle and high school students are paying attention.

"It's starting to grow," he said.

But still, it's not enough. Stauring said he was alarmed to find out in places like Tennessee and even Las Vegas many simply do not know what is happening in Sudan.

His approach is to try and expose new people to the information on the current genocide and also past ones, after which the world said "never again."

"We're trying to reach one person at a time," he said.

Each tent, a dedication to the lives lost in five genocides in the past 100 years, often showed horrific images of death associated with the killing. Most also had a quote from a survivor of the violence, describing the bloodshed.

"I heard somebody calling my name. He said actually that 'I have killed 399 cockroaches,' and he wanted me to be the 400th," a survivor of the Rwanda genocide said.

Another powerful quote was hanging from the walls of the Darfur tent.

"There were soldiers from Sudan, janjaweed (militia) and planes and bombs. I saw the janjaweed take girls and women. The women were screaming. They seized them, they took them by force. The pretty ones were taken away. Girls were taken, small girls too, I think five and seven and 14. Some came back after four or five hours ... some we haven't seen again," wrote a 13-year-old Darfur survivor.

Stauring said he intends to bring the tents to refugee camps in the area to provide those in need with shelter, so messages are written on the tents by people from all over the country in the hopes of inspiring some optimism.

One quoted the Bible -- Psalm 27: verses 1 and 2.

Many said the victims will not be forgotten.

Others kept the message as simple as possible.

"Stop genocide."


Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

A flicker of light: Sparking hope and speaking out to end genocide

Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Montclair Times
By TARESSA STOVALL AND MARK S. PORTER
of The Montclair Times

A year ago, a rally of perhaps 2,000 people gathered in Watchung Plaza to decry the deaths occurring in Darfur.

Speakers, including influential politicians, denounced the brutal rapes, the pillaging of villages and the undeniable genocide perpetrated by Sudan and pro-government tribal militias against the western region of the huge nation located in northeast Africa.

A year later, the killings have increased.

Terror has grown. Peacekeeping efforts have failed to slow methodical raids against Darfuri towns and refugee camps. Aid workers have been murdered, assaulted, or intimidated into departing. Sudan wields its oil wealth to win strategic support from China — and its leader’s promise to resist the Islamic terror group al Qaeda has won at least acquiescence from the Bush administration.

This year’s rally, in Union Congregational Church, 176 Cooper Ave. sought to get people to take action – from sending e-mails to the White House to purchasing $25 solar heaters. These heaters already enable some of the more than 400,000 Darfuri refugees to prepare food in their destitute camps without risk of rape or murder, which often occur when they forage outside the camps seeking wood for stoves.

”Just a year ago, only 15 percent of the American people knew anything at all” about the situation in Darfur,” Gloria Crist, a leader of the Essex County Coalition for Darfur, which organized the rally, told the crowd. “Now that we know what’s happening, what are we going to do about it?”

The rally in Montclair coincided with more than 400 other gatherings throughout the United States on behalf of the “Global Days for Darfur” project.

Along with hundreds of adults filling Union Congregational Church, participants included scores of college-age, teenage and younger students energized to effect change in an area where an estimated 400,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million people have become refugees.

“Silence is complicity,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, who has actively worked to help Darfur through his strong support of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, and sponsored a $60 million appropriation to create a United Nations peacekeeping force.

Menendez scornfully noted that this $60 million funding “sits in an account instead of saving lives.”

“The truth is that the situation in Darfur is a time bomb which could explode at any time,” Menendez said, expressing his frustration at the lack of progress and calling for “serious sanctions” against Sudan, including a no-fly zone over Darfur and the possibility of bringing Sudanese leaders before the International Criminal Court.

An escalating obstacle to helping the Darfurian people is the increasing danger to relief workers providing aid. “Several international aid agencies announced last Monday that they are suspending their efforts because of at-tacks,” Menendez said.

Menendez said that he plans to introduce a bipartisan Senate resolution to send a message to China, which pumps oil from Sudan while providing arms and money to the janjaweed. With China slated to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, “we cannot allow China to host the Olympics with blood on their hands,” he said, as an enthusiastic audience cheered.

“Chinese investments fuel the atrocities taking place in Darfur,” said Menendez.

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., who co-sponsored the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act in 2006 and has supported several measures to stop the genocide and help the victims, said he was “heartened to see this mobilization,” and “encouraged by our students. Never have I seen our youth so engaged in an issue.

“While we love our young here, the children of Darfur are systematically being robbed of their families, their futures, their lives,” Pascrell said. “We may be late, but we are not too late for hope. We will not be too late unless we allow ourselves to become silent.”

Yahya Osman, a Darfurian who is a leader in the Darfur Rehabilitation Project, a national organization based in Newark, thanked the crowd for their presence and commitment, noting that the students in the crowd provided “a sign of hope” for the future.

“But we need to stop the genocide before it is too late,” he emphasized. “I ask you not to forget the people who need your help.”

Noting that the lack of food, water medicine and schooling “is part of the genocide,” Osman forcefully advocated reconciliation. “We don’t want our people to grow up with hatred in a refugee camp.”

Before the event commenced, Osman told The Times: “We’re asking the world to stand up and take action. We believe in people power. People can bring attention to the crisis by educating, by donating and by holding their leaders’ feet to the fire.”

Assemblyman William Payne, who authored New Jersey’s landmark Sudan divestiture law, spoke to the crowd, as did his brother, Rep. Donald M. Payne, who was one of earliest and most forceful supporters of securing peace in Darfur. Payne was responsible for a congressional resolution declaring that the onslaught in Darfur was genocide. Both men have visited the refugee camps.

“There has to be a new attitude about ending the genocide,” said Rep. Payne, who was appointed chairman of the Subcommittee on African and Global Health in February. “”We’re demanding that China put more pressure on the government of Sudan.” he said, adding that he is introducing legislation to get a no-fly-zone declared around Darfur.

PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES

Speakers referred to Darfur as the first — and hopefully the last — genocide of the 21st century. During a candle-lighting ceremony, speakers referred to other mass-murders such as the Holocaust prior to and during World War II, the rampaging killings in Cambodia, the slaughter in Rwanda, the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s and widespread killings of Armenians by Turks early in the 20th century.

“I am here as a genocide survivor to call the international community to action before it is too late,” said Joseph Sebarenzi, who lost his parents, seven siblings and numerous other relatives during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

Sebarenzi commended Montclair for its leadership in raising awareness and urging action to help the people of Darfur, adding, “I believe that the international community should press the government of Sudan to stop this genocide. I think the members of the United Nations Security Council have the legal and moral responsibility to protect the people of Darfur.

“Allow a UN force to protect the people of Darfur,” urged Sebarenzi, who said a UN force “should act without delay.”

Rabbi Steven Kushner of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield and a founding member of the Essex County Coalition for Darfur, led a remembrance and vigil for Darfur. Survivors, descendants and representatives of 20th century genocide victims in Armenia, the Nazi Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda lit white candles “to return even a flicker of light to our world,” Kushner said.

Then Osman lit a green candle for Darfur, “to show us the way, how we can stop this genocide,” he said.

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Kushner asked. “It’s a question we need to ask ourselves as well.

“It strikes me that, if all we do is remember, we learn nothing,” Kushner said. “If not now, when?”

The ceremony ended with Kushner sounded the shofar, a horn used in Jewish religious ceremonies to call people together and sound warnings.

TOGETHER

The Montclair Academy Drummers played before the rally, directed by Maya Milenovic Workman with Kevin Jones and Reggie Workman. Music for the program was performed by members of the Christian Love Baptist Church Youth Choir, Irvington; B’nai Keshet & Ner Tamid Choirs; and OSAU Choir, Montclair State University, under the direction of David Sanders.

Sara Gold, a senior at Montclair High School who has been involved in the Darfur cause since attending the 2006 rally, brought her mother, Judy Becker. “She is definitely raising my awareness about Darfur, and it was just very moving to hear peoples’ experiences from all genocide,” Becker said.

Cheryl Marshall-Petricoff, a founder of the Coalition, brought her three children, ages 9, 3, and the baby, now 8 months, she was carrying when she spoke at last year’s rally. “I’m saddened that we’re having a rally again and not much has changed,” she said. “But my spirit is always very lifted when I see everyone come together in the commu-nity and work together to put more pressure to make change happen.”

The Rev. Charles Ortman of the Unitarian Church of Montclair told The Times: “We’ve allowed humanity too many opportunities to destroy itself in the past while we just sat there. We have to be present, stand up and raise our voices so our political leaders and our corporate leaders can take any measures they can to secure peace and protect human life.”

“Four years is enough,” Sebarenzi said of the genocide in Darfur. “We need actions, not words.”

“President Bush, time is up,” Menendez said. “It’s time to save Darfur.”

Contact TaRessa Stovall at stovall@montclairtimes.com. Contact Mark S. Porter at porterm@montclairtimes.com .


Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.