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The
Time is Now to Act on Sudan |
Posted:
03.22.05
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Student Jennifer Dewey urges American teens to educate themselves
about the atrocities occuring right now in the Darfur region of
Sudan and then to act on that information and do something about
it.
If you'd like to respond to Jennifer's editorial, e-mail
us
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 Imagine
this: you are in your kitchen making lunch. It is a warm, sunny,
breezy day outside, and your friends are on their way over. You
give your ten year-old sister a plate, when all of a sudden a
group of militia men break down the door and point guns at you.
They take your sister by the hair and drag her outside where
they throw her on the ground, bind her hands and feet then take
turns brutally raping her. When they are done destroying her tiny
womb, mutilating any chance of bearing children, they burn her
alive and drive off in their truck with you in the back, wondering
what they will do to you.
Stories like this happen every day in Sudan.
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You can't
bury your head in the sand |
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Now, I apologize for ruining your otherwise fine day with this
gruesome bit of reality, but you know what? You're not children
and you're not ostriches. Life is not like a box of chocolates,
and you can't keep burying your head in the sand.
PEOPLE ARE DYING, something to the tune of 10,000 per month in
the Darfur region of Sudan. According to The New York Times, "a
figure of 70,000 is sometimes states as an estimated death toll,
but that is simply a U.N. estimate for the deaths in one seven-month
period from non-violent causes."
The actual death toll from the past two years of genocide is hard
to report, mostly because the Sudanese government is blocking
the U.N. and other agencies from knowing the truth and making
such an estimate. According to The New York Times, independent
mortality estimates exceed 220,000, and, as I said before, is
rising by about 10,000 per month.
President Bush, Congress and the European Parliament have already
declared that genocide is under way, yet they have done almost
nothing. In previous incidences of genocide, such as those against
the Jews, Armenians and Cambodians, it was reasonable to believe
that our passivity was a result of ignorance; but not anymore.
As Nicholas Kristof from The New York Times put it, "This
time, we have no excuse."
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Act now! |
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How can we allow Sudanese documents to urge to "change the
demography of Darfur and make it void of African tribes,"
encouraging "killing, burning villages and farms, terrorizing
people, confiscating property from members of African tribes and
forcing them from Darfur?"
The truth is this: we can't. We all know it's wrong, and we all
know about it. It is our passivity which has allowed this grave
injustice to continue.
Former senator Paul Simon said after the Rwanda genocide, "If
every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters
from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda,
when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response
would have been different."
IT'S NOT TOO LATE. We can still do something. PLEASE write a letter
or e-mail your congressman, your senator, someone; I already have.
This is not the last you will hear about this from me. I must
inform you, move you and inspire change, or I wouldn't be doing
my job as a human. Now you need to do yours. SO DO IT.
--
Senior Jennifer Dewey is the Editor-in-Chief of Bourgade Catholic
High School's newspaper The Eagle's Eyrie in Phoenix, Arizona.
Something to say on this topic? e-mail
us
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American schools and financial aid should be only for legal citizens of the United States. There should be no exceptions to this.
