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August 31, 2005
Coalition for Darfur: What It Is All About
Here's the weekly Darfur post.
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Last weekend, the blog Blue Girl, Red State wrote a post about a regular blog commenter who went by the name "Shameless Hussy."
Blue Girl reports that "Shameless Hussy" went to Darfur in June as a humanitarian volunteer and was traumatized by what she saw
WhatThis post receive a fair
she dealt with daily goes beyond the pale...beyond the nightmares of
most people; Children with all four limbs hacked off right above the
knee or below the elbow. Twelve year olds who died in childbirth after
being gang-raped by the Janjaweed. Women who gave birth to rape-babies
who were then cast out by their families for shaming the family name,
leaving only one avenue of survival for themselves and their children
after the camps: Prostitution.
What is f**ing her up is the
desperation, and the fact that she worked herself to death for over a
month, and she still didn't really save anyone. Now that she's gone,
it's like she was never there. Even the ones she helped keep alive, she
didn't save. You try dealing with that reality.
And women are
the preponderance of victims. Men do not leave the villages to go to
the countryside to gather firewood and other necessary items of
sustenance. Women venture out, even though every time they leave their
villages, they are at horrific risk of being beaten and raped and
disfigured. The reason they go instead of the men? The women are only
attacked, the men are killed.
amount of attention within the blogosphere (as far as posts about
Darfur go) mainly due to the fact that Kevin Drum
linked to it. And while getting bloggers to pay attention to Darfur, if
only for a minute, is a minor miracle, it is worth asking why it takes
a post about traumatized aid workers to generate any interest in
genocide.
This situation in Darfur has existed for over two
years and, if people were interested, they could find accounts of
death, disease, rape and torture occurring there on an almost daily
basis. 400,000 people have died and nearly 3 million have been
displaced and yet nobody - not politicans, not the media, not bloggers
- really seem to care.
To anyone who has been paying attention,
the atrocities witnessed by "Shameless Hussy" are, sadly, well-known.
If her story generates concern for the people of Darfur, then for that
we should be thankful. And if people who were moved by it are really
interested in Darfur, then they should start reading the analyses
produced by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Eric Reeves and the International Crisis Group, supporting organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Save Darfur and STAND, reading blogs like Passion of the Present, Sudan Watch, the Coalition for Darfur, and Sleepless in Sudan and demanding that their elected leaders do something about it.
Our
thanks goes out to "Shameless Hussy" and all those who sacrifice to
help those in need. But we must keep in mind that Darfur is not about
them - it is about this
Posted by John Bambenek at August 31, 2005 3:05 PM
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Comments
It sickens me that the West is doing nothing to stop the atrocities at Darfur. I guess oil in Iraq is more important than genocide.
RESPONSE:
You'd be surprised to know that the US is doing more than the UN and it wouldn't even be on the agenda if it weren't for our prodding.
Posted by: Christopher Trottier at August 31, 2005 4:06 PM
I remember hearing of Sudan’s troubles in the 90's and no one was doing anything about them then. That is most likely because government are reluctant to interfere with internal politics even when it is a question of genocide. Another point is who is the U.S. to criticize another country considering the number of minorities killed through abortion and the poor quality of health care given to those same minorities. Not to give anyone the wrong impression I am for messing with internal politics to protect the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness among others.
Posted by: Kerwin at September 1, 2005 1:17 PM
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