Mahmoud, Age 13
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: These men in green are taking the women and the girls.
Human Rights Watch: What are they doing?
Mahmoud: They are forcing them to be wife.
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: The houses are on fire.
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: This is an Antonov. This is a helicopter. These here, at the bottom of the page, these are dead people.
Lots more pictures at the link above.
This is the most terrible thing happening on Earth, and the lack of a strong international response is appalling. The first step is to know what is happening.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
National Day of Action on Darfur
Today, September 21, 2005, has been designated by the Save Darfur Coalition as a National Day of Action on Darfur. There is a current recognized genocide several times the magnitude of Rwanda happening right now, and almost nothing is being done about it. When's the last time you read about Darfur in the news? Reports estimate the number dead at 400,000. Another 2.5 million have been driven from their home by violence. And the atrocities run much deeper than that. Rape of women and children is commonplace.
Here is a picture drawn by a child, and his description of it (courtesy of Human Rights Watch):
Mahmoud, Age 13
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: These men in green are taking the women and the girls.
Human Rights Watch: What are they doing?
Mahmoud: They are forcing them to be wife.
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: The houses are on fire.
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: This is an Antonov. This is a helicopter. These here, at the bottom of the page, these are dead people.
Lots more pictures at the link above.
This is the most terrible thing happening on Earth, and the lack of a strong international response is appalling. The first step is to know what is happening.
Mahmoud, Age 13
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: These men in green are taking the women and the girls.
Human Rights Watch: What are they doing?
Mahmoud: They are forcing them to be wife.
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: The houses are on fire.
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: This is an Antonov. This is a helicopter. These here, at the bottom of the page, these are dead people.
Lots more pictures at the link above.
This is the most terrible thing happening on Earth, and the lack of a strong international response is appalling. The first step is to know what is happening.
What exactly are you referring to when you say that the Darfur killings are several times the magnitude of Rwanda? I know that it's not the numbers that are important here. Still, I'd be interested to hear what you meant.
ReplyDeleteIt is a human trajedy nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteVonAurum, I do not question that.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused. I was referring to the numbers of people killed. Why are the numbers not important?
ReplyDeleteNot sure why numbers are not important. Maybe because killing and/or raping of one person seems already infinitely bad, and an atrocity is an atrocity, whether it affects one person or a million. In Rwanda a million people got killed during 100 days. That's way more than Darfur, as far as I know. Unless there has been new estimates that I am not aware of. (?)
ReplyDeleteI don't know the data behind it, but here's the quote that I've read:
ReplyDeleteTen years after the Rwandan genocide, the world still frets about what it should have or could have done during that 90-day slaughter. In Sudan, three times as many people have died, spread over a twenty year period. We are still fretting, still wringing our hands, still wondering if our aid workers will be granted travel permits to clean up after another bout of ethnic cleansing has occurred. Sudan is Rwanda in slow motion.
As for the normative matter, the numbers definitely matter. To say that they don't is to say that every rape and murder after the first one was morally neutral. It's to say that it wouldn't be a good thing if the atrocities stopped today. Every one of those numbers represents a human being, and yeah, it's worse to brutalize more than less.
Oops, I forgot to cite the quotation. It's John Prendergrast, pecial Advisor to the President of the International Crisis Group. That quote is pretty widely-cited. I found it online here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.africa.upenn.edu/afrfocus/afrfocus051004.html