ME and Ophelia

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KOFI ANNAN AT HARVARD JUNE 10
Peace rally for Sudan in planning stage

Great news from Jim Moore's Journal and the Sudan blog out of Harvard:

Kofi Annan, who is a supporter of action to stop the Sudan genocide, will be speaking at Harvard on Thursday June 10, 2004.

Encouraged by television journalist Liz Walker, Jim and several others who live in the Boston area are holding a Sudan peace rally on the day.

Read the latest in Jim's journal on how action within the blogosphere is finally gaining momentum.

Today Joi Ito also posts on the Sudan and suggests how you can help googlebomb to stop genocide.

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Further reading: Democratic Reforms Must Go Hand in Hand with Economic Changes Annan Says September 24, 1998.

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DARFUR IN WESTERN SUDAN
Not included in the peace agreement for Southern Sudan

CNN May 27: Kofi Annan has been flooded with requests from people across the world beseeching him to provide emergency assistance to end the killing in Darfur.

A spokeswoman for the Nobel prize winning U.N. secretary-general, said he will focus on stemming the fighting in western Sudan, where the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are threatened. He fully shares the concerns of the public at large, and is following the situation in Darfur very closely and with great concern.

A day after a peace agreement marked the end of fighting in southern Sudan, attention has turned to the still embattled western part of the country - Darfur. Annan will also press for a humanitarian ceasefire in Darfur to be extended, and is urging the Sudanese government to intervene to halt human-rights violations in that region, she said.

Meanwhile, David Lambo, director of the Africa bureau of the U.N.'s High Commission for Refugees, said Thursday that Wednesday's agreement will "bring closer the day when southern Sudan's 500,000 refugees and more than three million displaced persons can go home."

Also Thursday, the president of the Security Council, Pakistan Ambassador Munir Akram, said that, with the agreement affecting the southern region now signed, the council may take further action elsewhere. [via passion of the present.com and jim moore's journal]

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DARFUR IN WESTERN SUDAN
A dramatic race against the clock - hundreds of thousands will perish

The U.N. estimates that 30,000 people have been killed in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

On Wednesday, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland called the situation there "the biggest humanitarian drama of our time". "This is the most dramatic race against the clock that we have anywhere in the world at the moment," he said. "If we lose, hundreds of thousands of women and children, mostly, will perish."

Egeland said the U.N. and other relief agencies were "late" to recognize the scope of the humanitarian problem in Darfur. [source: passion of the present.com via jim moore's journal]

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WORLD NEEDS TO SEE AND HEAR SURVIVORS' TALES
The people of Darfur care that somebody cares about them -
It's important for survivors to know that people are telling their stories

Jerry Fowler, staff director of the Committee on Conscience at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, at a May 26 museum-sponsored program on the current crisis said: "One of the things that survivors of the Holocaust carry with them to this day, six decades after the end, is a feeling of abandonment...the sense that no one cared what was happening to them....The Darfurians who fled into Chad care that somebody cares about them. It was very important for them to know that people were telling their stories." Read more Stories of Refugees From Sudan's Darfur Echo Horrors of Holocaust by Charles W Corey, May 28, 2004. [via passion of the present.com and jim moore's journal]

Note: Jim posts about the Feedster RSS mentions on "Sudan" (down slightly, to 13200 from 13222). Sorry, I can't figure how to change my template to accommodate Feedster, so I guess the mentions of Sudan - in this blog - are not counted in those numbers. If any readers here do manage to get Feedster, please mention "Sudan" in your RSS-issuing blog and you'll help raise the total. Thanks.

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PHOTOS OF SURVIVORS IN THE SUDAN
13 year-old-boy's fingers all cut off by his master

Sorry, I am unable to post pictures here. If you cannot find the words to google bomb the word Sudan, please copy and post any of these photos from the Free Sudan Movement Photo Gallery that chronicle recent trips by Rev. Walter Fauntroy and Joe Madison into the Sudan. Their efforts have resulted in the freeing of over 6000 slaves. They met Sudanese slaves freed through Sudan's Underground Railroad.

Note the photo with the caption "Right hand of 13 year-old-boy Yak Kenyang Adieu, all fingers cut off by his master." Other photos show amputees whose arms were chopped off with an ax by slave owners when they tried to rescue their enslaved wives and children. A Sudanese woman being consoled with 400 freed slaves in background. An orphaned slave baby whose mother was killed in minefield. Arek Kiir with stab wounds in chest and throat. Mawien's right hand missing finger. Agom Bol Akuei who was forced to carry heavy loads of salt (looted by attackers from Pan-Nyok market). She collasped under the weight which broke her jaw bone.

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US HOLDS KEY TO PEACE IN SUDAN
By John Eibner and Joe Madison, Boston Globe, May 29, 2004

Excerpt: SUDAN'S Islamist government and the secular Sudan People's Liberation Army have passed another milestone in a long and tortuous peace process. On Wednesday, Vice President Ali Osman Taha and SPLA Chairman Colonel John Garang signed the last of six protocols that collectively constitute a framework for a comprehensive peace agreement for Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains. They are now poised to conclude negotiations by establishing modalities for implementation and international monitoring.

On paper, the protocols appear to lay the foundation for an end to 21 years of apocalyptic civil war between successive Arab-Muslim-dominated governments and the predominantly black, non-Muslim rebels of Southern Sudan. The South is due to receive autonomous, Shariah-free government during a six-year interim period. Free elections are scheduled within three years. Southern Sudan is promised a referendum on independence at the end of that period.

The greatest beneficiary of peace should be the South. There, the war assumed genocidal proportions: Over two million black non-Muslims perished, over four million were displaced, and tens of thousands enslaved. For Southern Sudan, the protocols open a door to economic development and self-determination. They also provide the North with a historic opportunity to free itself from a destructive jihad declared against restive non-Muslim communities.

The Bush administration deserves credit for creating conditions for a serious peace process. Read more...

Note: John Eibner, a member of the human rights organization Christian Solidarity International, and Joe Madison, a Washington-based syndicated radio commentator, are co-founders of the Sudan Campaign coalition, which works to free slaves in Sudan (see photos in next post above) [source: passion of the present.com via jim moore's journal]
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Further reading in my previous posts:


April 24, 2004: IMPORTANT POST ON GENOCIDE IN SUDAN - Time is critical and hours matter
April 26, 2004: WOMEN AROUND THE WORLD - Stand and unite against mans inhumanity
April 29, 2004: BLOGGERS HAVEN'T DONE A WHOLE LOT TO CHANGE THE WORLD - Now seems like a hell of a time to try and start. THANK YOU DEAR BLOGGERS - For doing something
May 02, 2004: WHY IS THE BBC CONTINUOUSLY STIRRING UP TROUBLE FOR EVERYONE IN IRAQ - And not headlining shocking photos of rape and genocide in the Sudan?
May 03, 2004: SUDAN IS NOT IGNORED BY THE BBC - It's lack of political and media outrage
May 05, 2004: SUDAN: ONE OF THE WORLDS WORST HUMANITARIAN CRISES - BBC reports that conditions are as bad as reports suggested. SUDAN - A BRITISH ANGLE From The UK Today
May 05, 2004: SUDAN KEEPS SEAT ON UN RIGHTS PANEL - U.S. rights groups protest nomimination
May 07, 2004: SUDAN 'STARVING DARFUR REFUGEES' - BBC reports on the "politics of starvation"
May 08, 2004: BIG POWERS WARY OVER SUDAN CRISIS - Pro-government militiamen are accused of holding a town hostage
May 10, 2004: WHERE WERE WE TEN YEARS AGO? - Asks a blogging reporter in Africa
May 11, 2004: BBC RADIO ONLINE - Listen to World Service via the Internet
May 21, 2004:  IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO BLOGGERS FROM DR JAMES MOORE: WHY YOUR ACTION ON SUDAN MATTERS TODAY. THANK YOU TO THE BBC FOR REPORTING ON THE SUDAN - Peacekeepers to be called to Darfur as soon as possible
June 02, 2004: RALLY FOR PEACE IN THE SUDAN - At Harvard on Wednesday June 9, 6 PM
June 01, 2004: BRITAIN REJECTS MILITARY INTERVENTION AND SANCTIONS AGAINST KHARTOUM - Time to stop dragging our feet. Time to act
June 01, 2004: BRITISH-US RIFT ON HOW TO DEAL WITH SUDAN 'CLEANSING' - Britain rejects intervention despite warnings of 350,000 deaths in the next few months
June 01, 2004: ON MAY 30, 2004 - Oxfam launched a new appeal for Western Sudan
May 30, 2004: US HOLDS KEY TO PEACE IN SUDAN - By John Eibner and Joe Madison, Boston Globe, May 29, 2004
May 30, 2004: PHOTOS OF SURVIVORS IN THE SUDAN - 13 year-old-boy's fingers all cut off by his master
May 30, 2004: WORLD NEEDS TO SEE AND HEAR SURVIVORS' TALES: The people of Darfur care that somebody cares about them - It's important for survivors to know that people are telling their stories
May 30, 2004: DARFUR IN WESTERN SUDAN - A dramatic race against the clock - hundreds of thousands will perish
May 30, 2004: DARFUR IN WESTERN SUDAN - Not included in the peace agreement for Southern Sudan
May 30, 2004: KOFI ANNAN AT HARVARD JUNE 10 - Peace rally for Sudan in planning stage
May 30, 2004: BOSTON CALLING LONDON - The UK Today on Sudan.