Sunday, November 27, 2005

A Tolerable Genocide: NY Times Article Calls for Action

I think most of us feel helpless when it comes to genocide. Yet, reading the below article, I realized there are things I can do. I've posted excerpts of the article below in the hopes that you will read it, become as moved as I was and decide to take action with me.

Below the article are some personal comments from me along with a way you can take action within the next 10 minutes.

(Photo Credit: Richelle Reid. Monument at Dachau Concentration Camp)

A Tolerable Genocide
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: November 27, 2005
NYTimes Select

NYALA, Sudan

Who would have thought that a genocide could become worse? But after two years of heartbreaking slaughter, rape and mayhem, the situation in Darfur is now spiraling downward...

Aid workers have been stripped, beaten and robbed. A few more attacks on aid workers, and agencies may pull out - leaving the hapless people of Darfur with no buffer between themselves and the butchers.

The international community has delegated security to the African Union, but its 7,000 troops can't even defend themselves, let alone protect civilians. One group of 18 peacekeepers was kidnapped last month, and then 20 soldiers sent to rescue them were kidnapped as well; four other soldiers and two contractors were killed in a separate incident.

What will happen if the situation continues to deteriorate sharply and aid groups pull out? The U.N. has estimated that the death toll could then rise to 100,000 a month...

This downward spiral has happened because for more than two years, the international community has treated this as a tolerable genocide. In my next column, my last from Darfur, I'll outline the steps we need to take. But the essential starting point is outrage: a recognition that countering genocide must be a global priority...

One Western aid worker in Darfur told me that she had visited an area controlled by janjaweed. In public, everyone insisted - meekly and fearfully - that everything was fine.

Then she spoke privately to two sisters, both of the Fur tribe. They said that the local Fur were being enslaved by the janjaweed, forced to work in the fields and even to pay protection money every month just to be allowed to live. The two sisters said that they were forced to cook for the janjaweed troops and to accept being raped by them.

Finally, they said, their terrified father had summoned the courage to beg the janjaweed commander to let his daughters go. That's when the commander beheaded the father in front of his daughters.

They told me they just wanted to die," the aid worker remembered in frustration. "They're living like slaves, in complete and utter fear. And we can't do anything about it."

That aid worker has found her own voice, by starting a blog called "Sleepless in Sudan" in which she describes what she sees around her. It sears at http://sleeplessinsudan.blogspot.com, without the self-censorship that aid groups routinely accept as the price for being permitted to save lives in Darfur.

Our leaders still haven't found their voices, though. Congress has even facilitated the genocide by lately cutting all funds for the African Union peacekeepers in Darfur; we urgently need to persuade Congress to restore that money.

So what will it take? Will President Bush and other leaders discover some backbone if the killing spreads to Chad and the death toll reaches 500,000? One million? God forbid, two million?

How much genocide is too much?

(To read the full text go to: http://select.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/opinion/27kristof.html?th&emc=th)


My Personal Reflections
(Photo credit: Richelle Reid. "Never Again" in five languages. Monument at Entrance to Dachau Concentration Camp)


In an online interview, Kristoff says that if 100 people from every congressional district had called their congressman during the Rawandan genocide, then that would have been enough to get congress to take it seriously and act to intervene. That doesn't seem too hard to me. I'm going to take him up on it and I ask that you join me.


*** THINGS WE CAN DO IN 10 MINUTES ***
Your 10 minute sacrifice could help save 100,000 lives.

1. Call or email your congress person in the next 10 minutes.


HERE'S THE LINK TO CONTACT YOUR CONGRESS PERSON. http://www.parenthub.com/family/time/people/congress.htm

You can use the copy of the letter I sent (pasted below). Then pass the link to this blog on and ask others to join you in acting now.

2. Write about Darfur in your blog or put links to articles on your website to get the word out.

3. Support Humanitarian and Human Rights Organizations that are there right now. "Save The Children" is one that Kristoff mentions in an online interview. I believe World Vision is there as well.

4. Support newspapers and magazines that report on Darfur. Sign up to Get NYTimes Select online newspaper service. You get special access to great articles like this one by Kristoff. When newspapers know there's a market, they print more articles about particular issues. Show them there's a market.

5. If you are a student, organize a campus event that creatively gets the word out about the ongoing Genocide in Darfur. (Okay, that might take more than 10 minutes.) ;p

I emailed my congress people using the link in the email above and it was really quick and easy. Here's a copy of the letter I sent. Feel free to copy it and use it in your own letter.

SAMPLE LETTER TO CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE

Dear (SENATOR or HOUSE REP'S NAME HERE):

I recently read a series of articles in the NY Times by Nicholas Kristoff about the continuing Genocide in Darfur.

Last year Colin Powell stood before the world representing the U.S. and confirmed what we all knew. Genocide is happening in Darfur. This admission requires action by international law. Yet, still a year later, the international community turns a blind eye to the genocide in Darfur. Instead, we have turned over the responsibility to the African Union whose 7000 troops are not enough to bring order in Sudan. Now the situation is deteriorating. The UN estimates that the death toll could rise to 100,000 people per month.

While the U.S. may be able to avoid adherance to international law because of the UN's lack of enforcement measures, the representatives of this nation still have to answer to their electorate. Your electorate cares.

Therefore, I ask, "What is your plan for how you will press congress and the Bush administration to honor Articles 1-5 of the U.S. ratified UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of The Crime of Genocide?"

I look forward to receiving your response. I'll let my network know your plan once I'm notified.

Respectfuly,
(YOUR NAME HERE)


Finally, A Prayer.

God let our representatives hear our pleas for action.
Move them to care.
Empower them to act.
Move mountains on behalf of "the weak and oppressed" among us.
Continue to give us your heart for the least.
Please give us strength to care.
God have mercy on us
Have mercy on our world.
Have mercy on us.

Amen.

posted by Lisa Sharon Harper @ 8:30 PM 2 comments

Thursday, November 10, 2005

One Day, One Life...

A lot of you have asked how New York is treating me. Do I like it? Am I having fun? Do I like my new life? etc. A lot happens every day, so it's hard to answer that question in an email... or even a phone call. So, I thought of a creative way to give my friends a window into my new life in NY.

"ONE DAY, ONE LIFE... MY LIFE"

Wednesday, 10/09/2005

9am. Wake up and Pray/Journal

10am. Finish 17 pg. paper for Intro to Human Rights (Due Tomorrow) "Globalization, Democracy and Human Rights" - A research paper investigating the question of whether a) globalization naturally leads to democracy and an increased enforcement of human rights or b) globalization leads to increased tension btwn cultural groups brought into close proximity, thus creating increased violations of human rights.

1:25pm. Send a copy of my paper to a new friend from my Human Rights program, Helle (a journalist from Denmark). We study together on Fridays and have agreed to check each other's papers before turning them in.

1:30pm. Run errand. Take the A Train down to 57th street, rush past Black female opera singer singing on platform, make bank deposit, stop in at Pax (Peace) Cafe for my favorite lunch item in that area - any one of their Panini's!

2:30pm. Go back to Train (this time the 1 Train) and see same opera singer on the platform... stop... in awe... "She's gonna be famous some day." Sit. Eat Pax Panini and listen to aria in the subway.

2:40pm. 1 Train arrives. I make eye contact with the diva-to-be, smile and give her the thumbs up. She curtsies in grand style. Still singing as the train doors close.

3:15pm. Arrive at Columbia and head to work at Earl Hall (The office of the Chaplain's Associates) where I open my email and find several CNN Breaking News emails about first one, then two, then three bombings at American hotels in Jordan.

3:30pm. Begin emailing faculty and student leaders in the Columbia School of the Arts and Professor George Lewis of the Music program, inviting them to participate in a Chaplain's program I'm putting together, "The Meter, The Music, The Sound of Prayer: An exploration of the intersection between Art and Prayer."

5:20 (ish) pm. Leave work and jet over to Lerner Hall to grab dinner - some variation on California Roll called "Ocean Roll" (don't ask)... but ah... a small reminder of life in LA...

6pm. Get in a long line winding through Lerner Hall to get into a Panel Discussion, entitled "The End of Poverty," with JEFFREY SACHS (author of the book by the same title), AMARTYA SEN (Harvard Prof. & author of "Development as Freedom"), GARETH STEDMAN JONES (Acting Director of Center of History and Economics & author of "An End To Poverty?") and EMMA ROTHSCHILD (Director for the Center of History and Economics Univ. of Cambridge, Visiting Prof. at Harvard & author of "Economic Sentiments...")

Number one thing I learned after listening to these scholars - all the absolute best in their fields - discuss each other's work:

IT IS POSSIBLE TO END WORLD POVERTY RIGHT NOW at relatively little cost, using proven methods.

(SIDE NOTE: In another special Jeffrey Sachs lecture I attended yesterday, I learned if you focus on the poorest people in the world, you find that they are most highly concentrated in basically uninhabitable equatorial regions of the world. The majority are concentrated in Africa. They have no roads, they're high in the mountains, or on drought prone, mosquito-ridden land. They have no hospitals, few doctors if any, and their inhabitants get Malaria or other highly treatable diseases 6x a year! So, curable sickness and needless death continues their cycles of poverty.

The solutions are doable. Build roads. Give Malaria shots. Immunize for these highly curable diseases that ravage these communities. Sachs has been talking with doctors and scientists all over the world who know exactly what they need to do to stop the cycles of poverty in these regions. Yet, for this to happen, the richest countries in the world would have to make good on the 2002 Monterrey Financing for Development Conference Agreement, promising to give 0.7% of their GNP to specific projects in the poorest countries to fund the needed change.

Sachs' website states, "On average, the world's richest countries have provided just 0.25% of their GNP in official development assistance (ODA). The United States provided just 0.15%." (See http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/endofpoverty/oda.html)

This is why the Millenium Development Goals are so important. For more info on the face of poverty and the UN's Millenium Project go to http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/facts/index.htm. END OF SIDE NOTE.)

8pm. Slide out of my row while Sachs, Sen, Rothschild and Stedman Jones field questions from an engaged audience. High tail it across campus to

8:10pm. Amnesty International Presents: Investigate Torture. JUMANA MUSA (Advocacy Director for Domestic Human Rights and International Justice at Amnesty Int.) and SARAH HAVENS (Attorney for 11 Yemenis detained at Guantanamo Bay).

This event was co-sponsored by the Chaplain's office. So, I went to check in and make sure all was going well.

I learned the following:

SARAH HAVENS' clients have been held for 3 years now. She knows that several are absolutely innocent. In fact, at this time, the U.S. Government knows they're innocent too, but they can't release them because they'd risk lawsuits for the torture these men have been made to endure for three years. So, now they're just holding them to keep them quite and save face.

By the way, did you know TORTURE is absolutely against International Law FOR ANY REASON AT ALL according to the UN Convention Against Torture which the U.S. signed under Reagan's presidency and ratified during Bush Sr.'s term.

And by the way, did you know that TORTURE makes it impossible to prosecute real terrorists successfully, because any evidence received under torturous conditions is inadmissible in any court in the world.

And by the way, did you know the Bush Administration is threatening to VETO Sen. Tom McCain's Anti-Torture legislation if he doesn't include a loop-hole provision for the CIA to be able to use torture tactics in their interrogations. This would be Bush's very first VETO of his presidency.

(There's more... but it get's pretty gruesome. If you want more info let me know. I'd be happy to share more.)

9:30pm. Head home on the 1 Train.

10pm. Turn on "Law & Order" (the original one ;p) and - yes - wind down while recounting "A Day In A Life". Smile, when I realize ... all that and no class today.

Tomorrow. Intro to Human Rights (Subject of Discussion? Torture.)

Friday. Fly to Indiana where I'll speak on SHALOM for the Northern Indiana InterVarsity Fall Conference.


By the way... If you'd like a copy of my paper, let me know and include your email address. I'll send you a copy via email.

posted by Lisa Sharon Harper @ 2:13 AM 0 comments