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CWS's Moses Ole Sakuda Tells Boston Rally to Save Darfur, 'We Want to Ask President Bush, Are You Really Serious About Darfur?'
Church World Service's Mose Olé Sakuda, a Maasai from Kenya who frequently visits Sudan for CWS, urges to action attendees at the July 26 Rally to Save Darfur on Boston City Hall Plaza.
Photo: Stephanie Cruse
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Mass. Coalition Rally Draws Crowd to City Hall Plaza, Advocates Urge Increased U.S., NATO Action, AU Troop Support
In a rally on Boston's City Hall Plaza on Tuesday (July 26), Church World Service's Moses Olé Sakuda told hundreds gathered to protest U.S. government inaction on the continuing crisis in Darfur, Sudan, "In the last few days we've heard Darfur is getting better. Yet in the last 24 hours we've just heard about more bombing by Sudanese government forces on villages in Darfur."
Visiting the devastated region where more than 300,000 have been killed by government-backed janjaweed militia, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said last Thursday (July 21) "the government of Sudan is not serious about ending the conflict in Darfur." *
But CWS' Ole Sakuda told the Boston rally this week, "We want to ask President bush and his administration the same question, 'Are you really serious about saving/ending the conflict in Darfur?' Are you really serious about putting your actions where your words are?'"
The Darfur gathering was led by the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur and echoes similar grassroots organization advocacy across the U.S. that continue to urge the Bush administration and other world bodies to increase pressure on the government of Khartoum to bring about an end to the year-and-a-half of assault that has displaced more than 2.5 million mostly black African farmers, burned villages, raped and killed.
The situation is being called one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world and has been labeled genocide by the Bush administration.
Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur Co-Chair Kenneth A. Sweder said the coalition was urging more African Union troops on the ground in Darfur and more support from the U.S. and NATO. He acknowledged the Bush administration for its recent appointment of a special envoy to Sudan but said more needed to be done, including efforts to divest funds that support the government of Sudan.
He urged support for the current Bill #2166 in the Massachusetts Senate (requiring divestiture in Sudan).
 More than 500 gathered recently on Boston's prime public forum location, City Hall Plaza, to hear leading faith-based and community advocates, entertainers and former African victims of genocide during the recent Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur rally. Photo: Stephanie Cruse
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At the Boston rally, longtime Boston news anchor and humanitarian Liz Walker, who has visited Darfur several times with humanitarian agency Mercy Corps, told the rally crowd, "Each time we go, our hearts are broken more and more. But once you step back up to Khartoum, you are stepping out of an existing hell, and you realize the world goes on . . . as if it (Darfur) doesn't matter.
Walker said "Khartoum bases its entire government policy on knowing the rest of the world does not care and will move on to the next crisis . . . and that 2 million displaced people don't matter and 300,000 dead don't matter."
"It matters," Walker said. "We're here to remind them tonight that it does matter, that rallies matter . . . that standing up matters.
"You count," she told the crowd on the hot City Hall Plaza. "You matter. You matter all by yourself and you matter in continuing with those around you."
Ole Sakuda, a Maasai from Kenya and CWS Mission Relationship and Witness Program Associate Director, frequently travels to Sudan conferring with the agency's faith partners the Sudan Council of Churches, New Sudan Council of Churches and All Africa Conference of Churches on humanitarian needs, programs and church solidarity across the region- including South Sudan, where a flow of refugees is returning after being displaced by the just-ended 21 year conflict between north and south Sudan.
Ole Sakuda told the Darfur rally that CWS calls for justice worldwide, "for women raped everyday and for children who'll never have a chance to be heard. For what affects my neighbor should affect me in one way or another, whether here or abroad and whether I admit it or not. "
Abuk Bak, a former Sudanese slave, told the Darfur supporters that in 1987 when she was 12, Arab militia raided her own village in South Sudan - the same dreaded janjaweed on horseback accused now of burning virtually every village in Darfur, raping, killing and mutilating the predominately black African populace.
She said the militia killed most of the men and took most women and children with them to North Sudan to work as slaves. Bak said, "I worked for a man as a black slave. When I said, 'I'm tired,' they beat me." Saying she was beaten and raped, Bak escaped and eventually was able to come to the U.S.
Liz Walker spoke of meeting many women in Darfur refugee camps who were raped and who had fled to camps to survive.
"Their only crime was being human," said Walker. "When you come back here (to the U.S.), you have no idea how blessed you are.
She commended those at the rally, saying, "your faith and moral outrage has brought you here."
Walker said, "Condoleeza Rice said the U.S. is demanding action not words from Sudan. But now we are demanding action not words from Condoleeza Rice."
Ernest Rugwizanoga, a Rwandan genocide survivor, told the rally of his own experiences. In 1994, learning his home was on the list marked for burning, his family was warned to flee in different directions, "so that if one of us was caught, the others might escape."
Rugwizanoga fled to a concentration camp where 100,000 people were held. After the conflict, he said, "The genocide took three of my siblings, many friends and family members." Rugwizanoga came to Boston in 1997 and now works "with city kids, mostly of color.
"After the genocide," said Rugwizanoga, "I heard people like President Clinton say they should have done something about Rwanda. I was optimistic then.
"I'm not so sure now," he says, "about the people who have power. Violence anywhere is violence everywhere," the young man said.
He spoke of the Dorchester neighborhood where he now lives and how, in recent days, two young men were shot, one on Rugwizanoga's front steps.
"In Dorchester and Sudan," he said, "the violence could have been stopped if the people in command had wanted it to."
Rugwizanoga said, "We want to ask Bush, 'Do we want to be seen as a country who helps people only when there is a dollar to be made there?'"
Boston's Walker said the Darfur advocates want to ask President Bush, "When does 'never again begin?' Bush said 'Not on my watch'," she said. "Mr. President, when does your watch begin?"
Coalition co-chair Sweder told the group that the coalition was sending President Bush a reminder about his administration's watch for genocide, then held out for the crowd to see a six-foot wristwatch they intend to send to the White House.
Sweder told the Darfur rally, "As a Jew I always took what happened in the Holocaust personally. Today I take what happens to my brothers and sisters in Darfur personally."
Sweder, a Boston attorney and longtime Boston activist, challenged the group and each individual to "make Darfur your passion. You be the one to take Darfur to your church."
He said the coalition looked forward to future Darfur rallies in Boston, New York and "hopefully in Washington," and claimed that a grassroots campaign would have an effect on President Bush.
Massachusetts Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry and Representative Michael Capuano, in a letter read aloud to rally attendees, sent support for the rally's aims, noting that "Khartoum has continued to rape and kill with impunity."
Church World Service Calls for Broader Authority for AU Troops in Darfur
Church World Service is advocating an increase of African Union monitoring troops in Darfur, chartered with broader authority.
The agency says strengthening the AU mandate is a priority. "There are times when they do not act or act late," says CWS' Ole Sakuda, "because of different perceptions of this mandate. So clarity and a sense of purpose around mandate are critical."
On the continuing rape and killing in Darfur, Ole Sakuda says "The issue here is who will be the powerful voice of the victims of violation, and how do we encourage the AU to tell the true story of what is going on?'
CWS also calls for a need for more police in Darfur, especially more female police, and for voluntary return of uprooted civilians from their homes, in accord with international principles.
CWS also warns of a looming food crisis due to poor security and inaccessibility, current weather conditions and lack of seeds and tools.
CWS just increased its combined fundraising appeal for Darfur and South Sudan to $1.75 million.
CWS issued an initial fundraising appeal for the Sudan-Darfur crisis in 2004, in concert with partners and Action by Churches Together (ACT) members Sudan Council of Churches (SCC), Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) and Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social service organizations.
CWS and partners have been providing food, medicines, water and sanitation projects, education, agricultural inputs and tools, and counseling programs for Darfur's most vulnerable since July 2004.
CWS' Ole Sakuda says the agency applauds grassroots coalitions such as the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur for "staying the course and not giving up until the world responds sufficiently and the innocent of Sudan can sleep in peace.
"When people of faith and others rise to the challenge before hand, serious tides have been reversed in the past. Darfur too can be changed and we will all live in a better world, " he said.
At Boston's rally, in a closing a cappella performance by a vocal group from the Boston Women's Network, a line from the song composed by one of vocalists seemed to capture the essence of the event: "Sisters and brothers, I hear your cries on the wind . . . and we are all connected"
For more information about the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur, visit: www.savedarfurma.org
For more information about Church World Service's support for the people of Darfur and South Sudan, visit www.churchworldservice.org/news/Sudan/
* Source: BBC, Thursday July 21, 2005
Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;
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