A rally for Darfur in Dallas

from the Dallas Morning News

Here's a story on Darfur, a rally in Dallas took place reciently that supported the indictment of the Sudan's president.

Also here is a link to video of the rally. - Kale
By JEFFREY WEISS

Zeddim Dawelbit telephoned his sister Thursday, back in his genocide-wracked homeland of Darfur. When he asked her about how things were going, she started to cry, he said.

“She told me not to ask about Darfur. ‘Just tell me what it’s like there,’ ” Mr. Dawelbit told a loosely organized Dallas rally to support an indictment of Sudan’s president by the International Criminal Court.

About 60 people assembled around a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. today. Most were originally from Darfur, the western region of Sudan where American and international authorities have declared that a government-backed genocide is going on. But some of the group came from elsewhere in Sudan — south, north, east.

They came in solidarity with the Dafurians to make the point that, as fellow Sudanese, they condemn the oppression of the people of the Darfur region in western Sudan. For them, they said, it’s as if an American were to see an injustice in another state.

“If there was a problem in Texas, then there’s a problem in the United States,” said Deng Bol, who escaped the civil war in Southern Sudan in 1989.

But he and others also asserted that while Darfur is getting most of the attention today, government -backed atrocities are still happening elsewhere in Sudan.

Several of those in attendance were American-born activists, members of several organizations working to end the violence in Sudan.

The news event that pulled them together was last week’s call by the international court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, for an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Mr. al-Bashir is accused of ordering the killing of non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur.

Leaders of China, the Arab League, and African League have warned against the issuing of the indictment, calling it outside interference in Sudan’s affairs. The small rally in Dallas was one of several recent events held in cities across the United States in support of Mr. Moreno-Ocampo.

Many of the Sudanese at the rally had escaped their homeland’s local wars a decade or more ago. Distance and the poverty back home meant that some had heard little or nothing from their relatives in some time. But some, like Mr. Dawelbit, have been able to keep in touch.

His sister, he said, is a teacher in the Hassa Hissa refugee camp outside the village of Zalingei. His uncle and aunt were killed last year, he said, when a helicopter strafed their nearby farm.

Link to full article. May expire in future.