2008 Woodie Awards
UN peacekeeping mission needed in Darfur
Katie Mariategui/Special to The Carolinian
Issue date: 10/3/06 Section: Opinions
In a refugee camp in the Darfur region of Sudan, a young woman tells her story:
"I was sleeping, when the attack on Disa [village] started. I was taken away by the attackers, they were all in uniform. They took dozens of other girls and made us walk for three hours. During the day we were beaten, and they were telling us: 'You, the black women, we will exterminate you, you have no god.' At night, we were raped several times. The Arabs guarded us with arms, and we were not given food for three days."
Another Darfurian woman recounts: "I was with another woman, Aziza, aged 18, who had her stomach slit on the night we were abducted. She was pregnant and was killed as they said: 'it is the child of an enemy.'
As millions of Darfurians are subject to slaughter, rape, beatings, mass starvation and disease, and the destruction of their homes in a genocidal campaign perpetrated by the Sudanese government since 2003, the world stands by and watches. As a teenage boy is captured by government militia forces, called the Janjaweed, and enslaved, we watch. As an eight year old girl is gang raped, we watch. As a mother cries out when her baby is ripped from her arms and thrown into a bonfire, we watch.
What will it take for the world to stop watching and start helping the people of Darfur? Will it take 6 million deaths as it did in the Holocaust? 800,000 as in Rwanda? How many innocent lives lost does it take for us to become outraged?
The United States has called the situation genocide. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called it, "the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world." Countless UN resolutions have been passed to condemn the Sudanese government and urge the halting of these atrocities. But three years later, the killings continue.
What is needed right now in Darfur is a UN peacekeeping mission. African Union troops, which have been monitoring the situation in Darfur, will have to leave by September 30 due to a lack of funding. This will leave the Darfurians with nothing between them and the Janjaweed machetes. Although the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution to authorize the placement of 20,000 UN troops in Darfur, Sudan's president has not authorized this action. Unbelievably, he has the final decision in this matter.
"I was sleeping, when the attack on Disa [village] started. I was taken away by the attackers, they were all in uniform. They took dozens of other girls and made us walk for three hours. During the day we were beaten, and they were telling us: 'You, the black women, we will exterminate you, you have no god.' At night, we were raped several times. The Arabs guarded us with arms, and we were not given food for three days."
Another Darfurian woman recounts: "I was with another woman, Aziza, aged 18, who had her stomach slit on the night we were abducted. She was pregnant and was killed as they said: 'it is the child of an enemy.'
As millions of Darfurians are subject to slaughter, rape, beatings, mass starvation and disease, and the destruction of their homes in a genocidal campaign perpetrated by the Sudanese government since 2003, the world stands by and watches. As a teenage boy is captured by government militia forces, called the Janjaweed, and enslaved, we watch. As an eight year old girl is gang raped, we watch. As a mother cries out when her baby is ripped from her arms and thrown into a bonfire, we watch.
What will it take for the world to stop watching and start helping the people of Darfur? Will it take 6 million deaths as it did in the Holocaust? 800,000 as in Rwanda? How many innocent lives lost does it take for us to become outraged?
The United States has called the situation genocide. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called it, "the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world." Countless UN resolutions have been passed to condemn the Sudanese government and urge the halting of these atrocities. But three years later, the killings continue.
What is needed right now in Darfur is a UN peacekeeping mission. African Union troops, which have been monitoring the situation in Darfur, will have to leave by September 30 due to a lack of funding. This will leave the Darfurians with nothing between them and the Janjaweed machetes. Although the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution to authorize the placement of 20,000 UN troops in Darfur, Sudan's president has not authorized this action. Unbelievably, he has the final decision in this matter.
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