Congo, Darfur victims gain voices at Portland event
By DEBORAH MOON
article created on: 2010-02-25T00:00:00
With her house party Feb. 21, Dale Oller illustrated one of the concrete steps her 30-some guests were told they could take to help the refugees of the Darfur genocide and the long-running conflicts in the Congo.
Oller decided to host the informational event after hearing a program last fall about the nearly 3 million refugees who have fled the genocide that killed about 450,000 people in Darfur over the past seven years.
The event drew several Lincoln High School students and many members of the Never Again Coalition, which arose to unite social action committees and others from numerous synagogues around that issue.
“The men, women and children of those countries are just like us,” said Terrie Rodello from Amnesty International. “They need someone to speak for them.”
Oller also invited two refugees from the Congo, one of whom shared part of a film on the Congo and who spoke about the complicated history of his homeland that has left more than 5.4 million dead. Though the five-year war ended in 2003, violence continues to claim up to 45,000 lives each month, with more than half of those deaths children under the age of 5.
Vincent Chirimwami came from the Congo five years ago and is now a special education teacher in the Portland school district. He gave a brief overview of Congo’s troubled history since the large region in central Africa was claimed by the King of Belgium in the 1880s. Congo became a Belgian colony in 1908 and gained its independence in 1960. The current deaths arise from a history of corruption, conflict stemming from the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda after which the perpetrators fled to the Congo, ongoing conflicts over Congo’s extensive mineral wealth and the extensive rape inflicted on hundreds of thousands of Congo’s women.
“The conflict is really, really complicated,” said Chirimwami, noting he is still learning about the causes even though he grew up in that country.
Following the extensive presentation on the horrendous human rights abuses in the Congo, Never Again Coalition member Marty Fromer spoke briefly about Darfur, noting most of those present were already well aware of the ongoing genocide in that region of the Sudan. Fromer said if Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir—who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity—is elected in the so-called “sham elections” in April, the resulting “legitimacy” of his government will allow him to scuttle the elections set for 2011 in southern Sudan, creating yet another area of conflict in Sudan.
Never Again member Julie Lipson then turned attendees attention to how they can take meaningful action.
“After you digest the exhaustive amount of information we learned tonight, there are a few simple actions you can take,” said Lipson.
Lipson urged people to sign up for the Postcard Brigade. For a $3 to $5 contribution per month, participants receive a stack of stamped postcards preaddressed to various public officials and media outlets featuring timely messages on Darfur and Congo, as well as updates on the situations in Darfur and the Congo. To sign up, e-mail postcardbrigade@gmail.com.
She also asked people to call 1-800-GENOCIDE (436-6243), a hotline which offers numerous actions people can take including connecting them with the office of their senator or representative to repeat that day’s message.
“We also encourage people to do stuff like this house party,” said Lipson. She said when people get involved on the grassroots level to spread the word about ongoing atrocities, they expand the circle of educated voices able to speak for the victims.
Other concrete ideas on how to help included:
• Contact President Obama via e-mail (www.whitehouse.gov/contact) or phone (202-456-1111) and urge the administration to stop supporting the sham elections in Sudan.
• Go to www.sudansham2010.org and sign the petition urging rejection of those elections since the nearly 3 million refugees in that country can not register to vote.
• Sign petitions or send messages to your congressional representatives supporting the Conflict Minerals Trade Act of 2009, which will provide more transparency on the source of minerals essential to the electronics industry. Many of the mines in the Congo producing coltan, cassiterite and wolframite are in areas controlled by armed groups, which tax the mines to finance continued conflict.
For more advocacy ideas, visit neveragaincoalition.org.
For more in-depth information on the two conflicts, visit jewishworldwatch.org.
