Friday, November 10, 2006

Darfur

Public service ads that are meant to scare us into action have never worked too well for me. I have a feeling that shock tactics tend to alienate people instead of creating empathy. A good exception is The Save Darfur TV campaign. I found it so effective, I went to the website and wrote a check.
There are no refugees in sight in the ad. You see Americans, adults and children, mostly white, reading first hand testimony of atrocities in Darfur. It works. But even if it didn't, one cannot remain indifferent to Darfur.
I urge you to visit the website, learn about the problem, contact your representative, donate:

http://www.savedarfur.org/content

Now, on the Save Darfur website there is a useful introduction to the problem, so we know why the place is such a disaster. However, I guess in the interest of not sounding too political or biased, they neglect to say that the Janjaweed, the marauding murderers who are committing the atrocities and who are sponsored and abetted by the Sudanese government are Muslims and they are killing other Muslims.
We can call on our congresspeople and senators and Bush all we want, but Muslim nations should also be part of the solution. Who better than them to pressure the Sudanese government to stop the genocide? Somehow, the gazillionaire, oil-rich Muslim countries seem quite unconcerned with the fate of their fellow Muslims in Darfur.

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