MARY WISNIEWSKI
Assistant Living Editor
Like filmmaker and documentary photographer Mark Brecke, Pepperdine students have a knack for humanitarian causes. His current focus is on Darfur, a region where the Sudanese government and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia is killing, raping, starving and displacing non-Arabs since February 2003, partially, to arm rebel groups in the region. Although the United States acknowledged the situation as genocide in 2004, the crisis continues.
“Darfur is another culture who has lost their way of life and are targeted by the extermination of their government,” Brecke said.
Since his first visit to Darfur, Brecke said the situation has only deteriorated. He said the Internally Displaced Person camps are run by the government and have increased the violence as well as rapes. Brecke said the rebels are out of control, too.
“People are losing hope,” Brecke said.
Although countries have not come to a consensus in taking collective action to end the violence, many people like Brecke are raising awareness in America, including students.
Stephanie Nyombayire is a native of Rwanda and attends Swarthmore College. At the time of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, she lived in the Congo but felt the consequences. She lost more than 100 family members and friends because of it. She said her past makes her unable to be a bystander in the case of other genocides like the one occurring in Darfur. Because of her convictions about the crisis, Nyombayire went to the Darfurian refugee camps in Chad through MTVu in March 2005. She said the camps are more horrifying than one could imagine.
“They were lucky to have tents,” she said.
What horrified Nyombayire the most were the children.
“They see atrocities no one can imagine,” she said. These atrocities are reflected in their artwork. She said she met a child who drew a picture of a plane bombing.
“It is not a typical 8-year-old drawing,” she said.
To help end the genocide in Darfur, Mark Hanis co-founded the Genocide Intervention Network and is the president.
“People get overwhelmed with genocide and Darfur because of the death toll and can feel lost on how to stop it,” Hanis said.
Hanis said to help end the ongoing genocide in Darfur, one should join the network as a means to educate, advocate, and donate. He also recommends calling (800) GENOCIDE, a number that directly connects people to their governor’s office as a means to make sure they are taking action to stop the genocide. Nyombayire is also involved with Genocide Intervention Network and advises people to grade their senators as a means to monitor they are doing what they need to do.
“It’s probably not going to be the last [genocide],” Nyombayire said. “Everyone can do something.”
Hanis said there is a plethora of inspiring stories of people trying to stop genocide. He said one such story is a 10-year-old child who asked his grandmother to donate money toward Darfur for a birthday present. Such stories have given Hanis hope.
The Genocide Intervention Network is one of many organizations students are involved with to fight genocide. STAND stands for Student Anti-Genocide Coalition and is also fighting to end genocide in Darfur with more than 600 high school and college chapters. On April 16 to 27, members will tell members of Congress to make the grade to end the genocide.
John Prendergast is a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group, a human rights organization and former director of African Affairs at the National Security Council for the Clinton White House. He also spent time in Darfur. Prendergast said what strikes him most about his personal visits to Darfur are the uniformity of the stories that displaced women and kids tell him about their personal tragedies.
“All of them were rendered homeless in the most violent way,” he wrote in an e-mail interview. “Many of the women have been raped, some repeatedly. Most lost a number of family members in attacks by government forces or government-supported Janjaweed militias.”
Brecke saw the same struggles when he traveled to Darfur for the first time to capture it on film with the Sudanese Liberation Army.
“I didn’t meet a family where someone hadn’t been killed,” he said. He said it is important to document the genocide.
“Injustice must be recorded. It’s not like shooting for Vogue,” Brecke said. “You are there as a witness.”
Brecke said he gets through witnessing the horrors by believing there is more good in the world than bad.
“Some get cynical, but I look at it in a more optimistic way,” he said. “You have to or you won’t get through it.”
He said he finds the people in Dafur are resilient. People in the United States get mad when their cell phones die, and people in Darfur can still smile with an ongoing genocide, he said.
Brecke said to help fix the situation, people in the region need security first and foremost as well as humanitarian aid. He said the issue also must be brought up more at U.N. Security Council meetings.
“Bush is kind of a lame duck so far,” he said. “We have resources but don’t have the legitimacy to be in the territory.”
Although many people are raising awareness, politically, countries have not intervened enough to make the genocide end.
Loyola professor Jok Madut Jok is from the Sudan and said everyone would have to agree to end the genocide for it to end. He said this would not happen because countries will lose their own self-interests like China and its desire for oil in the Sudan.
“This won’t happen for the sake of Africans,” Jok said. “I don’t talk about what the world will do because I know it won’t happen.”
Prendergast said the situation in Darfur is sadly deteriorating.
“Against all odds, things are actually getting worse in Darfur,” he wrote in an e-mail. “As long as the Bush administration pursues a policy of friendly persuasion with the regime, rather than a punitive, pressure-based strategy, the Sudanese government will not change its behavior. So it is up to us. We need to make the issue of genocide response a political one. We need to say that as voters it matters to us how our government responds to the most horrific crime on the face of the earth. We need to stand up in the face of this crisis and be counted as people who will not stand idly by while the 21st century’s first genocide unfolds in front of our eyes.”
04-05-2007