Poster’s Post
Instead of just posting news about Darfur and other people’s ideas, I’ve decided that I’m going to add some of my own. Plus, some of the students of Chatham High School. You could go to any site to get news, so perhaps you should truly hear the voices of students who live in a relatively safe enviroment. We didn’t cause these problems, but when now 400,000 people are dead from starvation, 2 million people are fleeing their homes, and 200,000 people are misplaced, I think its important that we try and fix it.
Yesterday someone close to me and completly ignorant on this topic made a comment on Darfur. He said that we didn’t cause the problems, and we shouldn’t fix them. Furthermore, he said that people are killing people becuase they hate each other, and it’s not his problem. If there were people killing people here in this town, then it would, but all over the world people are dying becuase of violence. People are killing themselves by killing other people. It’s pretty much the whole “eye for eye” shennanigan. Why should we get in the middle of a violent fight?
The problem is that people in Darfur are innocent most of the time. Sure there are rebels (I mean, there were Jewish resistant fighters as well during the holocaust), but this is genocide. These are men women and children dying, while the Janjaweed its pretty much just soldiers.
Another thing he doesn’t know is that those 400,000 deaths were mostly caused by starvation, not violence. 2 million people have so far fled from their homes to either Chad or to a refugee camp. These refugee camps are somewhat lacking, though, since they don’t have enough supplies or food to really protect anyone. Plus, the Janjaweed are right outside, cutting off the supplies being sent or killing/raping the people. If they want water, for example, they have to leave the camp to go to a well a that can vary to a few steps outside to a few miles away. Not only that, the Janjaweed soldiers are surrounding the well with guns so that if anyone insults them in any way (this could just mean walking up to them), they’d shoot them. People have to send their children, not teenagers but 6 and 7 year olds, to get water becuase they’re less likely to get killed or raped! Imagine if you had to send your little child on this dangerous mission to get water. Imagine if you had to leave behind a baby because you had to leave your home quietly and stealthily and the baby may cry. Imagine if you had to sacrifice your self for your children yet they were killed anyway?
So don’t tell me this is people killing people and the whole world if full of it. Rwanda, the Armenian Genocide, Darfur, the Holocaust…they’re all the same. Innocent people are systemmatically getting killed because of their race. This is a topic close to my heart for this reason. Everything has happened because of race, all the unncecessary deaths and violence.
Maybe you don’t care as much as I do about race. It is true that I’ve been teased about not being white. When I was a child, my friends called me “Mud”, and thought my skin was dirty. This may seem like it has nothing to do with the genocide, but it does. The people of Dar Fur, they’re being killed for the same reason. because they’re dirty and muddy. The Janjaweed are only attacking them because of their etnicity, becuase they didn’t believe they were “pure”.
If such a thing happened in America, the government would immediatly jail the people who do this if they were being as violent as the Janjaweed. The democratic politicians would be making speaches speeches on race (instead of completly ignoring the topic as to not lose the race, since Obama is black) rather than Iraq. However, the Sudanese government is completly ignoring it, just as the government of Turkey is completly denying the fact that the Armenian Genocide happened on their soil, even though they’re the ones who enforced it years ago. The minister in charge of this affair is actually minimizing the violence going on there, an act that would lead him to improsonment if he were in the US. He has been falsely reporting things.
What depresses me is that people think this is not worth fighting for. It’s true that as of right now, America is going into a recession and the Iraq war is failing and a lot of crap like global warming is going on. We’re a little too busy dealing with the problems at home. But at least spare some money for this genocide, to help these poor people stop living their lives in fear. If this went on in the US and everyone just stood by and watched while one by one your friends and family dissapeared, how would you feel?
The US govt is not helping at all. They can’t even spare the .7% of their income to help poverty. No democracy can. People are too wrapped up in their own lives to worry about anyone elses. It is only those countries without a democracy who are actually doing something to help people in need.
But please. You don’t have to call a full-fledged war on Sudan for this right away, but at least help these poor people. Send them money so they could eat for a day. It doesn’t have to be your whole bank account either. Every cent counts. A vaccination is 15 cents, a bottle of water is a dollar. Donate to
savedarfur.org [[darfur]]
ONE campaign (http://www.one.org) [[poverty]]
Unicef (unicef.org)
The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (http://www.pedaids.org/) [[Aids]]
And others. I’m sure you can find them. They’re everywhere.
So, its not that much of an effort to either spread the news about darfur, or to donate 15 cents so somebody can live.
