The Walk for Freedom
Along with being April fools day, April 1 had supporters for Sudan's freedom walking 15 miles from Laurel to College Park in Maryland. I refer to the 300 mile Sudan Freedom Walk that was headed by Simon Deng, bearing the American flag, inaugurated on March 5 from Staten Island (through Long Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland) until it reached Baltimore on March 30. Many have walked along the east coast on a mission to spread awareness for the victims of violence and injustice. The walk will end in Washington D.C. on April 5 at the Capitol where a major rally is to start at 3:30pm.
Last week, through the regular emails I get from organizations I so actively once associated myself with… okay, I was not too involved, but nonetheless, they still believe I should be well aware of what is going on at the Alumna abode! I had received an email from an active member, trying to start a chapter of an existing and maturing organization namely, S.T.A.N.D. [Students Taking Action Now: Darfur] asking the masses to join 'the walk'! As soon as I saw how many miles we were going to be walking, I had to think it over. Conversely, as soon as I thought about the condition the innocent Sudanese were suffering, I thought to myself, "Only 15? That's nothing compared to what people go through on a daily basis there".
My knowledge on Sudan's troubled world was first sparked when I started reading Francis Bok's Escape from Slavery. I would recommend it to all those who want an in-depth view of the life of a common Sudanese villager from the south. Honestly, it is very much like hell on Earth. I would not recommend this book to the fragile ones out there. Oh no! I had to read the book in fractions, bit by bit. Tears would often roll down my cheeks, not the way it would when I used to read Danielle Steele's fictions. If only this too was fiction, a long tragic story with fictional characters. For those who are not aware of the injustice starring the Sudanese in the face, I shall summarize it for you. But first, I'd like to tell you a bit about the country. Sudan, Africa's largest country, is located between Egypt and Ethiopia. Its land lodges over 39 million people. It is overwhelmingly divided between northern and southern areas of the country, where the north is largely Arab, while the south is largely various tribes of black Africans. As a result, the religious affiliation in the north is Muslim and in the south, Christian and Animist. Many of the northerners advocate Sha'ria law for the entire country, whilst the southerners favor a secular federal government.
Now, the Sudanese government is accused of closing their eyes to slavery. While there is convincing evidence that slavery does occur there, the total picture is far more complicated. Large numbers of Sudanese men, women and children lose their freedom in many ways.
Government-backed militias, mainly from the Baggara tribe in western Sudan, primarily raid villages belonging to the Dinka tribe in Southern Sudan. These raids are a demonstration of a long-standing religious and racial conflict in that country and have been fueling a civil war for the past 40 years. Purportedly, more lives have been lost in Sudan's civil war than in Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo combined! From what I've read thus far through Bok's biography, news reports and learning about Simon Deng, armed militias (guns and swords) mounted on horses and on foot storm through villages, setting everything on fire, looting money, food and livestock (in Dinka villages, livestock is the prime scale of wealth for the people). All men are then killed like ants, as the women and children made are prisoners. Together, with all the loot (of course, humans included) they travel back to the north, where they force their newly acquired slaves to work under inhumane conditions. Those who fail to cooperate or those who complain face a 'non-surgical amputation' of limbs and are left to rot. By and large, the slaves are made to see pictures of a limbless man, and are warned that if they complain, they would face similar consequences. Of course, many try to escape, risking their lives in the process. Some like Bok and Deng have been successful, but many have not.
Feud amongst southern tribes continues to exist to date. A common practice is where women and children are abducted and held captive until their relative can scrape up enough money to buy them back. In the meantime, one can only imagine the torture faced by those unjustly held.
Camps adorn the land in a scattered fashion, but due to lack of sanitary conditions, water and adequate food, deadly epidemics threaten to breakout. Many humanitarian international camps have been setup, but there is only so much scarce resources can accomplish. Thousands have tried to flee (and many have been successful too) to neighboring countries, thus turning into refugees, living under a different regime. Being forced out of your one's home country, begging for shelter elsewhere, gives rise to new problems.
I am not going to elongate this post any further, but I am trying to get as much as I can out there. This is why I've linked the following websites to make it easy for you to discover and maybe even find ways to help the innocent in Sudan. See what the UN, and other countries are trying to do to help free the country from auto-genocide.
www.iabolish.com
Last week, through the regular emails I get from organizations I so actively once associated myself with… okay, I was not too involved, but nonetheless, they still believe I should be well aware of what is going on at the Alumna abode! I had received an email from an active member, trying to start a chapter of an existing and maturing organization namely, S.T.A.N.D. [Students Taking Action Now: Darfur] asking the masses to join 'the walk'! As soon as I saw how many miles we were going to be walking, I had to think it over. Conversely, as soon as I thought about the condition the innocent Sudanese were suffering, I thought to myself, "Only 15? That's nothing compared to what people go through on a daily basis there".
My knowledge on Sudan's troubled world was first sparked when I started reading Francis Bok's Escape from Slavery. I would recommend it to all those who want an in-depth view of the life of a common Sudanese villager from the south. Honestly, it is very much like hell on Earth. I would not recommend this book to the fragile ones out there. Oh no! I had to read the book in fractions, bit by bit. Tears would often roll down my cheeks, not the way it would when I used to read Danielle Steele's fictions. If only this too was fiction, a long tragic story with fictional characters. For those who are not aware of the injustice starring the Sudanese in the face, I shall summarize it for you. But first, I'd like to tell you a bit about the country. Sudan, Africa's largest country, is located between Egypt and Ethiopia. Its land lodges over 39 million people. It is overwhelmingly divided between northern and southern areas of the country, where the north is largely Arab, while the south is largely various tribes of black Africans. As a result, the religious affiliation in the north is Muslim and in the south, Christian and Animist. Many of the northerners advocate Sha'ria law for the entire country, whilst the southerners favor a secular federal government.
Now, the Sudanese government is accused of closing their eyes to slavery. While there is convincing evidence that slavery does occur there, the total picture is far more complicated. Large numbers of Sudanese men, women and children lose their freedom in many ways.
Government-backed militias, mainly from the Baggara tribe in western Sudan, primarily raid villages belonging to the Dinka tribe in Southern Sudan. These raids are a demonstration of a long-standing religious and racial conflict in that country and have been fueling a civil war for the past 40 years. Purportedly, more lives have been lost in Sudan's civil war than in Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo combined! From what I've read thus far through Bok's biography, news reports and learning about Simon Deng, armed militias (guns and swords) mounted on horses and on foot storm through villages, setting everything on fire, looting money, food and livestock (in Dinka villages, livestock is the prime scale of wealth for the people). All men are then killed like ants, as the women and children made are prisoners. Together, with all the loot (of course, humans included) they travel back to the north, where they force their newly acquired slaves to work under inhumane conditions. Those who fail to cooperate or those who complain face a 'non-surgical amputation' of limbs and are left to rot. By and large, the slaves are made to see pictures of a limbless man, and are warned that if they complain, they would face similar consequences. Of course, many try to escape, risking their lives in the process. Some like Bok and Deng have been successful, but many have not.
Feud amongst southern tribes continues to exist to date. A common practice is where women and children are abducted and held captive until their relative can scrape up enough money to buy them back. In the meantime, one can only imagine the torture faced by those unjustly held.
Camps adorn the land in a scattered fashion, but due to lack of sanitary conditions, water and adequate food, deadly epidemics threaten to breakout. Many humanitarian international camps have been setup, but there is only so much scarce resources can accomplish. Thousands have tried to flee (and many have been successful too) to neighboring countries, thus turning into refugees, living under a different regime. Being forced out of your one's home country, begging for shelter elsewhere, gives rise to new problems.
I am not going to elongate this post any further, but I am trying to get as much as I can out there. This is why I've linked the following websites to make it easy for you to discover and maybe even find ways to help the innocent in Sudan. See what the UN, and other countries are trying to do to help free the country from auto-genocide.
www.iabolish.com
www.sudanactivism.com
Thanks for caring! They need us!
PS: I understand that the main concern here is the Solution... will write on that!
Thanks for caring! They need us!
PS: I understand that the main concern here is the Solution... will write on that!
posted by surbhi seth @ 12:18 PM
13 Comments:
Great post. I give my full moral support.
Can't wait for the solution post
If you enjoyed (not sure if enjoyed is the right word to use) Escape from Slavery, you might want to get a copy of either (or both!) of these books:
-The Zanzibar Chest, by Aidan Hartley
-No One Can Stop the Rain, by Karin Moorehouse and Wei Cheng
The Zanzibar Chest is Hartley's story, mixed in with bits and pieces of the life of his father, who was a colonial administrator in East Africa in the 1920s. Hartley was born and raised in East Africa and he made a career as a foreign correspondent for Reuters. The story the book tells is his experience in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda of the 90's. Being a journalist, his story-telling is incredibly vivid, definitely not sugar-coated and told from a different perspective.
No One Can Stop The Rain is the story of Moorehouse and Cheng, a surgeon husband and HR administrator wife who volunteered with Medecines Sans Frontieres in Angola during the last years of Angola's civil war.
Happy reading!
Ko4: Thanks for the compliments and for being there! The solution post will be out sometime in the near future... so stay tuned! I'm only upset that I won't be able to make it to the rally at the Capitol (DC) today, where there are going to be many dignitaries like Hillary R. Clinton, men and women of the senate (people who can actually make a difference) and the media, of course! Let's just say, I'll be there in spirit!
Em: Thanks for recommending those books. I looked them up online, and will make my way to Barnes & Nobles after work to get myself a copy of The Zanzibar Chest. After reading its reviews, I must say, I'm a bit frightened to read it. But hey! Gotta be strong and prove Mansfield wrong!;)
surbhi,
I do not know the exact point when Americans became no apathetic, but ones eyes can not be opened when not connected to a brain. Love, respect and compassion are not weaknesses.
brian: Could you please elaborate on your comment! I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're getting at.. or maybe I'm not so deep! Thanks!:)
Message from Brian, whose views I thought, were worth sharing:
Hi Surbhi,
It was not my intention to confuse anyone with my comments to your Walk for Freedom post. Eyes are simply for gathering information. The brain is where information becomes right from wrong. We know that what is going on in The Sudan is wrong, but most Americans don't care. They are apathetic for lots of reasons; it's another tragic African story, why can't those people ever learn how to take care of themselves. Those
people aren't white. I have my own family to take care of, no one is
looking out for me. Hey did you see the latest I-Pod at the mall. What do you think of the Oriole's chances this year.
These and many more reasons are why American's don't care. It is all just too big. Like I said in my post, the death of one is a tragedy. Make The Sudan about just one story, one person, one tragedy at a time and people will listen.
Love, respect, compassion, mercy, justice and equality ; they
are not weaknesses but grace from God. We honor God when we humble
ourselves in service to others.
Thanks, Brian
hi, good post you got there... yes poverty is just a really hard issue to deal with in the world rite now... just hope we could find a solution real FAST!!!!!
keep it up
hi, good post you got there... yes poverty is just a really hard issue to deal with in the world rite now... just hope we could find a solution real FAST!!!!!
keep it up
smz: I'm glad you liked the post! Poverty is definitely one of the many hot topics. In my opinion, something can be done... perhaps a mixture of a total national/int'l. economic reform, substantial cooperation between the developed and developing countries, education and changing the way society thinks about blue and white collar jobs! I'm sure there's more to overthrowing poverty though!
just to add to those links,
http://www.darfurgenocide.org/
I have read Escape from Slavery. and i strongly recommend it to everybody!
Aytida: Thanks for commenting! By the way (and this is so off topic), I like 'The Adventures of Tintin' too!!!!=)
(off topic again)i was looking for some good tintin wallpapers of high resolution.. u think u could be of any help?? :)
happy blogging!!!!
Aytida: Hey, www.tintin.com should have wallpapers. But here's the link to another website:
Tintin Wallpapers
Enjoy!:)
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