a day in the life of Darfur

in pictures

via mere comments

From The New Republic, photos by Brian Steidle.

We've used up our thousand words...

Some thoughts from Brian Steidle:

Our mission was to document violations of the cease-fire agreement--attacks on villages, troop movement, and military operations. This is what we witnessed: villages of up to 20,000 inhabitants burned to the ground with nothing left but ash frames; scores of dead bodies with bound arms--males had been castrated and children had been beaten to death; evidence of execution-style deaths. In the village of Um Louta, which was destroyed in November 2004, many of the 37 people who had been killed had been locked in their huts before being burned alive. We interviewed women who had been gang raped--one report alleged that there had been approximately 70 rapes in a group of refugee camps during a period of only a few days.

My conscience would not allow me to stand by and take no further action. I became convinced that I must tell the story of what I witnessed to the world.

ps:  if you want to contact your MP, you can locate him/her easily here.

Comments

[alex]

So, what can I do? Is there a co-ordinated "contact your MP" group to help pressure the government to intervene? What else is there?

[Joseph]

alex: you can probably start by contacting your local mp - (use the link above), as well as getting info via savedarfur.org about local events and groups. If I run across anything more specific, I'll pass it along.

And pray. And act. And pray.