Just because the situation in Sudan isn’t on the front pages doesn’t mean thousands of people aren’t dying every week.
That, says Ruth Messinger with a sigh, is certainly the case in Darfur.
For the past several years, the executive director of the American Jewish World Service has traveled around the world telling anyone who will listen how bad things are in the African nation’s Darfur region. Her message now: It’s getting worse.
“The political situation with both Sudan and Chad is more destabilized. Now there are significant areas in Darfur where the U.N. is pulling out. It’s too unsafe for humanitarian aid workers, there have been too many deliberate attacks,” said Messinger, who will be in the Bay Area this weekend for a pair of free speeches.
With the U.N. washing its hands of Darfur, Messinger predicts a domino effect of non-governmental organizations fleeing as well, leading to outbreaks of disease in squalid camps without enough food or access to health care.
“There are 3.5 million people without significant access to food. The situation is just [getting] worse, and the best guess of various world experts is that 500 people a day are dying as a result of deliberate ethnic cleansing displacement that meets the U.N. definition of genocide.”
You can’t feed millions of people. You can’t pick up a rifle and stave off the murderous Janjaweed tribesmen or the corrupt Sudanese government that enables them in attacking the Darfurian people.
But you can still help, Messinger stresses, and many Jews and Jewish organizations have joined her crusade. She’s raised millions of dollars for food and medical supplies and has put letters in the hands of thousands of people, urging them to write to their elected leaders. On April 30, a rally for Darfur will be held in Washington, D.C.
“When evil is perpetrated around the world, some people are perpetrators, some people are victims and too many other people are bystanders. This is an effort to get people to not be bystanders.”
For more information or to donate, visit www.ajws.org.
Ruth Messinger will speak at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 11 at Congregation Sherith Israel, 2266 California St., S.F., and at 9:15 a.m. Sunday, Feb. 12 at Congregation Rodef Sholom, 170 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. Both speeches are free.