Charlie Gaia

2/9/2005

TH300 Theology III 11

 

Sudan Genocide

 

            Sudan has been plagued with genocide for many years.  In recent decades the Sudanese Government has been bombing small towns in the Darfur region to flush out rebel forces that they think might be residing in the area.  Often times these bombings kill many people and level whole villages.  All that is left in their midst are burnt flattened homes and dead bodies.  Survivors of the initial bombings are left with nothing; their houses are destroyed and all their belongings are lost.  The survivors and their families are then forced to move into refugee camps or take cover in bordering countries like Chad.  Many children in these camps die of starvation.  It is estimated that five to ten thousand people die each month in these camps and the villages.  Disease spreads quickly and easily from the dead rotting bodies of those starved to death.  While studying Sudan I couldn’t help but think how people could order and commit these mass killings of the many innocent Sudanese people living there.  Seeing pictures of the destruction and death brought on an emotional feeling of sadness.  I wondered how the Sudanese government could justify killing all those innocent people just to flush out the rebels, and how they could hire the janjaweed and allow them to kill any civilians and destroy any of their property.  Another thing that I wondered was how the U.S. could sit back and watch all this happen without doing anything about it, knowing that it probably wouldn’t take very many forces and funding to do so.  If the U.S.’s reason for not going into Sudan was that they didn’t want to anger another country or send soldiers after what had happened not too long ago in Somalia, then is that a good enough reason to not do anything about the killing of thousands of innocent people?  I am not sure what the answer to this question is, but I think that by recognizing that this is genocide and it is happening to many innocent people is the first step to stopping it.  Why even after all the reports that have been coming in about the mass killings doesn’t the UN call what is happening in Sudan Genocide?  What can we do to help these people in Sudan overcome this genocide?  I think that everyone can help this cause very easily by just raising awareness.  “What’s ultimately going to make a difference is when political advisors or members of the cabinet can no longer say that nobody out there really cares about this,” said Gale Smith who was a Clinton era Whitehouse Official.