Help end genocide in Darfur

Every five minutes a Darfuri dies. Four hundred thousand have already died since the ethnic-cleansing genocide of poor-but-proud African farmers was undertaken by the despotic Arab Al-Bashir regime in Khartoum. An estimated 50,000 of these have been babies who are often chained together and thrown on the pyres of the burning huts in the thousands of villages that have been burned to the ground by the mercenary Janjaweed militia, the killing agents of Al-Bashir. Two and a half million Darfuris have been left homeless and 4 million depend on emergency relief for their very survival.

Salt Lake Saves Darfur, the local organization of the international Save Darfur Coalition, in observance of the Global Days for Darfur, April 21-29, is sponsoring a series of events to bring the plight of these suffering people to the vision and the hearts of the great people of Salt Lake and Utah. On Saturday, we will be sponsoring, in partnership with the Westminster College chapter of STAND, a lecture by noted Africa and Sudan expert John Prendergast titled "Stopping the Genocide in Darfur." This lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 7 p.m. in the Gore Auditorium on Westminster College's beautiful campus in Salt Lake, and will also be broadcast for those unable to attend.

On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe, Kakwa Union USA, at Salt Lake's magnificent Main Library and Plaza, from 1-5 p.m. This event is also free and open to all. We will discuss ways to get our government to insist on the immediate placement of adequate United Nations peacekeepers to "stop the killing now," get our government to pay its fair share of the costs for this international peacekeeping effort and insist that our government and institutions divest themselves of any entity deriving profit from the inhumane Al-Bashir regime and the slaughter of the innocent people of Darfur.

In the time that it has taken to read this, another Darfuri man or woman or baby has perished. Please come to the library on April 29 to join your voice with ours. We simply can't let this atrocity against humanity in Western Sudan continue.

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Chuck Bruder is with Salt Lake Saves Darfur, www.savedarfur.org.