Last year my brother, sisters and I curled up on our big green sofa and watched the movie "Tears of the Sun." The film is set in a war-torn African nation into which a Navy SEAL lieutenant, played by Bruce Willis, is sent to rescue foreign aid workers. The film chronicles the decisions of conscience that the lieutenant and his men are forced to make. They have to decide between doing what their mission details and leaving the dangerous country, or trying to save African refugees from the army trying to annihilate them.
In the end, with great Hollywood fanfare and much loss of life, the men decide to take their chances against the evil army.
"Tears of the Sun" was one of the most moving and disturbing movies that I have ever seen. Not because of its overdone, Navy SEAL-tries-to-save-the-world premise, but because of its depiction of the secret atrocities that happen during "war." I put "war" in quotations because it's hard to believe that the baby-killing rapists that I saw were soldiers protecting themselves and their country from harm.
The disturbing image of one soldier raping a woman after cutting off her nipples is forever imprinted in my mind. This, along with other images of burned villages with human carcasses strewn about, comes to mind whenever I read or hear about the atrocities in Sudan.
The Darfur region of Sudan is the site of what the United Nations has called "the world's worst humanitarian crisis," according to an Oct. 30 CNN.com article.
Unrest first broke out in the region in February of last year when African farmers attacked government property because of what they believed was an unfair distribution of scarce resources. The largely Arab government sent Arab militia to quell the rebellion.
What started out as the quelling of a rebellion has turned into a government-sanctioned attempted genocide.
The armed Arab militiamen, named Janjaweed, ride into the villages of their African countrymen and murder and pillage at will, turning 1.5 million people into refugees as they try to escape the murderous posse. At last count, 70,000 people had died from starvation and disease since the February displacement, according to reports from CNN.com. The exact number of those who have died as a result of violence is still unknown.
But what is known is that the Sudanese government has done nothing to stop the violence, in fact their inaction and lack of cooperation with United Nations peace forces makes it clear that they are in league with the murderers. What is also known is that, aside from the threat of worldwide sanctions against the Sudanese government and the deployment of aid workers by the United Nations, the rest of the world has shown little interest in the humanitarian crisis.
The barely established nations of Rwanda and Nigeria have sent what they could afford of their army. Now, 50 Nigerian troops, 237 Rwandan troops, and some compassionate aid workers are all that stand between a nation of people and their genocide.
Recent peace talks and meetings with the Sudanese government have been followed by carloads of Arab-Sudanese police terrorizing the refugee camps into which the Africans have been marginalized.
For the people of Sudan, the path from their war-torn villages to the refugee camps is just as perilous as their escape from the Janjaweed who surround their villages. Along the roads are the bodies of those who have died from starvation and disease before ever making it to camps. Lurking on the outskirts of every camp and village are Janjaweed who rape old women and little girls without discrimination.
An Oct. 20 article on the United States Fund for UNICEF Web site summed up the role that rape plays in genocides.
"Many (women and girls had been) assaulted by militia groups who use rape and sexual violence as a form of punishment and torture. This has a devastating effect on individuals and instills fear and shame within communities. Families and children are sometimes forced to watch."
One militiaman was quoted in another article as saying he rapes the African women because he "wants to make light babies."
It is hard to believe that as we sit comfortable in our homes contesting civil rights battles for no apparent good reason, there is a genocide in progress on the other side of the world. Many people I spoke with had not even heard of the crisis.
It's interesting to note that when I first saw "Tears of the Sun," no one I spoke to had heard of it. One person said it was possibly because it wasn't critically acclaimed.
When I turn on the evening news and see only a half-second snippet of a starving Sudanese child, I can't help but think that maybe the crisis in Darfur isn't critically acclaimed either.
