Genocide Intervention Network www.GenocideIntervention.net

Update: Browse the gallery of submitted photos!

Thanks to the hard work of Darfur advocates around the world, the Global Days for Darfur were a huge success! Tens of thousands of concerned citizens participated in hundreds of activities to rally around the message that time is running out for the people of Darfur and to demand immediate international action to end the violence.

More than 400 events were held in the United States, encompassing 47 states and over 300 cities. These coincided with over 50 international events. Complete media coverage of events can be found on the Save Darfur website.

We know many of you have been taking pictures at these events, and we want to make sure that everyone gets to see them! We've set up an online photo gallery of all of the photos we've received so far, and we want your images to be a part of it.

And submitting the images couldn't be simpler: Just upload your pictures to Flickr.com and add the tags antigenocide and days4darfur. Any images tagged with those words will automatically be displayed in our gallery.

The Details

Flickr.com is a free photo sharing site. We post all of our images there to give others an easy way to access them. If you're not a member of Flickr, you can sign up for free and upload several dozen photos per month.

When you upload your photos, Flickr will give you the option to add tags for all of the images you're uploading at once. Just enter "antigenocide days4darfur" (without the quotes) into that field and the photos will automatically show up in our photo gallery.

Please make sure to include the location of the event in the title or in the description of your photos.

Once you upload your photos, they may take up to an hour to show up in the gallery — but don't worry, they'll be there!

Questions?

If you need any help, please e-mail membership@genocideintervention.net and we'll answer any questions you may have!

—Ivan, Colin and the GI-Net team

P.S. Did you take any videos at a Darfur event? If so, we'd like to see it! Upload your video to YouTube or Google Video and send us the link, and we may include it on our website or in a future newsletter!

By Ronan Farrow and Mia Farrow, The Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2007

Read more about Ronan Farrow, Genocide Intervention Network Representative.

"One World, One Dream" is China's slogan for its 2008 Olympics. But there is one nightmare that China shouldn't be allowed to sweep under the rug. That nightmare is Darfur, where more than 400,000 people have been killed and more than two-and-a-half million driven from flaming villages by the Chinese-backed government of Sudan.

That so many corporate sponsors want the world to look away from that atrocity during the games is bad enough. But equally disappointing is the decision of artists like director Steven Spielberg — who quietly visited China this month as he prepares to help stage the Olympic ceremonies — to sanitize Beijing's image. Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?

China is pouring billions of dollars into Sudan. Beijing purchases an overwhelming majority of Sudan's annual oil exports and state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. — an official partner of the upcoming Olympic Games -- owns the largest shares in each of Sudan's two major oil consortia. The Sudanese government uses as much as 80% of proceeds from those sales to fund its brutal Janjaweed proxy militia and purchase their instruments of destruction: bombers, assault helicopters, armored vehicles and small arms, most of them of Chinese manufacture. Airstrips constructed and operated by the Chinese have been used to launch bombing campaigns on villages. And China has used its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to repeatedly obstruct efforts by the U.S. and the U.K. to introduce peacekeepers to curtail the slaughter.

As one of the few players whose support is indispensable to Sudan, China has the power to, at the very least, insist that Khartoum accept a robust international peacekeeping force to protect defenseless civilians in Darfur. Beijing is uniquely positioned to put a stop to the slaughter, yet they have so far been unabashed in their refusal to do so.

But there is now one thing that China may hold more dear than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil: their successful staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics. That desire may provide a lone point of leverage with a country that has otherwise been impervious to all criticism.

Whether that opportunity goes unexploited lies in the hands of the high-profile supporters of these Olympic Games. Corporate sponsors like Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, General Electric and McDonalds, and key collaborators like Mr. Spielberg, should be put on notice. For there is another slogan afoot, one that is fast becoming viral amongst advocacy groups; rather than "One World, One Dream," people are beginning to speak of the coming "Genocide Olympics."

Does Mr. Spielberg really want to go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games? Do the various television sponsors around the world want to share in that shame? Because they will. Unless, of course, all of them add their singularly well-positioned voices to the growing calls for Chinese action to end the slaughter in Darfur.

Imagine if such calls were to succeed in pushing the Chinese government to use its leverage over Sudan to protect civilians in Darfur. The 2008 Beijing Olympics really could become an occasion for pride and celebration, a truly international honoring of the authentic spirit of "one world" and "one dream."

Mr. Farrow, a student at Yale Law School, traveled to Darfur as a UNICEF spokesperson in 2004 and 2006. Ms. Farrow, an actor, has traveled twice to Darfur and twice to neighboring Chad. She has recently returned from Darfur's border with the Central African Republic.

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
--Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl in his book, Man's Search for Meaning

This past year, you joined with thousands of activists from across the country and the world to help give the people of Darfur the security and means of survival that were callously ripped away from them by their own government.

As the year comes to a close and we reflect on our actions, consider the fact that we have not been "coming to the rescue" of powerless victims, but rather we have been ensuring that the world has heard the story of tenacious survivors.

In contemplating our goals for the next year, we should be guided by the stories of genocide's survivors. Although facing an unrelenting assault on their existence -- facilitated in part by a seemingly impotent international community -- the people of Darfur have shown us hope. They have shown us resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.

As illustrated in the above quote by Viktor Frankl, the survivors of genocide teach us to appreciate the power we all have to respond to the sometimes dismal realities of life with elevating and inspirational actions and attitudes.

To help us remember this power, GI-Net has created a calendar and a computer desktop background with photos of Darfurians overcoming the gravest of conditions -- and important dates in the work to end the genocide in Darfur, as well as anti-genocide anniversaries around the world. We invite you to download these for free, and we hope they will provide a source of inspiration for your work in the year ahead.

Our work is far from over. The international community must still live up to its responsibility to protect the people of Darfur. With your continued efforts, we can make 2007 the year in which peace returns to Darfur.

Here are three actions you can immediately take to help achieve this goal:

• Help get UN peacekeepers deployed now! Join our Sprint for Darfur campaign, an easy way to raise awareness in your community and funds for Darfur. Sprint for Darfur now includes a new letter to President Bush which we encourage you to send.
• Support civilian protection in Darfur and GI-Net's advocacy work: Make your tax-deductible donation to the Genocide Intervention Network that will fund our innovative civilian protection program and national advocacy work.
• Write your own story of activism. Columnist Nicholas Kristof has invited Darfur activists to use coverage of Darfur to create their own articles, essays or multimedia about the genocide -- the deadline is Jan. 10. Unfortunately, this feature is only available to New York Times TimesSelect subscribers. Kristof, however, is also a judge in the US Holocaust Memorial's student op-ed contest, along with Sen. Barack Obama. The deadline is March 1.

--Colin, Ivan and the rest of the GI-Net team

P.S. The Darfur activism "year in pictures" is still available on our website -- feel free to pass the images around or use them for your own Darfur events!

Images Courtesy of Mia Farrow

You, and tens of thousands of activists like you, are trying to do nothing less than change the way the world responds to genocide — transforming “never again” from a promise we make to a commitment we keep. At a time in which the situation looks ever bleaker for Darfur and many in the international community continue along a path of indifference, we wanted to commemorate your hard work.

We may never know what might have happened in Darfur had anti-genocide activists not risen to the occasion, but we do know that the only reason — the only reason — that political leaders have taken the steps they have is because of your efforts. In the end, we will stop genocide, but that will not bring back those who have been killed, nor excuse the inexcusable inaction of the world. Yet if even one life has been saved, it will have been enough.

We hope you take some measure of strength and inspiration from these stories of grassroots anti-genocide action — and continue to fight, until the genocide is over.

In Memory of Emily

Photo by The Journal News

On Sept. 17, Emily Cornish — a member of the Amnesty International Club at her high school — was in Manhattan attending the Save Darfur Rally in Central Park. She was handed a pamphlet publicizing DarfurFast and suggested to her friends that they participate in the campaign.

Hours later, she was killed in a car accident.

In her memory, students at Yorktown High School in Westchester, N.Y., decided to raise money to help end the genocide. On Oct. 5, they set up a table in the school cafeteria and proceeded to raise over $750 for the Save Darfur Coalition as part of DarfurFast.

Emily did not get a chance to participate in DarfurFast herself, but her passion while living inspired Yorktown High School students to become anti-genocide activists. We hope it will inspire all of us to do the same.

Watch an video about about Emily and her commitment to Darfur.

Reaching Out in Minnesota

The Genocide Intervention Network’s University of St. Thomas chapter has been hard at work in Minnesota. Eighteen GI-Net students spent a recent Sunday afternoon assisting staff at the American Refugee Committee (ARC) with outreach efforts and donor communications. ARC is a humanitarian assistance organization that supports a Darfur refugee camp.

Some of these students also attended ARC’s Tenth Annual Chicago Luncheon. This year’s topic was the ongoing violence in Darfur and featured a keynote address by John Prendergast from the International Crisis Group. Jerry Ferrell, the ARC director of operations in Darfur, also spoke.

We look forward to seeing what anti-genocide activists in Minnesota will do next!

Running for Darfur

Photo by Trung Bui, Daily Lobo

On Sunday, Oct. 22, a group of students and faculty from the law school at the University of New Mexico ran in the Duke City Marathon to raise awareness and financial support for Darfur. According to law professor Jennifer Moore, their specific focus was to inform people about the horrific number of women who are raped in Darfur and support prevention efforts that provide armed guards to groups of women leaving the camps.

In all, seven teams and one solo runner from the law school ran the marathon, and the women’s team claimed first place! Proceeds from their efforts, as much as $3,000 — raised from T-shirt sales, campus meetings, seminars, and the race itself — will be donated to the Genocide Intervention Network.

Taking the Initiative

Ruth Gonzalez, a 17-year-old high school student from Miami, began her anti-genocide activism one day in September when she decided to wear a “Save Darfur” t-shirt to school. This simple act elicited a flurry of questions and comments from her classmates who, as she put it, “were clueless” about the situation in Darfur.

Since then, Ruth has posted flyers around her school, become involved with the Miami-based chapter of Never Again International along with fellow student activist Nidya Sarris, and has given presentations on the genocide to her creative writing teacher and her club advisor. She is now planning to enter the Darfur op-ed contest for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Ruth is just one example of someone who is contributing to a brighter future for Darfur by standing up and taking action in her own community. We should all heed Ruth’s words: “The world has to stop ignoring genocide and start doing something about it before once again, we have only history to judge us. I won't stop as long as it takes!”