Blog Posts in Prevention
Rep Ros-Lehtinen Speaks Out on the Sudan Election
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) brought concern over next month’s Sudanese elections to the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday. As a ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she drew attention to the promise of democratic transformation offered by Sudan's 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which hasn’t come to pass in the five years since the peace deal was signed. Referring to the upcoming elections as a “sham,” the congresswoman stressed the importance of bringing to justice Sudan’s president, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes in Darfur. She said:
“These elections are a sham - hijacked to legitimize the rule of a reprehensible, murderous regime. Responsible nations must work to ensure Sudan’s butcher answers for his crimes before this process moves forward.”
Tuesday marked Florida's day of action in an ongoing grassroots campaign, Sudan Sham Elections 2010. With events taking place across the United States, activists aim to generate attention to Sudan's elections in the weeks before polling begins and urge U.S. leaders at the highest levels to engage at this crucial moment in Sudan's history.
Watch Congressman Ros-Lehtinen's full remarks on the House floor:
Technorati Tags: Advocacy Darfur and Southern Sudan Omar al-Bashir Prevention Sudan Election Sudan NowWomen's Day in Photos from Around the World
A large, energetic crowd turned out on March 8, for Washington, D.C.'s Join Me on the Bridge event. All over the world, women and men commemorated International Women's Day at events affiliated with Women for Women International by gathering on bridges to send the message that we must join together and work collectively to end global violence against women. Below is an audio slideshow narrated by Candice Knezevic, the campaign manager for RAISE Hope for Congo, about D.C.'s Join Me on the Bridge event and other gatherings held around the world.
Congo Spotlighted in This Week’s Law & Order SVU
This week’s all-new episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit once again takes on an issue we at Enough are passionate about: ending the epidemic of violence against women in eastern Congo.
In the second half, the episode “Witness” highlights the searing story of a young Congolese woman who escaped the violence in eastern Congo and now lives in the United States. Although she is many thousands of miles away from her home, a turn of events forces her to confront her own experience with rape in Congo. Her story highlights the fact that the trade in conflict minerals from Congo is helping perpetuate the violence, and as consumers, we bear responsibility for helping to end the sordid trade so that Congo’s people can benefit from their country’s resource wealth.
In the gripping, highly fictionalized style that regular followers of SVU love, scriptwriters (with some input from Enough) incorporated this tragic and underreported theme into a story that will reach hundreds of thousands of viewers in the United States on Wednesday night. Please tune in at 10/9c. After watching this account of the character’s experience, learn about the work being done daily to empower the real women of Congo and reform the conflict minerals trade.
Please help spread the word about Wednesday night’s episode and the resources available that explain the real-life dimension of the tragedy unfolding right now in eastern Congo. On Twitter and Facebook, please post:
Law&Order #SVU this Wed takes on war over conflict minerals in #Congo. Learn about real-life drama: http://bit.ly/9zraNG
“There’s No Money in the Elections”
JUBA, Southern Sudan – Six kids to care for, husband’s left town so she’s on her own, it’s over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and at 10 a.m., it seems like it’s already been a long day for Stella, a southern Sudanese woman running a tea and coffee stand in a market on the outskirts of Juba.
As she roasts coffee beans over a charcoal stove, Stella responds with passion to my casual inquiries about Sudan’s upcoming elections, but as my friend Isa translates from Juba Arabic to English for me, I realize Stella is not voicing her enthusiasm for a particular candidate or political ideology; she is angry about her own situation as a single mother trying to make ends meet.
Stella says she wishes she could work for the Government of Southern Sudan, because from her perspective, the people who do work in government are the ones with money. (Isa explains that she probably is referring to work as a cleaner or a tea service person in a government office, given that she is not literate.) As for the elections, she says through my friend’s translation that “there’s no money in the elections.” From our short conversation, this statement seems perfectly logical to me. Her primary concern is supporting her family, and if participating in the elections could help her to do this, she would. I don’t think it is a stretch to posit that Stella’s personal experiences have not given her good reason to view the elections as a vehicle for political and practical change in her country.
I stopped for tea at Stella’s stand because I wanted to ask her about the large campaign poster hanging outside the market entrance. The sheet was painted with red and blue letters that read: “SPLM: New Sudan, Yes We Can.” When I first saw this poster, I was amused by the clever wordplay and reference to President Obama’s campaign. But after talking to Stella – and learning that she was not aware of the meaning of the campaign slogan because she cannot read and no one explained it to her – I better understood the disconnect between the complex arena of Sudanese politics and the basic yet monumental needs of ordinary Sudanese people. The conversation was a reminder of the space between the political wrangling that I often report about and the expectations and priorities of the majority of Sudanese people.
LRA in Darfur? Regional Actors React
The news that Enough broke yesterday of a contingent of the Lord Resistance Army moving into Darfur generated considerable interest from a variety of regional actors.
Some of the reactions, while predictable, were interesting for simply being over the top. An LRA spokesman in Nairobi said the LRA “would like to dismiss this baseless report with all the contempt it deserves” – which makes one wonder why the spokesman can't muster a bit of contempt for his own organization’s long track record of committing war crimes. Colonel Michael Anywar and Justine Labeja, representatives of the LRA’s political wing in the Kenyan capital, claimed that the Sudanese government stopped supporting the LRA in 2002. Both LRA officials quoted from Nairobi participated in the most recent round of peace talks in 2006, but it is unclear how closely they are linked to the fighters in the field.
The Ugandan president weighed in on the news today in a press conference in Kampala. He said he received reports from the Ugandan army a month ago saying that the LRA’s messianic leader, Joseph Kony, had “disappeared” and that the group he travels with crossed over the border from the Central African Republic to Darfur. After pushing the LRA out of northern Uganda, the Ugandan army received authorization from the governments of Congo, southern Sudan, and CAR to track the LRA in their territory.
President Museveni also seized the opportunity to point out that the Sudanese government – a longtime adversary with whom Uganda shares a history of providing safe haven to each other’s rebel groups – has been a patron of the LRA in the past. If Khartoum provides a cover for Kony in Darfur, “it makes no difference because they supported him much more in the past,” Museveni said. “But whatever they gave him, we captured." The fact that the Ugandan president has accused the LRA of moving into Darfur would seem to ensure that this story will continue to play out for some time.
The response from Sudan came from the government’s representative at the United Nations, the outgoing Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, who, it must be noted, doesn’t tend toward bland, diplomatic statements. The ambassador blasted Enough, saying that the report was meant to derail the “peace train” for Darfur, currently making a stopover in Doha. As a note to the outgoing ambassador, the peace train rhetoric and LRA denials might be a little more believable if the Government of Sudan hadn't long lied about its previous support to the LRA and wasn't currently engaged in attacks in Darfur that have claimed hundreds of lives in recent weeks.
Coincidentally, news of the LRA in Darfur occurred a day after the U.S. Senate passed legislation calling for the Obama administration to devise a strategy for militarily defeating the LRA. That job just got more complicated now that it appears Kony and Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, both wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, have once again teamed up.
To date, U.S. officials have insisted simply that they can neither confirm nor deny the LRA presence in Darfur. Here is hoping that Congressional leaders can push for an answer that is considerably more forthcoming than that.
