Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.
- News out of Sri Lanka this week was dire, as the Sri Lankan government launched what many predict will be a final attack against the Tamil Tigers. The BBC’s Alastair Lawson filed a report that outlines the endgame options for Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war, including what it might mean for the civilians who remain as a human buffer zone between the government forces and the Tigers.
- Human Rights Watch released this report yesterday, which provides the chilling details of a massacre in eastern Congo in which Rwandan Hutu militia, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by its French acronym FDLR, trapped children in homes and burned them to death. The report includes testimony from some of the children’s parents as well as photographs of the charred villages.
- PRI’s The World featured an interview with playwright Lynn Nottage whose play “Ruined” about rape in eastern Congo won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Nottage describes the field research that went in to writing the script and how she hopes the play will inspire audience members to learn more about how American consumers are connected to the violence through purchasing electronics made from Congo’s minerals.
- This analysis written by International Crisis Group’s Daniela Kroslak calls for increased attention to Chad – for Chad’s sake, not just as a consequence of the conflict in Darfur. The tense humanitarian and political situation in Chad today threatens to worsen in coming weeks as rebels prepare to challenge Chadian President Idriss Deby.
- In a column in the Washington Post this week, James Traub describes how the situation in Sri Lanka “threatens to produce exactly the kind of cataclysm that states vowed to prevent when they adopted ‘the responsibility to protect’ at the 2005 U.N. World Summit.” Very interesting points, though I would argue that the international community already has shirked this responsibility (again).
The Enough Team contributed to this post.