Dear Friends:
It is not very pleasant to be focusing on genocide every day. It is exciting, though, and it gives me so much energy and hope, to be able to work next to some amazing young people who are truly giving of themselves to help others halfway around the world.
Members of the Human Rights Watch Student Task Force hosted and completely ran Camp Darfur at their high school. They did research on Darfur and on past genocides, and they guided their entire student body through the camp.
They read real testimony of the victims of the Darfur genocide, and they showed how anyone could get involved and make a difference. During each group’s tour of Camp Darfur, some of the student leaders would interrupt, and, with a microphone for all to hear, they would use their cell phone to call President Bush, asking him to do a better job in providing immediate protection for the innocent civilians of Darfur.
These young men and women (because they definitely do not act like children) are not old enough to deserve blame or feel guilty about not acting during the Rwandan genocide, not to mention the others from the past century. But, they somehow found it within themselves to embrace responsibility.
Where the international community, individual countries, and our leaders have not taken Responsibility to Protect as a concept or philosophy that needs to be followed in action, not just in words, young people are embracing Responsibility to Protect at the person-to-person level and acting on it.
Please watch the video and follow the example set by our young leaders. Call President Bush and ask him to go beyond words and do all that he can to push for immediate protection for the innocent civilians of Darfur. Genocide is not negotiable.
White House: (202) 456-1111
Peace,
Gabriel
3 replies on “Field Report 2: LA area High School students host Camp Darfur and create action to stop the genocide in Darfur.”
How inspiring! I will bring up Camp Darfur again at the next San Antonio Interfaith Darfur Coalition meeting. The more realism we can interject with the message, the more powerful and lasting the images become to those who “experience” it. Kudos to the high school students who had the courage and the determination to take on an event such as this. I hope others will follow your example.
Megan Goldner
Texas
Hello Megan!
Yes! Please let us know if you’d like us to bring Camp Darfur to San Antonio. The team has been talking about how great it would be to meet you and your mom in person and do a CD together.
The young men and women at Wildwood High School are just amazing. I am very impressed at how young people have chosen to embrace responsibility, when many older adults seem to want to avoid it.
Today we brought Camp Darfur to Berkeley, where STAND students held a regional conference. We’ll upload a field report about this soon.
Please say hi to your mom and keep in touch!
Paz,
Gabriel
From USA-Today opinion piece
Genocide’s top villian is the United States, not the people, government, or corporations of the United States; but a small number of powerful corporations and individuals who have been able to manipulate the US government into profiteering from genocide for the pass forty years.
The victim is West Papua, the loot is that nation’s gold and copper which the Bechtel built Freeport McMoRan mine has been digging up for the pass forty years. Unfortunately Mobil and Chevron owned 60% of the NNGPM company which during 1936 discovered the world’s richest gold & copper deposits were in West Papua. The geologist named it “Ertsberg” – Mountain of Ore – and the company unable to get a mine license for the country, kept Ertsberg secret.
Then in March 1959 the New York Times revealed the Dutch had discovered gold was flowing into the Arafura Sea and were searching for the mountain source of this gold.
Soon Rockefeller’s Freeport Sulphur was asking a Dutch company for a partnership via which to lodge a claim for the Timika area as a possible copper deposit. After the Indonesian military proved unable to take the territory itself, inside the White House a McGeorge Bundy and Robert Komer began telling Kennedy that he had to force the Netherlands to sell the people and lands of West New Guinea (West Papua) to Indonesian control.
The rest is history. As too was May 2003 when news reports were telling of another ten Papuan towns being decapitated and burnt to the ground by Indonesian military or Laskar Jihad forces.
Instead of the world media responding to this genocide, the media followed George Bush’s White House declaration that Darfur was ‘genocide’ even though no legal expert has given that opinion. What we learnt a year later, was that the Yale Law School was conducting a one year report on the GENOCIDE of West Papua.
No wonder George W Bush wanted to dis-arm the word “genocide” before that report was published.