Will God forgive us?

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"The photo was taken in the village of Hamada on Jan. 15, right after a Sudanese government-backed militia, the janjaweed, attacked it and killed 107 people. One of them was this little boy. I'm not showing the photo of his older brother, about 5 years old, who lay beside him because the brother had been beaten so badly that nothing was left of his face. And alongside the two boys was the corpse of their mother". -- Nicholas Kristoff, NYT, 2/22/05

It's going on at this very moment. The President, the Congress, and the media know it.

So do I.
So do you.

Women are brutally raped and men castrated in one last horrific moment of indignity before they are murdered. Children are often forced to witness the hellish proceedings before they meet the same fate as their parents. No one is spared.

Kristoff writes:

"Certainly there's no doubt about the slaughter, although the numbers are fuzzy. A figure of 70,000 is sometimes stated as an estimated death toll, but that is simply a U.N. estimate for the deaths in one seven-month period from nonviolent causes. It's hard to know the total mortality over two years of genocide, partly because the Sudanese government is blocking a U.N. team from going to Darfur and making such an estimate. But independent estimates exceed 220,000 - and the number is rising by about 10,000 per month.

So what can stop this genocide? At one level the answer is technical: sanctions against Sudan, a no-fly zone, a freeze of Sudanese officials' assets, prosecution of the killers by the International Criminal Court, a team effort by African and Arab countries to pressure Sudan, and an international force of African troops with financing and logistical support from the West. But that's the narrow answer.

What will really stop this genocide is indignation. Senator Paul Simon, who died in 2003, said after the Rwandan genocide, "If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different."

If we have any virtue, if we have any morality, if we have any empathy for our fellow man - we must act. We must do something. It doesn't take long to write a letter or better yet make a call. Thousands of people call into American Idol to vote for their favorite celeb-du-jours... surely we can spend a few minutes contacting our leaders to let them know this genocide must end.

For more information and to see what else you can do, please see these websites:

www.savedarfur.org
www.darfurgenocide.org

Learn a bit about the situation and then please contact your elected officials.

Tell them that we know that THEY KNOW what is going on and they will be held accountable. Just as surely as God himself should hold us accountable for our apathy and silence.

Contact your Senators
Contact your Representatives
Contact the President