DARFUR CAMPAIGN STARTS OLYMPIC TORCH GENOCIDE TOUR
.campaign.starts.olympic.torch.genocide.tour/12283 .htm
Monday, August 13, 2007
Actress Mia Farrow and fellow campaigners have begun an Olympic-style
torch relay through countries that have suffered genocide to press
China to help end abuses in the Darfur region of its ally Sudan.
Actress Mia Farrow and fellow campaigners have begun an Olympic-style
torch relay through countries that have suffered genocide to press
China to help end abuses in the Darfur region of its ally Sudan.
Farrow, a goodwill ambassador for U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF and
outspoken critic of abuses in western Sudan, lit a torch just across
the border in Chad almost exactly a year before the Beijing Olympics
are due to open on Aug. 8, 2008.
"This flame represents and honours all those who have been lost,
and all those who still suffer," said Farrow as she held the symbolic
torch in Oure Cassoni refugee camp, 3 miles (7 kms) from Chad’s border
with Sudan.
"This flame celebrates the courage of those who survived and represents
the hope we all share for an end to the violence, and a safe return
home," she said.
During a fierce rain and dust storm which engulfed the camp, the
actress then wrapped up the ceremony by symbolically leading away a
refugee boy into the distance, still holding the torch high in her
other hand, to cheers from fellow activists.
Human rights campaigners accuse Sudanese President Omar Hassan
al-Bashir’s government of supporting abuses by his armed forces and
allied Arab militia known as the "Janjaweed" and accuse China, Sudan’s
most powerful ally and top oil customer, of shielding Khartoum from
international action.
Washington brands Darfur’s war genocide. International experts estimate
200,000 people have died in Darfur, though Sudan puts the toll much
lower at about 9,000.
OLYMPIC OPPORTUNITY
China hopes the Olympics will showcase its growing industrial and
economic might, and campaigners trying to exert pressure on Beijing
over alleged human rights abuses by it or its allies have seized on
the Games as a publicity opportunity.
Critics who accuse China of widespread human rights violations at home
against groups such as outlawed Falun Gong spiritual group began a
rival torch relay in Athens, on Friday, the same day Farrow lit the
Darfur torch in Chad.
Organisers requested details of the controversial ceremony in Chad
be published only after they had left for Rwanda, where an estimated
800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in a 1994 genocide.
"The Olympic torch travels the world before the games to represent
peace and brotherhood. We are doing this torch … to also represent
peace and brotherhood for the people of Darfur," Jill Savitt, of
organisers Dream for Darfur, told reporters.
Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service, and
Ira Newble, an NBA basketball player with the Cleveland Cavaliers,
also took part in last week’s ceremony.
Eastern Chad is home to 230,000 Darfuri refugees as well as 170,000
more Chadian civilians forced from their homes by inter-ethnic attacks
similar to those which have plagued neighbouring Darfur.
The Dream for Darfur torch is due to continue to visit genocide
sites in Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia, Germany and Cambodia as well as
touring nearly two dozen cities across the United States ahead of
next year’s Olympics.