Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City)
August 16, 2007 Thursday
Farrow joins survivors of genocide at ceremony
Mia Farrow joined genocide survivors in a torch-lighting ceremony
Wednesday at a Rwandan school in Kigali where thousands died in a
100-day frenzy of killings in 1994.
The 62-year-old actress, whose screen credits include "Rosemary’s
Baby" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo," is leading an Olympic-style
torch relay through countries that have suffered genocide to press
China, host of the 2008 games, to help end abuses in its ally Sudan’s
Darfur region.
More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been chased
from their homes in Darfur since 2003, when tribes of ethnic African
farmers rebelled against the Arab-dominated central government,
accusing it of neglect and discrimination.
"We welcome China’s recent U.N. vote to allow a peacekeeping force
into Sudan," said Jill Savitt, director of Dream for Darfur, the
group that organized the ceremony. "However, China now must continue
to press Sudan to ensure that the words on paper translate into
action. That means adequate and verifiable security on the ground in
Darfur."
The U.N. Security Council has authorized a joint U.N.-African Union
operation of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian police for
Darfur. Sudan at first resisted the proposal, but backed down. The
new force will absorb a 7,000-member African peacekeeping force now
in Darfur, and was to be in place by year’s end.
The school where Farrow appeared Wednesday is Ecole Technique
Officielle, where 2,000 Rwandans were executed during the country’s
genocide.
The killing started within hours after the president’s plane was
mysteriously shot down over Kigali late on April 6, 1994. Hutu
militiamen, known as interahamwe, set up roadblocks across Kigali and
on April 7 began hunting down Tutsis and moderate Hutus and killing
them.
The Darfur torch relay will also go to Armenia, Bosnia, Germany,
Cambodia and finally to Hong Kong in December.