Darfur  

Posted by Michael

Faith and I just finished watching "The Devil Came On Horseback".

Though this is a difficult documentary to watch, it stirs something in me to want to be there tonight to help. I am so thankful that I will actually be headed over there in a few months, but i don't want to wait.

Here's a description of the movie from The New York Times:

Showing the Unspeakable From Six Months Spent in Darfur

By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: July 25, 2007
Brutal, urgent, devastating — the documentary “The Devil Came on Horseback” demands to be seen as soon as possible and by as many viewers as possible. An up-close, acutely painful call to action, the movie pivots on a young American, a former Marine captain named Brian Steidle, who for six months beginning in the fall of 2004 worked for the African Union as an unarmed monitor in Darfur. What he saw in Darfur was unspeakable. And then he returned home, his arms, heart and head filled with the images of the dead.

You see a lot of those images in “The Devil Came on Horseback,” which, in brute form, serves as a catalog of human barbarism. The title refers to the Arab militias known as the janjaweed, which, sponsored by Sudan’s Arab government, have been instrumental in waging a campaign of violence and terror against the inhabitants of Darfur, many of them black. At least 450,000 civilians have died, and millions have been displaced. The atrocities — rape, torture, mutilation, murder — seem endless. So too does Mr. Steidle’s storehouse of graphic photographs and his documentation, which he took with him when he returned to the United States and began sharing with anyone who would pay attention, including Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, who wrote about him in a March 2, 2005, column titled “The American Witness.”

Recently the stars of “Ocean’s Thirteen,” led by George Clooney, donated $5.5 million for aid relief; other American citizens have organized car washes to raise money. In early May, 15 House Republicans sent President Bush a letter urging action in Sudan: “The time is at hand to reassert the resolve of the United States that the atrocities taking place in Darfur cannot stand.” In late June, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio put the issue in stark terms during a Democratic presidential debate: “Let’s face it, if Darfur had a large supply of oil, this administration would be occupying it right now.”

There’s really nothing more to say — and there’s everything else to say — but because I cannot improve on Mr. Kristof’s passionate words on Darfur, I will repeat the final lines of his 2005 column about Mr. Steidle, which are worth repeating again and again until peace at last makes them irrelevant.

“But if our leaders are acquiescing (submit or comply silently or without protest) in genocide, that’s because we citizens are passive, too. If American voters cared about Darfur’s genocide as much as about, say, the Michael Jackson trial, then our political system would respond,” he wrote. “As Martin Luther King Jr. put it: ‘Man’s inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic (scathing) actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating (corrupt, faulty, to make invalid) inaction of those who are good.’ ”

Please don't forget these facts:
450,000 are dead
2.5 - 3 million are displaced
3.5 million depend on food aid

Please don't forget that many are being displaced, raped and killed at this moment.

And please see this movie: (set your DVR's now)
April 18 on National Geographic Channel

websites to hit:
thedevilcameonhorseback.com/
globalgrassroots.org/

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at Friday, April 04, 2008 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

3 comments

I ordered that documentary on Netflix, and never watched it, becuase of my very graphic mind that takes over. I am glad you got to view it and be stirred to do more. Did know you were going to Darfur either, that is cool.

April 8, 2008 at 10:21 AM

We missed in while in Hawaii..it is on again 4/25- just set the DVR! YAY!

April 22, 2008 at 1:57 PM
Anonymous  

I watched it last night and was horrified. Horrified that I have turned a blind eye to this. Horrified that I have heard very little (comparitively) over the years. Horrified that the US is doing nothing and mostly horrified and saddened that as a Christian I have done nothing.....

Last night as I prayed I was strangley reminded of Boniface. Interesting.

April 26, 2008 at 11:50 AM

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