Concern grows locally for victims of crisis in Darfur

Darfur may be thousands of miles away, but the humanitarian crisis that has plagued the region has sparked a wave of concern among residents of Eastern Washington.

Nearly 1,200 people throughout the area have joined “Million Voices for Darfur,” a campaign to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis in western Sudan.

People from about 30 churches and community groups in the region are sending postcards to President Bush, urging him to support a multinational force to protect civilians in Darfur.

Their efforts began in late January during the Eastern Washington Legislative Conference, an annual event in Spokane that brings people from various congregation and faith communities together to promote social justice.

“It was an educational campaign to raise awareness,” said Diana Gibson, interim director of the Interfaith Council of the Inland Northwest.

Each postcard contains a black-and-white photograph of a young Muslim boy from Darfur and a message: “Instead of mourning a genocide, what if we could stop one?”

The Darfur disaster began in February 2003, when the rebel Sudan Liberation Army and allied Justice and Equality Movement took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese people of African origin, according to numerous reports from the Associated Press. The government struck back with a counterinsurgency campaign that encouraged the Janjaweed – the government-supported Arab militia – to commit wide-scale abuses against the Africans.

More than 400,000 people have died and another 2.5 million have been displaced as a result of violence and war.

The postcards, which have been collected at the Interfaith Council’s office, will be mailed off this week in time for the “Rally to Stop Genocide” happening this Sunday in Washington, D.C.

The council set a goal of 1,000 postcards and received 1,176, Gibson said. Nearly 30 percent of those cards came from parishioners of Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral in Spokane.

Concern and outrage over the Darfur disaster have grown significantly in the last few months, Gibson said.

Last year, only a dozen people attended the Interfaith Council’s prayer service for Darfur. This year, about 80 individuals – Muslims, Christians and Jews – attended a similar gathering at Country Homes Christian Church, she said.

“I felt not only a sense of concern, but a sense of community,” said Gibson, recalling the turnout at last month’s service. “It showed a huge jump in awareness.”