Doyle decries Darfur

The effort to end the genocide in Darfur must be multilateral and requires Chinese… The effort to end the genocide in Darfur must be multilateral and requires Chinese involvement, Rep. Mike Doyle told a crowd of students in the William Pitt Union last night.

Doyle, D-Pittsburgh, spoke as part of “Stand Up! Stand Now!”, an event sponsored by Students Taking Action Now Darfur and the College Democrats.

“I am ashamed to say that the international community hasn’t stepped up to its responsibility to provide support for Darfur,” Doyle said. “While the situation in Sudan is grim, there is a window of opportunity to put pressure on Sudan in the upcoming months.”

Rebels have killed more than 400,000 people and displaced two-thirds of the country’s population in Darfur, a region in western Sudan.

Doyle said that the Sudanese government might have conceded to allow the United Nations peacekeeping troops into its borders, but it hasn’t made it easy for them to do so. Humanitarian workers, he said, are being killed and, consequently, the trucks that supply people with food and other forms of aid can’t make it into Darfur.

Doyle insisted that China, one of Sudan’s major trading partners, must put pressure on the Sudanese government.

It is the United States’ responsibility, he said, to convince them to do so, and boycotting the Olympic opening ceremonies is “the best and perhaps only opportunity to achieve that goal.”

“Not everybody agrees with it,” Doyle said. “What we’ve come to realize is we don’t have very many tools in our arsenal to do things. I just don’t know that there’s a ‘Plan B’ out there that’s designed for us.”

He added that he thought that this request wouldn’t be asking too much of Chinese officials.

“What’s going on in Darfur is unimaginable,” Doyle said. “And all we’re asking China for now is to put pressure on [Sudanese President Omar al-] Bashir to let the peacekeeping forces in.”

Doyle said it is imperative that U.S. officials push only one or two issues when they’re negotiating with Chinese diplomats. Sending them a long list of demands, he said, almost always fails.

“When you deal with governments like Iran [and China], history has shown us that these multiple kinds of requests, they’re never successful,” Doyle said. Doyle said college students should support the cause by writing letters to their representatives and to the editors of mainstream newspapers.

He said few Americans could name the location of Darfur and that “a lot of Americans are walking around in La-La Land.” This happens, he added, partially because the cause doesn’t get enough media attention.

“Darfur has to be as common a story as Britney Spears,” Doyle said. “When they start writing it that way, action will come.”

Following Doyle’s speech, those at the event paraded onto the Union lawn carrying green flags with phrases like “The UN should do more,” “Never Again” and “I stand for peace.”

One by one, people took a moment to either read a Darfuri citizen’s story from a slip of paper or state why they chose to come to the event. They then placed their flags into the ground.

One woman cried as she read the story of someone who survived the genocide.

“I cannot forget the images I’ve seen,” she read. “I cannot sleep with the thought that my family members did not get cremated according to tradition, that their souls are not at peace.”

Duquesne freshman Matt Mierski read a Bible verse: “Truly I will say to you, as you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me.”

“This is what I’m trying to do,” he said afterward.

One Pitt doctoral student, Bagiyyah Conway, said she decided to come to the event because she saw several students outside of the Union yesterday advocating for the cause. “This is the first thing I’ve ever been involved with,” she said.

One of the women she saw was probably Catherine Balsamo, a STAND member who painted herself green, the movement’s official color, to show her support for the cause.

Balsamo said supporting STAND is a moral issue and that not acting out against the genocide would be hypocritical.

“One of the most villainized people, and rightly so, is Adolf Hitler, the perpetrator of a genocide,” she said. “A genocide is occurring. Something needs to be done. It’s strangely hypocritical how much inaction there is considering how much hatred there is for Adolf Hitler.”