Tweet
Mia Farrow's exclusive dispatch: I am a witness to Darfur's suffering
Published: 27 August 2007
My first visit to Darfur was in 2004. It changed the way I needed to live my
life. I have just returned from my seventh trip to the region. I don't think
I have the words to adequately represent what I have seen and heard there.
Incomprehensibly, it has now been more than four years since the killing
began. Some experts believe half a million human beings have died thus far.
Others bicker about the exact death toll - as if it makes a shred of
difference to how we must respond.
Only the perpetrators dispute that hundreds of thousands of innocent men
women and children have been killed, in ways that cannot be imagined or
described. It is all the more appalling that we cannot know - that no one is
yet able to count the dead. And the dying continues.
We can, however, know with certainty that more than four million people are
dependent on food aid because their homes, villages, and the fields that
sustained them, are ashes now. We also know that two and a half million
human beings are struggling to exist amid deplorable conditions in squalid
camps across Darfur and eastern Chad. I am a witness to their suffering.
The stories of those who survived the attacks are numbingly similar. Without
warning, Antonov bombers and attack helicopters filled the morning skies and
rained bombs upon homes and families as they slept, as they played, as they
prayed, as they tended their fields. Those who could run tried to gather
their children and fled in all directions.
Then the Janjaweed - government-backed Arab militia - attacked on horseback
and on camels (and more recently in vehicles). They came shouting racial
epithets and shooting. They shot the children as they ran, they shot the
elderly.
I spoke to mothers whose babies were shot from their backs, or torn from
their arms and bayoneted before their eyes, whose children were tossed into
bonfires. I met men whose eyes were gouged out with knives. Strong women in
frail voices described their gang rapes; some were abducted and assaulted
continuously over many weeks.
"No one came to help me," they said, as they showed me the brandings carved
into their bodies, and tendons sliced and how they hobble now.
"Tell people what is happening here" implored one victim, Halima. Three of
her five children had been killed. "Tell them we will all die. Tell them we
need help." I promised her I would do my best to tell the world what is
happening there. In the years since 2004, over and over and over, in camp
after camp, and deep in my heart I have made this promise.
In October, I will return to the region. People will tell me their stories
and again will ask for protection. I will listen, I will take more
photographs, and I will keep trying to tell the world what is happening
there. The people of Darfur continue to plead for protection, and still no
one has come. What does this say about us?
Last week, on the Chad-Darfur border, in a region where genocide is
occurring now, we lit a symbolic Olympic flame. The flame honours all those
who have been lost, and those who suffer; it celebrates the courage of those
who have survived, and is a symbol of hope for an end to genocide
everywhere.
We lit the flame again in Rwanda where the agony of survivors is palpable -
and without end. We gathered strength from their strength.
In Kigali, survivors expressed their wish to join their spirits with ours as
we take the flame to other communities of survivors: Cambodia, Armenia,
Germany, Bosnia.
Today, I look at Rwanda and see the abysmal failure of the United Nations
and of all the nations of the world. Collectively and individually, we
failed in our most essential responsibility to protect the innocent from
slaughter and suffering.
We look to world leaders and our own governments and see that they are mired
in self-serving interests. What are we to do about this? I tell my children
that "with knowledge comes responsibility." Yet our leaders do not reflect
this at all.
Most of us do not want innocent people to be slaughtered. Most of us wish
others well and hope for a world in which all people everywhere can be safe.
Yet, in the face of power and politics, we tend to feel overwhelmed, so we
step aside and attend to our own business. The future of the world, if there
is to be a future, surely lies in humility and in human responsibility. Let
us draw strength and courage from the survivors of genocide and conviction
from the voices of the dead.
After the Nazi Holocaust, the world vowed "never again". How obscenely
disingenuous those fine words sound today. As we look at Darfur and eastern
Chad - a region that has been described as "Rwanda in slow motion" - are we
to conclude that "never again" applies only to white people?
I hope that caring people of the world will band together and with one voice
demand an end to the terrible crime of genocide.
For more information, go to www.miafarrow.org
*From Hollywood to human rights*
Born to Catholic parents in 1945, Mia Farrow followed her film director
father and actress mother into the industry, appearing in a number of
critically acclaimed movies. Over the course of her career she has won
numerous awards including seven Golden Globes. Her very public marriages and
divorces to Frank Sinatra and later Woody Allen, in whose films she
regularly appeared during the 1980s, meant the Farrow family were rarely out
of the media spotlight.
One of Hollywood's most prolific campaigners, she has been involved in
activism since the 1970s when she became an advocate of adoption rights
after adopting three children from south-east Asia with her second husband
André Previn. She has since gone on to adopt 11 children. A childhood
survivor of the post-war polio epidemics, she has also campaigned for the
eradication of the disease which has paralysed one of her adopted children.
After becoming a goodwill ambassador for Unicef, she has turned her
attention towards Africa and in particular, raising awareness of the
genocide in Darfur.
Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article 2898438.ece
Published: 27 August 2007
My first visit to Darfur was in 2004. It changed the way I needed to live my
life. I have just returned from my seventh trip to the region. I don't think
I have the words to adequately represent what I have seen and heard there.
Incomprehensibly, it has now been more than four years since the killing
began. Some experts believe half a million human beings have died thus far.
Others bicker about the exact death toll - as if it makes a shred of
difference to how we must respond.
Only the perpetrators dispute that hundreds of thousands of innocent men
women and children have been killed, in ways that cannot be imagined or
described. It is all the more appalling that we cannot know - that no one is
yet able to count the dead. And the dying continues.
We can, however, know with certainty that more than four million people are
dependent on food aid because their homes, villages, and the fields that
sustained them, are ashes now. We also know that two and a half million
human beings are struggling to exist amid deplorable conditions in squalid
camps across Darfur and eastern Chad. I am a witness to their suffering.
The stories of those who survived the attacks are numbingly similar. Without
warning, Antonov bombers and attack helicopters filled the morning skies and
rained bombs upon homes and families as they slept, as they played, as they
prayed, as they tended their fields. Those who could run tried to gather
their children and fled in all directions.
Then the Janjaweed - government-backed Arab militia - attacked on horseback
and on camels (and more recently in vehicles). They came shouting racial
epithets and shooting. They shot the children as they ran, they shot the
elderly.
I spoke to mothers whose babies were shot from their backs, or torn from
their arms and bayoneted before their eyes, whose children were tossed into
bonfires. I met men whose eyes were gouged out with knives. Strong women in
frail voices described their gang rapes; some were abducted and assaulted
continuously over many weeks.
"No one came to help me," they said, as they showed me the brandings carved
into their bodies, and tendons sliced and how they hobble now.
"Tell people what is happening here" implored one victim, Halima. Three of
her five children had been killed. "Tell them we will all die. Tell them we
need help." I promised her I would do my best to tell the world what is
happening there. In the years since 2004, over and over and over, in camp
after camp, and deep in my heart I have made this promise.
In October, I will return to the region. People will tell me their stories
and again will ask for protection. I will listen, I will take more
photographs, and I will keep trying to tell the world what is happening
there. The people of Darfur continue to plead for protection, and still no
one has come. What does this say about us?
Last week, on the Chad-Darfur border, in a region where genocide is
occurring now, we lit a symbolic Olympic flame. The flame honours all those
who have been lost, and those who suffer; it celebrates the courage of those
who have survived, and is a symbol of hope for an end to genocide
everywhere.
We lit the flame again in Rwanda where the agony of survivors is palpable -
and without end. We gathered strength from their strength.
In Kigali, survivors expressed their wish to join their spirits with ours as
we take the flame to other communities of survivors: Cambodia, Armenia,
Germany, Bosnia.
Today, I look at Rwanda and see the abysmal failure of the United Nations
and of all the nations of the world. Collectively and individually, we
failed in our most essential responsibility to protect the innocent from
slaughter and suffering.
We look to world leaders and our own governments and see that they are mired
in self-serving interests. What are we to do about this? I tell my children
that "with knowledge comes responsibility." Yet our leaders do not reflect
this at all.
Most of us do not want innocent people to be slaughtered. Most of us wish
others well and hope for a world in which all people everywhere can be safe.
Yet, in the face of power and politics, we tend to feel overwhelmed, so we
step aside and attend to our own business. The future of the world, if there
is to be a future, surely lies in humility and in human responsibility. Let
us draw strength and courage from the survivors of genocide and conviction
from the voices of the dead.
After the Nazi Holocaust, the world vowed "never again". How obscenely
disingenuous those fine words sound today. As we look at Darfur and eastern
Chad - a region that has been described as "Rwanda in slow motion" - are we
to conclude that "never again" applies only to white people?
I hope that caring people of the world will band together and with one voice
demand an end to the terrible crime of genocide.
For more information, go to www.miafarrow.org
*From Hollywood to human rights*
Born to Catholic parents in 1945, Mia Farrow followed her film director
father and actress mother into the industry, appearing in a number of
critically acclaimed movies. Over the course of her career she has won
numerous awards including seven Golden Globes. Her very public marriages and
divorces to Frank Sinatra and later Woody Allen, in whose films she
regularly appeared during the 1980s, meant the Farrow family were rarely out
of the media spotlight.
One of Hollywood's most prolific campaigners, she has been involved in
activism since the 1970s when she became an advocate of adoption rights
after adopting three children from south-east Asia with her second husband
André Previn. She has since gone on to adopt 11 children. A childhood
survivor of the post-war polio epidemics, she has also campaigned for the
eradication of the disease which has paralysed one of her adopted children.
After becoming a goodwill ambassador for Unicef, she has turned her
attention towards Africa and in particular, raising awareness of the
genocide in Darfur.
Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article 2898438.ece