Sudanese refugees say Obama broke his promise to them.
From El Marco
A group of African former slaves turned human rights activists are walking from New York City to Washington, D.C. at this moment. They are calling attention to the ongoing crisi of genocide and slavery in Sudan. A New York Times op-ed recently referred to the situation there as “President Obama’s Rwanda moment … unfolding now, in slow motion.”
Sudan is less than 100 days from a referendum that is the culmination of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA,) which was a welcome example of what the United States can do when it uses its influence effectively. That agreement, a major focus for the Bush administration, is seen by expertsas endangered by a lack of resolve on the part of Obama and his team at the State Department.
Human rights activist Simon Deng is leading the fourth Sudan Freedom Walk to call attention to the impending disaster his people face in South Sudan. Deng, now a U.S. citizen, sees the upcoming referendum as a stark choice for his people:
… whether they’re going to remain under the islamization and arabization, under enslavement, or they’re going to choose freedom for the first time. I, for one, don’t want to go back to being a slave again. I’ve tasted freedom. I’m proud today to stand in this country, as a free man, speaking to free people.Of course they’re going to chose freedom. Because freedom is a God given right to all human beings. That being said, we, the people of South Sudan, for sixty years we went through a lot at the hands of the sitting governments in Khartoum. They slaughtered three and a half million South Sudanese. They enslaved thousands. They turned their arms and guns on the people in the Nuba Mountains. They turned their arms and guns on the people in the Blue Nile. And the world came to their senses by saying what happened in western Sudan in Darfur region is genocide.
