Aung San Suu Kyi said she trusted the Burmese president (BBC)

From the BBC earlier today.

Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi says she believes Burma will hold democratic elections “in my lifetime”.

Of President Thein Sein, a former top general who stepped down to contest elections as a civilian, Ms Suu Kyi said: “I trust the president, but I can’t yet trust the government for the simple reason that I don’t yet know all the members of government.  The most important thing about the president is that he is an honest man… He is a man capable of taking risks if he thinks they are worthwhile.”

BBC News – Suu Kyi: Burma democracy in my lifetime.

Last June, a few of you were at my house for a screening of “In My Country”.  This film is based on the true life accounts of journalists covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-Apartheid South Africa.  One reason I have always liked the film is that it does a great job of illustrating what Ubuntu really means.

Among those in attendance that night were, Isaac, Wai and Simon, friends from the Sudanese-American community living in San Diego.  Also with us that evening, Awichu, a new friend originally from Uganda.  As I looked around the room that night, I realized there were only a couple of us that had been born in the U.S.  With life stories based in many different countries, the conversation after the film that night spontaneously took on some of the toughest issues we face in this life:

• What does it take to heal?
• How do we manage to genuinely forgive?
• Is reconciliation always possible?
• How do those themes get applied when entire countries have been torn apart for decades?

After the great experience of exploring “Ubuntu” together, it was Simon that was the first to suggest we screen the film for their community down in San Diego. We are going to do that on Saturday, December 3rd, and we would really like for you to come join us that night.  All details are below and on the website.

Warmly,

Barbara English
Living Ubuntu
http://livingubuntu.org
(949) 891-2005

South Sudan Independence Celebration in San Diego this Sunday, July 10th. Click for more details.

A mere five days after our own 4^th of July celebration of Independence Day in the U.S., the world’s newest country will arrive.  This Saturday, July 9th, South Sudan will officially be a new, independent nation.  To mark this historic occasion, the Sudanese community in San Diego is planning a massive celebration this Sunday, July 10th.

Here are the details:

Independence comes with a mixture of sentiments.  Cause for celebration is inter-mingled with knowing that these remain times of tragic suffering and great uncertainty for many in various parts of Sudan. This weekend we come together in support of the Sudanese people and hold hope for peace and healing.  One way to demonstrate that support is to attend one or more of the events (see below) they have planned in San Diego.  We hope you will join us at the festivities this weekend.

Unfortunately, we’re double-booked on Sunday and will be the late-arrivers in San Diego after our Summer Body Group: Finding Your ‘No’ in the afternoon.  There are a few from Orange County who will be driving down for the celebration.  If you’d like to carpool, please get in touch with us. 

Hope you can make it.

Barbara & Anshul
Orange County for Darfur, a project of Living Ubuntu
(949) 891-2005
ocfordarfur.org | blog | facebook

PS:  We are extremely grateful to GI-Net / Save Darfur for their support of this event.  Thank you :)

::: EVENTS PLANNED IN SAN DIEGO THIS WEEKEND :::

Friday July 8, South Sudan Independence Live Broadcast
9p-12a.  Sudanese American Youth Center in San Diego
Click here for more info »

Saturday July 9, South Sudan Independence Day Party
9p-2a.  World Beat Center, San Diego, CA
Come and enjoy the Biggest African Party of the Year and lets kick off the summer with an event that screams Africa, at the one and only World Beat Center.  Find out more »

Sunday July 10th, South Sudan Independence Day Celebration: FREE!
1p-8p.  St Luke’s Episcopal Church, San Diego, CA
The Sudanese Community would like to invite you to this family-friendly event to celebrate the new South Sudan’s Republic.  Click here for more info »

Photograph by Rev. Wilfredo Benitez for Orange County for Darfur.

April was Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. In honor of this, we compiled a Resource List of books and films themed around each of the past genocides that have commemorative dates in April, plus the areas that we cover.  We hope you will make use of this list as a way to both remember these genocides, and learn more about them.

In April we featured books and films associated with the genocides that have commemorative dates in April, and in May, the regions of our present day efforts.  In June, as a final point of focus, we are including books and films about genocide that are not tied to any particular geographical region.  This is the tenth post in this series, Genocide.

Recommended Books:

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, by Samantha Power
From 1993-1996 Samantha Power covered the grisly events in Bosnia and Srebrenica, becoming increasingly frustrated with the United States and their inability to counteract the genocide.  “The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred.”

Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, by James E. Waller
From the Turks’ massacre of Armenians in 1915 through the Serbians’ slaughter of Bosnian and Albanian Muslims during the 1990s, the 20th century was an era of mass killing.  Social psychologist Waller develops a four-layered theory of how everyday citizens became involved.

Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide from Sparta to Darfur, by Ben Kiernan
Humans have been slaughtering each other for thousands of years, but only now is the field of genocide studies blooming.  This grim account of history notes remarkable parallels in the patterns of mass slaughter, from Carthage to Darfur.

Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond
The book asks and attempts to answer the question, once human kind spread throughout the world, why did differ populations in different locations have such different histories?  The modern world ha been shaped by conquest, epidemics and genocide, the ingredients of which rose first in Eurasia.  The book’s premise is that those ingredients required the development of agriculture.

Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities, by Frank Chalk, Romeo Dallaire, Kyle Matthews, Karla Barqueiro, and Simon Doyle
The recurrences of genocide and crimes against humanity around the world demonstrate that the international community has been largely ineffective in stopping mass atrocities.  Drawing on interviews with 80 key figures involved in American and Canadian responses to the Rwandan genocide and the Kosovo crisis, the book explains why and provides a roadmap for change.

Preventing Genocide: Practical Steps toward Early Detection and Effective Action, by David A. Hamburg
Analyzes the problem of mass violence, describes pillars of prevention, and concludes that focal points of knowledge and skill in prevention are essential to identify warnings and to prepare and propose appropriate responses before a genocide begins.  It recommends the establishment of international genocide prevention centers in strong institutions and outlines their tasks.

State of Darkness: US Complicity in Genocides Since 1945, by David Model
The  thesis of State of Darkness is that the United States is either guilty of or complicit in eight genocides since 1945.  Two different levels of guilt were defined in the Genocide Convention, one depending on whether a country is directly responsible for genocide and the other, complicity, on whether it contributed in some significant way to the commission of genocide.

The Responsibility to Protect-Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All, by Gareth Evans
R2P was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005.  Many misunderstandings persist about its scope and limits.  Much remains to be done to solidify support and to build  capacity.  Evans posits how R2P, with its acceptance in principle and effective application in practice, the promise of “never again” can become a reality.

Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
Worse Than War gets to the heart of the phenomenon, genocide, that has caused more deaths in the modern world than military conflict.  In doing so, it challenges fundamental things we thought we knew about human beings, society, and politics.

Recommended Films:

Screamers
The film a 2006 documentary by director Carla Garapedian examines repeating pattern of genocide, from the Armenian genocide, to the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, up to Darfur today.

The Last Survivor
This award winning documentary presents the stories of genocide survivors and their struggle to make sense of tragedy by working to educate, motivate and foster a civic response to these mass atrocity crimes.  It follows the lives of survivors of four different genocides and mass atrocities – The Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur, and Congo.

Worse Than War
Goldhagen is convinced that the overall phenomenon of genocide is as poorly understood as the Holocaust had once been.  How and why do genocides start?  Why do the perpetrators kill?  Why has intervention rarely occurred in a timely manner?  These and other thought-provoking questions are explored in this documentary film.

What is Genocide?:  Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; …Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article II
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948

– From GI-Net / Save Darfur Coalition (link)

—
Compiled by Paulina Robles and Barbara English of Orange County for Darfur and Martina Knee of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition.

While we have done several events this year, we didn’t get a chance to talk with many of you the way we wish we could have.  As we head into summer, we have decided to have a casual get-together at Barbara’s house on Saturday, June 18th.  Hopefully this will give us a chance to sit, talk and relate around what it has been like to be a part of this campaign against genocide.

The theme will be Ubuntu.  Desmond Tutu says part of Ubuntu is, “You share what you have”.  In keeping with that, it will be a vegetarian potluck.  We will also be screening the film, In My Country (trailer) based on a journalist’s account of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation hearings after apartheid, which were based on Ubuntu.  Given the name of the organization, we are always looking to keep in touch with the true meaning of the word.

Anyway, here are the details.

We would really like a chance to get to know you better and sincerely hope you will join us.

Warmly,

Barbara & Anshul
Orange County for Darfur, a project of Living Ubuntu
ocfordarfur.org | blog | facebook

In January 2001, Laurent Kabila, the then president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was murdered.  Over 50 alleged conspirators remain jailed in Kinshasa’s Makala Prison, but even Kabila’s own ministers do not believe they are guilty.

So who killed Laurent Kabila, and why?

(via Al Jazeera)

"I was one of the lucky few. Up to 6,000 innocent protesters were gunned down, and many more were imprisoned or mysteriously disappeared in the night. I lost many colleagues and close friends." - Tim Aye Hardy.

Recently, TIME magazine featured an article with headline, UN Envoy: Burma Not Addressing Abuse.  Not that this is news, as the abuses within Burma are long-standing and ongoing.  In April, the Obama administration finally complied with a portion of the Jade Act signed into law in 2008 and appointed a Special Envoy to Burma, Derek Mitchell.  As calls for a Commission of Inquiry continue, how much of a difference will this recent appointment (presuming he is confirmed by US Senate) make for Burma?

Our thanks goes out in advance to our dear friend, Tim Aye Hardy, from the Burma Global Action Network.  Some of you may recall Tim from when he was with us in person for an event last July.  He has graciously agreed to give us an update, walking us through the twists and turns of the current situation in Burma.

At our next meeting on Wednesday, June 8th at 6:30p, Tim, who lives in NYC, will join us via Skype.  This special meeting will be held in Lake Forest instead of our usual location.  Here is the address:

Talk with Tim about Burma
Wednesday, June 8th @ 6:30p in Lake Forest, CA
(If you’d like to attend, please contact us at (949) 891-2005 or info@ocfordarfur.org and we will send you the address)

We have limited space for this meeting.  Hope you can join us.

Warmly,

Barbara & Anshul
Orange County for Darfur, a project of Living Ubuntu
ocfordarfur.org | blog | facebook

Sudanese human skulls on display Mukjar, Sudan.

April was Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. In honor of this, we compiled a Resource List of books and films themed around each of the past genocides that have commemorative dates in April, plus the regions where we focus our awareness and advocacy efforts on an ongoing basis.  We hope you will make use of this list as a way to both remember these genocides, and learn more about them.

In April we featured books and films associated with the genocides that have commemorative dates in April.  In May, the regions of our present day efforts are the focus.  A previous post was specific to books and films about the Darfur genocide and the list below is more inclusive (e.g. Darfur, South Sudan, Sudan).  This is the ninth post in this series, mass atrocities in Sudan.

Recommended Books:

A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide, by Eric Reeves
The Khartoum regime is committing genocide in Darfur while the international community watches in silence or with mere hand-wringing.  Action is essential now if we are not to see a further extension of the international failures so conspicuous in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Emma’s War, by Deborah Scroggins
Young British relief worker Emma McCune came to Sudan determined to make a difference in a country decimated by the longest-running civil war in Africa.  She became a near legend in the bullet-scarred, famine-ridden country, but her eventual marriage to the rebel commander Riek Machar made international headlines—and spelled disastrous consequences for her ideals.

Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide, by Rebecca Hamilton *favorite
This is the story of the individuals who organized protest marches, lobbied government officials, and raised funds in the belief that the outcry they created would force world powers to save the millions of Darfurians still at risk.

Heart of Darfur, by Lisa French Blaker
An experienced nurse with Doctors without Borders, the author was posted to Darfur in 2005 for nine months to “provide assistance to populations in distress”.  In Darfur she found plenty.  She worked not only under harsh physical conditions, but also the deliberate brutality and malice of the janjaweed and Sudanese government soldiers.

Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast
Don Cheadle teamed with human rights activist Prendergast to plead for greater awareness of the horrors of genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and issue a call to action.

Nuer Journeys Nuer Lives: Sudanese Refugees in Minnesota, by Jon D. Holtzman
This book examines contemporary migration to the United States through a case study of the Nuer of Sudan, whose traditional life represents one of the most important case studies in the history of anthropology.  Readers will gain insights into the world of the refugee problem and the role of immigration in the Unites States and will learn about features of Nuer life.

Out of Exile: The Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan, by Craig Walzer *favorite
Refugees and abductees recount their escapes from the wars in Darfur and South Sudan.  They describe life in the desert camps of Khartoum, the underground communities of Cairo, Kakuma refugee camps, and the still growing internally displaced persons camps in Darfur.

Six Months in Sudan: A Young Doctor in a War-Torn Village, by James Maskalyk
The author, a doctor with Medecins sans Frontieres, describes the six months he worked in the middle of Sudan, in a village named Abyei that from the air was little more than “a smudge in the sand,” and his experience of caring for noncombatants trapped in a civil war.

Sudan: Darfur and the Failure of an African State, by Richard Cockett
The author provides an account of Sudan’s descent into failure, looking at all of Sudan’s numerous internal wars and rebellions since independence and showing how they are interconnected and looking at the country’s complex relationship with the wider world.

Sudan: The Land and  the People, by Tmothy Carney, Victoria Butler, Freeman
Internationally renowned photographer Michael Freeman traveled the length and breadth of Sudan to capture these extraordinary photos of modern Sudan.  This book gives the Country of Sudan, in all of its depth, a human face.

Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur, by Halima Bashir w/ Damien Lewis *favorite
Bashir, a refugee living in London, offers a vivid personal portrait of life in the Darfur region of Sudan before the catastrophe.  She anticipated a bright future after medical school, but tensions between Sudan’s Arab-dominated Islamist dictatorship and black African communities’ tribe finally exploded into conflict.

The Translator: A Memoir, by Daoud Hari
A deeply moving memoir of how one person has made a difference in the world–an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time.  Using his high school knowledge of languages as his weapon–while others around him were taking up arms–Daoud Hari has helped inform the world about Darfur.

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan, by Benjamin Ajak, Benson Deng, Alephonsian Deng, and Judy Bernstein
Raised by Sudan’s Dinka tribe, the Deng brothers and their cousin were all under the age of seven when they left their homes after terrifying attacks on their villages during the Sudanese civil war.  The three were relocated to the U.S., and immediately began to fill composition books with the memoirs of chaos and culture shock collected here.

War and Survival in Sudan’s Frontierlands: Voices from the Blue Nile, by Wendy James
A case study of how the Uduk-speaking people from the Blue Nile region of Sudan, have been caught up in and displaced by a generation of civil war.  The Uduk case shows how people who once lived together now try to maintain links across borders and even continents through modern communications, and where possible recreate their ‘traditional’ forms of story-telling, music, and song.

What Is the What, by Dave Eggers *favorite
Valentino Achak Deng was a refugee from the Sudanese civil war-the bloodbath before the current Darfur bloodbath-of the 1980s and 90s.  Valentino joins thousands of other “Lost Boys,” beset by starvation, thirst and man-eating lions on their march to squalid refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, where Valentino pieces together a new life.

Recommended Films:

Darfur Now
Theodore Braun’s absorbing documentary about the atrocities in Darfur, the westernmost region of Sudan, Don Cheadle poses a fundamental question facing moviegoers attending a film about African strife: How do you respond to an event as difficult to understand as a government-sponsored mass murder of part of a country’s civilian population?

God Grew Tired of Us
Four boys from Sudan embark on a journey to America after years of wandering Sub-Saharan Africa in search of safety.

Lost Boys of Sudan
Lost Boys of Sudan is a feature-length documentary that follows two Sudanese refugees on an extraordinary journey from Africa to America.  Orphaned as young boys in one of Africa’s cruelest civil wars.  Safe at last from physical danger and hunger, they find themselves confronted with the abundance and alienation of contemporary American suburbia.

On Our Watch *favorite
The world vowed “never again,” then came Darfur.  By 2007, at least 200,000 people had been killed, 2.5 million driven from their homes, and mass rape used as a weapon in a brutal campaign supported by the Sudanese government.  The film asks why the United Nations and its members once again failed to stop the slaughter.

Rebuilding Hope
After fleeing their homeland many years earlier, Sudanese “Lost Boys” Gabriel Bol, Koor and Garang eagerly return to South Sudan where they reconnect with their relatives, assess the political climate and search for ways to support their communities.

Sand and Sorrow *favorite
Offered exclusive and unparalleled access to the situation on the ground inside Darfur, Peabody award-winning filmmaker, Paul Freedman, joins a contingent of African Union peacekeeping forces in Darfur while a tragic and disturbing chapter in human history unfolds.

The Devil Came On Horseback *favorite
A documentary that exposes the genocide raging in Darfur, Sudan as seen through the eyes of a former U.S. marine who returns home to make the story public.

War Child
War Child chronicles the tumultuous, shocking, inspiring, and ultimately hopeful odyssey of Emmanuel Jal.  A former child soldier of Sudan’s brutal civil war, he is now an emerging international hip hop star sharing a message of peace for his war-torn land and beloved Africa.  War Child tells the story of Jal’s life through his words and music and remarkable film footage dating back to his childhood.

Background on mass atrocities in Sudan:  Sudan, the largest country in North Africa, is the location of two conflicts that feature large-levels of targeted harm against civilians. The first of these is the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Genocide Intervention Network is also focusing on ensuring the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between North and South Sudan to ensure that there is no resumption of what had been Africa’s longest running civil war. Since 2003, the genocidal conflict in Darfur has devastated millions of non-combatant civilians and resulted in the death of at least 200,000 people. As of 2010, Sudan continues to direct its troops and proxy Janjaweed militias to systematically destroy the livelihoods of Darfuris by bombing and burning villages, looting economic resources, and murdering, raping, and torturing non-combatant civilians. A proliferation of rebel groups in Darfur is also complicit in the recruitment of child soldiers and the commission of other acts of violence against civilians. The Darfur conflict has displaced over 2.7 million people within Sudan, with an additional 250,000 crossing the border into Chad. The actions of the Sudanese government, particularly the expulsion of 13 international aid groups in March 2009, continue to affect those who have sought safety in towns and displaced persons camps. Beginning in early 2009, incidents of inter-tribal violence across South Sudan have strained relations between North and South Sudan. The attacks, which increasingly target civilians, have led members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the governing party of South Sudan, to accuse the Khartoum government of delivering arms to the South. As the international community works to ensure that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 is fully implemented, these attacks cast a pall over the continued stability of Sudan. Currently Sudan features two large peacekeeping missions, UNAMID, tasked with bringing peace and protecting civilians in Sudan’s western Darfur region and UNMIS, designated to ensure the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the demobilization of former combatants in South Sudan.

– From GI-Net / Save Darfur Coalition (link)

Compiled by Paulina Robles and Barbara English of Orange County for Darfur and Martina Knee of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition.

In Congo, "a dead rat is worth more than the body of a woman".

April was Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. In honor of this, we compiled a Resource List of books and films themed around each of the past genocides that have commemorative dates in April, plus the regions where we focus our awareness and advocacy efforts on an ongoing basis.

We hope you will make use of this list as a way to both remember these genocides, and learn more about them.  In April we featured books and films associated with the genocides that have commemorative dates in April.  In May, the regions of our present day efforts are the focus.  This is the eighth post in this series, the mass atrocities in DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo).

Recommended Books:

A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman, by Lisa Shannon
The book chronicles Shannon’s journey to the Congo to meet the women her run sponsored, and shares their incredible stories.  What begins as grassroots activism forces Shannon to confront herself and her life, and learn lessons of survival, fear, gratitude, and immense love from the women of Africa.

Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe, by Gerard Prunier
Prunier follows the 1996–2002 war in the Democratic Republic of Congo through many twists and turns.  Sparked by a Rwandan army incursion to clear out Hutu-dominated refugee camps on the border between the two countries, the conflict dragged in the armies of eight surrounding countries and an alphabet soup of Congolese guerrilla movements and tribal militias; millions died in the fighting and attendant massacres, starvation and disease.

All Things Must Fight to Live: Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo, by Bryan Mealer *favorite
Mealer chronicles the four years he spent covering the fighting and genocide in Congo.  In 1996,  Mealer came to the troubled nation as a freelance writer with little knowledge of ethnic loyalties, looking for a translator to help him navigate the complexities of conflict.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, by Jason Stearns
Stearns vividly tells the story of this misunderstood conflict through the experiences of those who engineered and perpetrated it. He depicts village pastors who survived massacres, the child soldier assassin of President Kabila, a female Hutu activist who relives the hunting and methodical extermination of fellow refugees, and key architects of the war that became as great a disaster as–and was a direct consequence of–the genocide in neighboring Rwanda.

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of  Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo, by Michela Wrong
For the past few decades, the Congo, one of Africa’s richest countries in natural resources, has been in an economic decline that has resulted in violence and lawlessness.  Wrong, a British journalist who spent six years covering Africa as a reporter for European news agencies, skillfully balances history with nuanced reportage.

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, by Adam Hochschild  * favorite
King Leopold of Belgium did not much care for his native land or his subjects.  He searched the globe to find a colony for Belgium.  He eventually found what would become the Belgian Congo, Leopold set about establishing a rule of terror that would culminate in the deaths of 4 to 8 million indigenous people.

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa, by Rene Lemarchand
This book provides a thorough exploration of the contemporary crises in the region.  By focusing on the historical and social forces behind the cycles of bloodshed in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, it challenges much of the conventional wisdom about the roots of civil strife in former Belgian Africa.

Recommended Films:

Lumo – One Young Woman’s Struggle to Heal in a Nation Beset By War
Recently engaged to a young man from her village, 20 year-old Lumo Sinai crossed paths with marauding soldiers who brutally attacked her.  Rejected by her fiancé and cast aside by her family, Lumo found her way to the one place that may save her: a hospital for rape survivors set on the border with Rwanda.

Lumumba *favorite
The true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba.  Using newly discovered historical evidence,  Raoul Peck renders an emotional and tautly woven account of the mail clerk and beer salesman with a flair for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland.

Pushing the Elephant
In the late 1990s, Rose Mapendo lost her family and home to the violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo.  She emerged advocating forgiveness and reconciliation.  Now, Rose is confronted with teaching one of her most recalcitrant students how to forgive—the daughter who remained behind.

The Greatest Silence *favorite
In 2006, Emmy Award winning producer/director Lisa F. Jackson spent the year in the war zones of eastern DRC.  She documented the tragic situation women and girls are forced to deal with as they stand in the middle of a country’s conflict they did not create, and cannot control.

The Reporter *favorite
Congo is a country in the midst of a humanitarian crisis.  To date, 5.4 million people have been killed in Congo over the last decade. The core reason—instability.  This is Kristof’s charge—to put Congo on the international agenda.

Background on mass atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo:  Civilians in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo remain victims of mass killings, severe torture and widespread rape at the hands of numerous armed groups operating in the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Orientale.  Conflict in the DR Congo has resulted in an estimated 5.4 million civilian deaths since 1996.  In the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, civilians are targeted by the rebel Forces Democratique de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR). During its attacks, the FDLR burns villages and killed innocent residents. Human Rights Watch estimates that these attacks have killed more than 1,000 civilians since January 2009 . The Congolese Army, known as the FARDC predates on civilians throughout the country, engaging in looting and gender based violence against civilians that it should be protecting. In the Haut-Uele and Bas-Uele regions of Orientale province, more than 1,400 civilians have been killed in massacres and attacks committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony since Christmas of 2008, when the LRA established itself as one of the largest threats to civilians in the DR Congo. While the DR Congo features the world’s second-largest peacekeeping force, MONUSCO, the presence of these peacekeepers have yet to bring peace to an area that has been embroiled in conflict since 1996.

– From GI-Net / Save Darfur Coalition (link)

Compiled by Paulina Robles and Barbara English of Orange County for Darfur and Martina Knee of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition.