The Darfur Consortium

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Civil Society Action for Darfur

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July 19

Associated Press: China will continue efforts to bring peace to Darfur, vice president says. China will continue its efforts to help bring peace to the troubled Darfur region, Vice President Zeng Qinghong said Wednesday during a meeting with a top Sudanese official. Sudanese First Vice President Salva Kiir was in Beijing as part of a six-day visit to China. "China's stance on the Darfur issue is consistent and China has played a constructive role," Zeng said, according to state television. "China will actively push for an early resolution to the Darfur issue." China's involvement in Sudan is becoming a liability as the country tries to portray itself as a responsible power while welcoming the world to the 2008 Olympics, a massive source of national pride. China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports, sells the African country weapons and military aircraft, and has blocked efforts to send U.N. peacekeeping forces to Darfur without Sudanese consent. Liu Guijin, China's special envoy to Sudan, has said China was instrumental in a June diplomatic breakthrough in which Sudan's government finally agreed to let a strong force of U.N. and African Union peacekeepers be deployed in Darfur.

Washington Post: The Debates' New Face. Not long ago Kim, a mother of two, walked into her bedroom, turned on her webcam and made a 30-second video. When the Democratic presidential candidates gather in Charleston, S.C., on Monday for their next debate, co-sponsored by CNN and YouTube, this may be one of the questions: "Hi, my name is Kim. I'm 36 years old and hope to be a future breast cancer survivor from Long Island. . . . Like millions of Americans, I've gone for years without health insurance. . . . What would you, as president, do to make low-cost or free preventative medicine available for everybody in this country?" Steve Grove, head of YouTube's news and politics section, thinks the nature of the questions will result in a very different kind of debate. "These YouTube questions -- a lot of them, anyway -- are intimate, emotional, personal," he said. "That person is in his/her surrounding, and that person is bringing you into their world, their reality. That makes it a very powerful experience." The videos that Grove was screening last week at YouTube's offices in San Bruno, Calif., a few miles south of San Francisco, were as different as the people who made them. The war in Iraq, to his surprise, is not a dominant question. Many more questions are about Darfur, education, immigration, the environment, health care and gay rights. To view several views featured on WashingtonPost.com, including a question on Darfur, please click here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/youtube_20070721.html?hpid=topnews.

Philadelphia City Paper: Just Do It. At least 200,000 people (and perhaps twice that number) are dead from ethnically motivated murders in the Darfur region of western Sudan. More than 2 million are living as refugees. "DARFUR/DARFUR," a collection of photographs documenting this horror, will be projected onto the outer walls of the National Constitution Center every night from next Tuesday to the following Monday. Shot by former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle and seven international photojournalists, the images are meant to convey a sense of how drastically daily life in Darfur has been altered by the constant violence. Some capture government and rebel attacks on villages; others examine the culture of the refugee camps. By the end of the year, the photographs will have been displayed on walls in high-traffic areas in 24 cities. The show's organizers (including the Save Darfur Coalition and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C.) hope it will raise awareness of the Darfur genocide and encourage people to pressure their elected representatives to act forcefully against it. In conjunction with the exhibit, the Constitution Center will host an advanced screening of The Devil Came on Horseback, a film that examines the genocide from the perspective of Steidle, who first traveled to Darfur as an official military observer. Frustrated by the international community's refusal to intercede in mass murder, Steidle resigned and returned home to help raise awareness of the crisis. And, to close out the week, a symposium called "How Democracies Confront Genocide" will feature a panel discussion led by John Hefferman, genocide prevention initiative director at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, addressing genocide and constitutionalism. Exhibit runs Tue.-Mon., July 24-30, 8:45 p.m.-midnight, free; film screening, Sat., July 28, 7:30 p.m., $5; symposium, Mon., July 30, 7 p.m., free, National Constitution Center, Independence Mall, 215-409-6700, www.constitutioncenter.org

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Retired ambassador giving talk on Darfur. Local efforts to bring attention to the crisis in Darfur continue today and tomorrow when retired Ambassador Lawrence Rossin, senior international coordinator for the national Save Darfur Coalition, will speak on how to end the genocidal conflict in western Sudan. Mr. Rossin, former envoy to Croatia, has traveled to Sudan twice, and to Egypt, Turkey, France, Germany and China to muster international support to resolve the crisis. At 6 this evening, he will speak on "Stopping Genocide in Darfur" at St. Benedict the Moor Church, 91 Crawford St. at Centre Avenue in the Hill District. The session is free. Tomorrow, he will discuss the ongoing state divestment campaign at a 9 a.m. breakfast for Pennsylvania legislators at the Pittsburgh Chapter of the AJC at 2345 Murray Ave., Squirrel Hill. Mr. Rossin will also speak at a luncheon hosted by the NAACP for African-American community leaders at CJ's in the Strip District from 12:30 to 2 p.m., and he will attend a reception celebrating the 60th anniversary of Citizens for Global Solutions Pittsburgh at the Sheraton Station Square, 7 to 9 p.m.

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