Mark Brecke has been giving so many speeches he can’t even speak anymore. But when you’re showing photos like the ones he took in Darfur, you don’t need to say much.
More than 200 stunned and revolted attendees at Oakland’s Temple Sinai watched in shocked silence as Brecke solemnly narrated a slide show of his recent journey through the war-torn western region of Sudan. The San Francisco photographer displayed his images of starving and utterly exhausted women and children (notably, there were no men) who had hauled their families on 50-day donkey rides with only the clothes on their backs.
But the most visceral images were the dry, leathery corpses of 13 Darfurian men shot in a mountain valley and left to rot. That, incidentally, is what happens to the men.
The bodies “were stacked up on the side of the road like people putting out their recycling,” Brecke told the crowd.
The Sunday, April 23 panel discussion was one of a series of Darfur-related events taking place throughout the month, culminating in a Sunday, April 30 march on the Golden Gate Bridge. Fellow speakers at Sinai included Georgette Gagnon, the Toronto-based deputy director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch; professor Jok Maduk Jok, a southern Sudanese-born history instructor at Loyola Marymount University; and Elvir Camdzic, a Bosnian genocide survivor and the co-founder of the Bay Area Darfur Coalition.
More than 200,000 Darfurians have been slaughtered and nearly 2 million have been run off their villages by Sudanese government troops and government-formed armed militias known as the Janjaweed. To an outsider’s eye, both sides may appear to be black Africans, but the Khartoum government identifies as Arab and has been attempting, for many decades and in various manners, to assert dominance over the 70 percent of Sudan’s population who do not identify as Arab.
Gagnon noted that U.N. efforts to intervene have been hamstrung by the Chinese, who value their oil contracts with the ruling government, and the Russians, who value their weapons contracts with the same ruling government. An African Union force of 7,000 soldiers is currently overseeing a region the size of California.
Jok, a youngish professor with a booming African accent, called the Khartoum government’s war on Darfur a “repeat of what this government had been doing for more than 20 years” in southern Sudan, a brutal military action that killed more than 2 million civilians.
The professor explained the use of the Janjaweed militia as a malevolently brilliant economic and strategic move. For little money, the horse- or camel-mounted tribesmen carry out open war against the people of western Sudan, rather than the rebel groups in the area. By killing off the civilians, the Darfurian rebels lose their base of support. At the same time, the government maintains the image of separation from the carnage, which it can conveniently blame on tribal warfare.
“It’s a cheap war by proxy, and also a way the government can escape any kind of blame at a world tribunal to come,” he said.
Like his fellow panelists, Jok called for an international intervention. “The African Union force is well intentioned and they’re dodging bullets every day. But they have not stopped the killing, and what’s the point of bringing a force if you’re not stopping the killing?”
Jok also decried the use of rape as a weapon, which he sees as a disturbing trend in several parts of the world.
“Women become trophies, a way to sell the message to the enemy. Especially in western Darfur where the moral integrity of the society is pinned on the women, if a woman’s bodily integrity is tampered with, it is a transgression on the honor of the entire society.
“If women are humiliated, then the entire society is humiliated.”
Camdzic, who spoke slowly and forcefully and seemed to be fighting back tears, chalked up Darfur as yet another world hot spot that democratic countries can’t find a reason to protect.
“In 1995 on the front page of Time magazine in big, red letters was, ‘Is Bosnia Worth Dying For?’ Ladies and gentlemen, that is the question I submit for you today. Is Darfur worth dying for?” he asked.
“Soldiers from some country, someone’s sons and daughters, will have to be put in harm’s way. That’s the bottom line. Everything else, these slogans, — ‘let’s take action, let’s stop genocide’ — perhaps we’re hiding behind these slogans and what needs to be done.”
All four panelists stressed that pressuring the media and our elected representatives can and will make a difference. Gagnon noted that an appropriations bill pending in Congress would deliver vitally important funds to the African Union forces.
Brecke said he was amazed at how many photographers and cameramen had snapped his picture; in 2004, he claimed, the major networks only broadcast 26 minutes of news on Darfur for the entire year.
Summed up Camdzic: “The first and most important step is to educate yourself about the situation. Do not allow yourself to be hypnotized by complexity; through all the complexity you can always see the moral clarity” of the situation.
“Educate yourself, educate others and act.”