Students With A View

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.  The genocide in Sudan, more specifically Darfur, is characterized as a political genocide.  Even though the Sudan government has refrained from using the word genocide, that is exactly what has been taking place since 2003.  Darfur was having many problems in their country and needed support from a higher power.  So, Darfur asked the Sudan government for support.  In return Sudan sent in an army known as the Janjaweed.  The Janjaweed began to rid Sudan of the Darfuri people.  At first several groups in Darfur began to rebel, but the Janjaweed were simply to much for the small rebellion groups to handle.  The death toll has risen to 400,000 deaths in the past four years, which is increasing very quickly from month to month. 

Examples of the violence that has been occurring for the past five years are raping, slaughtering, starving, and even beatings.  Rapes happen every day in Darfur.  If a Janjaweed soldier sees a woman he likes, there will be no punishment for raping her so the Janjaweed soldier can do what ever he pleases.    Slaughtering and beatings are the two most brutally cruel acts performed by the Janjaweed.  There is no punishment for either of the acts, so the Janjaweed soldiers feel free to simply beat someone for no reason.  Lastly, starving is another way the Janjaweed soldiers have tortured the people of Darfur.  The main way the Darfuri people get food is by farming.  The Janjaweed have started bombing the crop fields in Darfur, and they are starving all the people in Darfur.  Because of all these cruel acts, the people of Darfur have simply given up.  This is why the people of Darfur deserve our help.    

The United Nations (U.N.) should help Darfur now more than ever.  One way that the U.N. could help is by send an army over to Darfur and driving the Janjaweed out of Darfur.  This would stop the mass killings that are currently taking place.  Another way the U.N. could help Darfur is by sending supplies over to Sudan to help feed the Darfur people.  Last, the U.N. could make laws that prevent the Sudan government from ganging up on the weak people of their country.  These are just three of the many things that the U.N. could do to help solve the genocide in the Darfur.  Although no one knows what the U.N. will do to help Darfur, anyone could see that something needs to be done.

                                                                                                –Matthew 7

Works Cited

1.         Save Darfur. “The Genocide in Darfur.” Learn. June of 2007: Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts.  Feb. 27, 2008                            <http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/background>

2.         Save Darfur. “A global shame.” Janjaweed. 2007:  Save Darfur organization. Feb. 27, 2008 < http://www.janjaweed.com/>

3.         Colum Lynch “Death rates in Sudan’s Darfur rising.” The World Revolution .        Sep. 15 2004: Washington Post.  Feb. 28, 2008

            < http://www.worldrevolution.org/news/article1497.htm>

The Bosnian genocidal war is in need of outside intervention before the ethnic groups Albanian, Serbian, and the Bosnians have exterminated each other.

            The death toll resulting from the Bosnian genocide between 1992 through 1995 was totaled about 200,000. (unitedhumanrightscouncil.org)  The United States needs to help stop the genocidal war in Bosnia. This is an ongoing and increasing problem.   If it is not stopped soon then eventually each ethnic group will systematically kill everyone of the other ethnic group.

 If the United States and the United Nations don’t step in, the ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia will basically exterminate each other.  The United States should step in and aid the UN with bomb and landmine recovery, and recovery of other deadly explosives.  The United States and the UN should also send in military forces to patrol between the borders of each ethnic group’s most populated lands and around the Kosovo border.  Hopefully this would help stop invasion of another area and stop mass killings.  The United States and the United Nations should work hard to facilitate a peace treaty between all the ethnic groups of former Yugoslavia and help them to keep it.  To do this the US and, the UN should send military support to concentration camps, overrun them and free the prisoners.

                                                                        –Mahatma Hildago

NA. “United Human Rights Council.” NA:  United Human Rights. February 25, 2008

            < http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/bosnia_genocide.htm >

Sudan is the largest country on the African continent, and the nation’s western region around the size of Texas, is known as Darfur.  Currently Darfur and its inhabitants are faced with the disturbing situation of genocide.  Originating in 1944, the specific term, genocide, is defined as the systematic and deliberate extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.  (dictionary.com) Six decades later, the US Secretary of State officially used the rare word to describe the events in Darfur, Sudan.

 In February 2003, the crisis began to unfold when two groups of non-Arab African Muslims, the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), were exhausted after decades of neglect and oppression from the Arab-dominated government. They then presented these issues to Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, whose reaction was vicious.  The Darfurian underdogs soon became the victims of the Sudanese government’s wicked pawns, the Janjaweed, which was a military group intent on annihilating the rebel movements. The Janjaweed consists of Arabs who herd cattle and camels and are directly supported, paid, trained, and granted immunity for the violent crimes and atrocities committed. Thus, the Janjaweed initiated their genocide by systematically destroying entire villages, killing, torturing, and raping hundreds of thousands of Darfurians, sparing none of the population. (savedarfur.org)

            Since 2003, over 400,000 innocent civilians are dead from violence, starvation, and disease, and thousands of women and girls have been raped. The Janjaweed’s main strategic plans of attack are to eliminate basic food and water resources, which are essential for survival, and to rape all the women, which shames them into becoming social outcasts due to Muslim beliefs. For being a constant reminder of the dishonorable action of rape, which is strictly forbidden in the Muslim religion, a Muslim woman’s fate after rape is most often rejection, a shameful reputation, and an erased hope of marriage or pleasant home life.  While thousands of villages are thoroughly being pillaged and often torched, around 2,500,000 Darfurians have been forced to flee from their homes to seek refuge in overflowing Internally Displaced Persons camps (IDPs), but another 200,000 have abandoned the country entirely to reside in refugee camps across the western border in Chad. One cruel illustration of the Janjaweed’s methods is that a large portion of their aircraft is painted white, like the UN aircraft, and when the civilians sight the planes they are always uncertain of its purpose, a helpful mission or bombs. Despite those dead and fled, more than 1 million Darfurians are still trapped in their villages and living under the constant fear of bombings, raids, torture, rape, and murder, and they must endure the pressure of having inadequate food, shelter, water, and health care, which causes many deaths every month. This genocide is a challenge that cannot be disregarded. (darfurgenocide.org)

            While the United States and the African Union are passing around the responsibilities of Darfur like a hot potato, the United Nations has met and negotiated three peace agreements, and the Sudanese government has ignored the agreements of every single one. Despite the overwhelming loss of hope among the SLA/M and Darfuris, there are measures that can be taken to ensure an end to this genocide. First, a real ceasefire needs to be negotiated and respected by every group involved with the genocide. Next, an effective and dependable peacekeeping force urgently needs to be arranged and positioned in Darfur by the African Union with strong numbers to guarantee humanitarian aid, and the United Nations can fund and equip the stationed forces. Also, a new peace agreement must meet the following requirements: “a secure environment that allows displaced persons to return to their homes-if they chose to do so”, “a sustainable political agreement embraced by all armed groups - as well as non-combatant groups representative of large portions of Darfuri society - and which deals with the root causes of the conflict”, and “accountability for all those who committed or can be shown to have had command responsibility over violations of human rights or international humanitarian law.” (savedarfur.org)  Following these steps can enable you to end or to further near you to end the genocide in Darfur permanently, and by experiencing and dealing with genocide humanitarian organizations will improve their strategies and better prepare themselves for when the world inevitably slips into another devastating genocide.

-          I Am the Walrus

“The Genocide in Darfur - Briefing Paper.” Save Darfur. June 2007. Save Darfur Coalition. 28 Feb 2008 <http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/background>.

“genocide.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 27 Feb. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide>.

“Trip to Darfur: Travelogue.” Darfur: A Genocide We Can Stop. Res Publica. 28 Feb 2008 <http://www.darfurgenocide.org/travel.php>.

In what is now called Yugoslavia was once just a lot of different ethnic groups split up. This genocidal war started in 1992 in Europe and has been going on since then. Well after WWII, Slobodan Milosevic, use to be a communist leader and he switched to being a nationalism leader, said ok you are all going to be one big country, Yugoslavia. The only problem was that three of the ethnic groups hated each other. They all wanted “pure” land.  From 1992-1995 over 200,000 people were killed. Some of the people were killed by snipers and others were killed by either land mines or mortar shells.

            The United Nations in the past few years have gone and found landmines, which is a big weapon with the Serbs, and destroyed them so they don’t kill innocent people. The Serbs are going and putting the land mines on commonly used roads and at people’s house so when they walk on one or drive on one they blow up and the person will either lose their life or a body part. So the Serbs major weapon is the land mine because they are easy to hide. They have found over 2.7 Million Square Meters of land and located and destroyed over 779 mines. Think of how many innocent lives that could have killed.

            The Serbs did some pretty graphic things to the Bosnians. Some are too gruesome to mention but there were some that were just plain mean. The land mines are one reason why the people are scared for their lives. Another is because if the Serbs think you are a Bosnian then they will kill you. They were killing innocent people so they can have the “pure” land that they want. They are just destroying their “pure” land with killing all of these people. They really don’t care who you are. If they just think you are a certain ethnic group then bang you are dead.

            The Serbs don’t care what it takes to get there land but the Serbs ARE going to get it no matter what, unless we help the Bosnians out.

                                                                                    –Cherokee Rose

Works Cited

“UNMIK (United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo).” E-Mine . 27 Feb 2008   <http://www.mineaction.org/country.asp?c=198>.

“What is genocide?.” Genocide International Network. 27 Feb 2008 <http://www.genocideintervention.net/educate/genocide#bosnia1>.

“Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1995 200,000 deaths .” The History Place. 1999. 28 Feb 2008 <http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/bosnia.htm>.

            In Europe there is a country that is the heart of a genocidal war, and that country is called Kosovo, which is in the middle of other countries that hold the Serbs, Albanians, and Bosnians. These ethnic groups, in a condensed version, just want to pure the area they are in of just themselves and no one else, and the only way they have been doing that lately is just killing everyone else except for the people of their ethnic background. This has been going on since 1995, and is still continuing to this day. That is why the United Nations and the United States need to send help even more than they already have, because it has been going on so long and needs to be settled down. This whole genocidal war could cause even a more prominent war, which could impact Europe and the U.S.

             While this genocidal war has been going on the UN has and still can do more to help this region and the war that is going on. They have sent medicine for the people who have been attacked, and they have gone and cleared the mine fields. Now, one thing the UN needs to do is go and have a sit-down meeting with the three ethnic groups, and talk out how to solve the problems of this genocidal war. It may not be effective, but it is something the UN needs to try. This genocide has been going on since 1995, and has not stopped. It may get worse, it may not, but if it does a major war could break out. Now, another war is something the United States does not need to worry about. One, we don’t have the money, and another we don’t have time to do anything about it.  

 Bombings, random shootings, and other acts of terror have flooded the streets of Kosovo and the area around it because the ethnic groups want the whole land for themselves. The UN and the US need to go in and not take control of everything, but go in and help solve what is going on. They need to do so by taking out the landmines and stopping any other terrorist acts to begin with. Then try and help create a compromise with each country. This might work by creating a compromise, it might not, but this has gotten to an extent to where something needs to happen. The United Nations Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) did clear mine and cluster bomb fields in 2001. This has been helpful in so many ways. It has helped stop deaths that could have happened to anyone. Clearing the field made life return to some since of normality for all the innocent people that lived in the area of Kosovo.

            Speaking of deaths, Albanians, Serbs, and Bosnians are being attacked and so are other innocent people. In July of 1999, 14 Serb farmers were murdered in their fields. Now, imagine your father out in his field and some random person just comes by and shoots him in the head. The land mines that have been taken out killed anyone that just stepped on them. So, a landmine could go off on an innocent boy that has done nothing wrong in his life all because he was just walking home. That is just one fear the people in Kosovo have to face. In February, of 2001 group of Serbs where on there way back from a trip on a bus and without warning it blew up, and everyone in it was killed. A lot are cleared now, but the landmines were a huge problem. No one was safe from them. So a civilian, who has never been apart in any of this genocidal war, could blow up one day walking to a park. I know for a fact though, is that if I lived in that area the one thought on my mind all the time would be, “is today the day?”

                                                                                                            Mr. Kite

Kollodge, Richard. “UNMIK (United Nations Interim Administration Mission in

            Kosovo). Mineaction.org. Jan. 7, 2003. United Nation Mine Action Service.

2/27/08. < http://www.mineaction.org/country.asp?c=198>

Jansen, G. “Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo.” Lamar.colostate.edu  June 15, 2007.

            Colorado State University. 2/27/08. <http://lamar.colostate.edu/~grjan/kosovohistory.html>