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Cary Clack: Cry for help re atrocities in Sudan must not be ignored

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  • Cary Clack: Cry for help re atrocities in Sudan must not be ignored

    San Antonio Express , TX
    Aug 11 2004

    Cary Clack: Cry for help over atrocities in Sudan must not be ignored



    Forty years ago, the name of Kitty Genovese became synonymous with
    looking the other way while someone suffered.

    In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, in a middle-class
    neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, Catherine
    "Kitty" Genovese was attacked three times in 32 minutes. The
    assailant stalked, raped and stabbed her to death.

    During the attacks, Genovese screamed, "Please help me! Please help
    me!"

    A subsequent police investigation revealed that at least 38 people,
    in the comfort of their homes, saw or heard the attacks, but no one
    came to Genovese's aid. The one call to the police came after the
    murderer had completed his crimes.

    Many times, people don't act in a time of crisis or don't do anything
    to save lives because they're unaware of the problem. When they are
    aware and still do nothing, it can be attributed to physical or moral
    cowardice, sheer callousness or the bystander effect, where people
    see someone in need but assume someone else will intervene to help.

    Doing nothing and assuming someone else will assume responsibility is
    a reason why so many crimes flourish in communities throughout this
    nation.

    Doing nothing and assuming someone else will assume responsibility is
    a reason why millions of people in countries around the world suffer
    with little hope that they will be emancipated from their pain.

    In the 20th century and these infant years of the 21st, there have
    been many regions of the world that were the Kitty Genoveses of the
    international community; places where cries of "Please help me!
    Please help me!" went unheeded or were answered inexcusably late by
    nations in a position to help.

    Whether the Armenian genocide in 1915-1916, the Holocaust of World
    War II, Bosnia during the 1990s or the slaughter in Rwanda in 1994,
    reaction to the worst of brutalities was slow.

    This column space is rarely filled with topics of foreign affairs but
    replace the word "foreign" with "human" and it's appropriate.

    What is happening in Darfur, in the western region of the Sudan, has
    been called by the United Nations and human rights organizations the
    greatest humanitarian crisis of our time and merits at least a few
    words of attention.

    The word "genocide" has been aptly used to describe the plight of
    black Africans at the hands of Arab militias, the "Janjaweed," who
    are supported by the Sudan's monstrous blood-soaked government.

    More than a million people have been driven off their lands, women
    and girls are routinely raped, more than 30,000 have died and the
    U.S. Agency for International Development says that hunger and
    disease will kill an additional 300,000 before the year is done.

    A U.N. resolution gives the government until Aug. 30 to disarm the
    militias. A Human Rights Watch report out today says the Sudanese
    government's pledge to stop the atrocities isn't credible.

    People in this and other nations can do what besieged Sudanese
    farmers cannot, and that's to appeal to their elected representatives
    to do something and to contribute to agencies providing food and
    medicine.

    A people's pain, no matter how close or far away, can't be ignored.
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