Darfur - The Devil Came on Horseback

Tonight I went to the Jerusalem Film Festival and saw a very affecting film - The Devil Came on Horseback. It's about Brian Steidle, an American who went to Sudan in 2004 as an observer of the ceasefire between southern Sudan and the government in the north, and who ended up being a witness to the genocide that was just starting in Darfur. He worked for the African Union documenting the genocide, but because he had no power to intervene at all, he eventually quit and since then has been trying to get the word out about what's going on and trying to influence the U.S. government to act. The film showed harrowing photographs that he took of the results of the Janjaweed attacks on Darfur villages - entire villages completely burned down, bodies of people murdered in many different ways, including being burned alive by the Janjaweed. (The film is called "The Devil Came on Horseback" because the word Janjaweed refers to "devils on horseback" - the Arab militias which are trained, armed, and funded by the central government in order to ethnically cleanse Darfur).

Steidle and the film's producer were at the film tonight, as well as a man named Ismael - a Darfur refugee who has just entered Israel eight days ago with his family from Egypt. He spoke very eloquently about his situation - he and his family (wife and four children) have been in Egypt for four years after fleeing Sudan. He left Egypt because the Egyptian government has treated the Darfur (and other African refugees) very poorly (not a surprise, it treats its own citizens very badly).

Steidle said, in answer to a question from the audience, that about 90% of the villages in Darfur have been destroyed by the Janjaweed, about half a million people have been killed (don't believe the statistics you read in the newspapers that say 200,000 have been killed - that figure is very out of date), 2-4 million are refugees either in Chad, the Central African Republic, or internally in Sudan itself. About a million of the internal refugees are living in refugee camps where they are getting no aid whatsoever from relief agencies, because the Sudanese government refuses to let them enter. He said that what has gone on up to now is "Stage 1" of the genocide, and now "Stage 2" is beginning in these inaccessible refugee camps - at least 300 people a day are dying of starvation and illness, which means at the current rate of death over a 100,000 people will die in the next year in these camps.

For a couple of years African refugees from Darfur and elsewhere in Africa have been slipping into Israel over the border with Egypt, and there are currently around 1200 Darfur refugees here. The Israeli government has been shamefully incompetent in dealing with them (see also this article on government plans to deport African refugees back to Egypt) - the military, who finds them on the border, tries to pass them to the police, who then dump them in Beersheva, which doesn't have enough resources on its own to take care of them, and private individuals, kibbutzim, and businesses have ended up helping them. Some heroic students in Beersheva and elsewhere have also been helping them out. Tonight at the film screening a student named Tali was there, informing people about a group of the Darfur refugees who have been sent by the Beersheva municipality to Jerusalem in order to arouse the action of the national government. They are currently camping outside the Knesset in the Wohl Rose Garden. She came and told the audience that they need blankets and diapers for the children, and even more than that, pressure on the government to make it help these refugees.

Even though I love Israel, it is very disheartening to see how miserable this current government is - this is only the latest demonstration of its incompetence and hard-heartedness. (For another example - the government still has not managed to renovate the bomb shelters in the north after last year's war or in Sederot, which still suffers from ongoing Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza). Prime Minister Olmert, who should have resigned last summer after the catastrophic war with Hizbollah, is still hanging on. Every day when I open the newspaper or listen to the radio there is another disgusting scandal being revealed, or other repulsive government conduct. (Tonight, for example, I saw on the Mabat news at 9:00 that a lawyer who was in the Knesset today physically attacked an MK for something he had said). What gives one hope is to see that there are still people in this country who care and have the moral backbone to do something when they see injustice being committed in front of their eyes.

Sudanese in Israel

The New York Times reported yesterday that Sudanese in Israel Hope They Have Found a Home. This is a touching story about Sudanese from Darfur who have made their way from Egypt (to which they had fled) to Israel. They have been locked up in Israeli prisons because they came from an enemy country (Sudan) but some of them are finally being released to live on kibbutzim and moshavim.

Yosef Lapid, a former justice minister, noted the parallel with 'the historical curiosity' of German Jews who escaped Hitler, landing in England only to be put in detention camps because they, like today’s Sudanese refugees in Israel, were considered enemy nationals. “I don’t think that the Jewish people can look the other way when such a horrible genocide is being conducted. It is our obligation to be as of much help as we can,” said Mr. Lapid, a Holocaust survivor.

[A group of Sudanese recently were taken on a tour of the museum at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. They stood silently, some wiping away tears as they looked at photographs of corpses and cases displaying children’s dolls and a mother’s final postcard. “It was very hard to see this, really shocking,” said a 24-year-old man who fled Darfur last year. “It reminded me of my own people. I hope one day we can have a museum like this in Darfur.”]

I remember that this was an issue last summer when I was visiting Israel, and human rights groups were already beginning to agitate for the release of the Sudanese. I hope this continues, and that Israel finds it possible to accept some more Sudanese refugees.

Heroism in Darfur

Nicholas Kristoff recounts several moving stories of heroism in Darfur:

When the janjaweed militia attacked Fareeda, a village here in southeastern Chad near Darfur, an elderly man named Simih Yahya didn’t run because that would have meant leaving his frail wife behind. So the janjaweed grabbed Mr. Simih and, shouting insults against blacks, threw him to the ground and piled grass on his back.

Then they started a bonfire on top of him.

But his wife, Halima, normally fragile and submissive, furiously tried to tug the laughing militia members from her husband. She pleaded with them to spare his life. Finally, she threw herself on top of the fire, burning herself but eventually extinguishing it with her own body.

The janjaweed may have been shamed by her courage, for Mr. Simih recalls them then walking away and saying, “Oh, he will die anyway.” He told me the story as he was treated at a hospital where doctors peeled burned flesh from his back.

Kristoff doesn't state whether Halima lived or not, although since he doesn't mention her survival, I imagine that she sacrificed her life for her husband's. He tells another story of self-sacrifice, this time a sister leaving herself as a decoy for Janjaweed rapists so that her younger sister can flee:

One of the most inspiring people here is Suad Ahmed, a 25-year-old mother of two from Darfur. She lives here in the Goz Amir refugee camp, and last month she was collecting firewood with her beloved little sister, Halima, when a band of janjaweed ambushed them.

The janjaweed regularly attack women and girls — part of a Sudanese policy of rape to terrorize and drive away black African tribes — and Ms. Suad knew how brutal the attacks are. A 12-year-old neighbor girl had been kidnapped by the janjaweed and gang-raped for a week; the girl’s legs were pulled so far apart that she is now crippled.

But Ms. Suad’s thoughts were only for her sister, who is just 10. “You are a virgin, and you must escape,” she told her. “Run! I’ll let myself be captured, but you must run and escape.”

The local culture is such that if the little girl were raped, she might never be able to marry. So Ms. Suad made herself a decoy and allowed herself to be caught, while her sister escaped back to the camp.

Ms. Suad plays down her heroism, saying that even if she had tried to escape, she might have been caught anyway, for she was five months pregnant. Or, she says, maybe she and her sister both would have been captured.

In any case, however, the janjaweed beat Ms. Suad, and seven of them gang-raped her despite her pregnancy. “You black people have no land,” she recalls them telling her. “This land is not for you.”

People from the camp found Ms. Suad in the hills that evening, too injured to walk, and carried her back. Ms. Suad said she didn’t seek medical treatment, because she wanted to keep the rape as much of a secret as possible and didn’t even tell her husband, although he eventually found out along with a few others. He accepted that it was not her fault....

The gang rape and beating were excruciating, she says, but her sacrifice was worth it. “When my sister saw me brought back and saw what had happened to me, she understood,” Ms. Suad says. “She is very grateful to me.”

As Kristoff says earlier in the column: "Side by side with the most nauseating evil, you stumble across the most exhilarating humanity."