Yesterday Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission held its first public hearings. Along with the ongoing trial of former warlord and Liberian president Charles Taylor in the Hague, it marks an astoundingly hopeful turnaround for a nation that spent 10 years in the grip of one of the more horrifying civil wars of the 20th century. They’ve still a ton of work ahead of them, but I hope it will not be inappropriate for me to say tres HOORAY for Liberia. They’ve had a truly breathtaking turnaround in the last couple of years. Almost enough to make one hope for Kenya, and Darfur, and Iraq, and Palestine, and …
Read more at Allafrica.com
as well as here
01-09-2008 |
No Comments »“It was as if the last day, as people say in the Bible, that there will be a last day that Jesus Christ will come, and whatever on Earth will be judged. That was my imagination. I thought that God felt tired of people on Earth here, felt tired of the bad deeds, the bad thing that we are doing, yet God is watching on us. I thought that God got tired of us and he want to finish us.”
- John Bul Dau
For our November meeting, our movie group watched the documentary God Grew Tired Of Us. Narrated by Nicole Kidman, this film tells the compelling story of three “Lost Boys” John Bul Dau, Panther Bior, and Daniel Abol Pach. After fleeing the civil war in Sudan as boys and spending more than a decade as refugees, these young men were given the opportunity to resettle in the United States. The film documents their amazing journey from a refugee camp in Kenya to their new lives in New York and Philadelphia.
In our discussion after the film, the theme that came up again and again was the concept of community. Aubrie commented on the striking contrast between the men’s lives in the African refugee camp where they did everything together and in the United States where they struggled with a sense of isolation and loneliness. Amy noted that in the refugee camp they had “hope and humor and love and community” and she observed that while they were happy to leave the camp for a better life in the US, they also experienced a deep sense of loss in leaving their friends.
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11-16-2007 |
3 Comments »“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
- Desmond Tutu
08-14-2007 |
8 Comments »Take a stand in whatever way you can.
That’s the message I left with after hearing Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof speak at the University of Oregon’s three day symposium Witnessing Genocide: Representation and Responsibility. Mr. Kristof gave the final keynote address of the symposium, “Covering the First Genocide of the 21st Century: Reporting From Darfur.”
I know, I know. Three days of talking about Genocide? The very idea makes a person want to run far away to avoid an overwhelming feeling of complete helplessness. I’ll admit that did keep me from attending the whole event, but the chance to hear Mr. Kristof in person overrode my flight instinct. So the four of us (Rachel and I along with our spouses) found some of the last seats in the room – boy I’d forgotten how small and uncomfortable classroom desk/chair combos are – to hear from this witness to genocide.
Much of what Mr. Kristof said will not surprise anyone who makes the effort to follow news about this atrocity taking place in Sudan, Africa. I won’t go into all the details he covered, but instead focus more on his thoughts about response and steps toward resolution.
05-07-2007 |
7 Comments »“Who do you think buys the stones I bring out? Dreamy American girls who all want a storybook wedding and a big, shiny rock, like the ones in the advertisements of your politically-correct magazines.”So please don’t come here and make judgments on me, alright? I provide a service. The world wants what we have and they want it cheap. We’re in business together.”- Diamond smuggler Danny Archer
Blood Diamond tells the intersecting stories of three individuals caught up in the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone in 1999. Leonardo DiCaprio plays an ex-mercenary turned smuggler who will do anything to obtain a rare and priceless diamond. Djimon Hounsou plays a peaceful Mende fisherman whose world is ripped apart when rebel forces brutalize his village and force his young son to become a soldier. And Jennifer Connelly plays an American journalist determined to unmask the dark truth about the diamond trade.
Blood Diamond powerfully depicts the unbearable anguish of parents as their children are torn away, the fear and confusion of child soldiers terrorized into committing brutal acts and the frustration of a journalist begging an indifferent world to pay attention. The movie exposes how the violence and suffering of the civil war were fueled and funded by the illicit diamond trade. And it challenges privileged and comfortable Westerners to educate ourselves about the consequences of our economic choices.
03-30-2007 |
2 Comments »Invisible Children is inviting us to imagine for 24 hours what it is like to be displaced for 10 years. On April 28th, tens of thousands of people across the U.S. will gather in 15 cities in mock internally displaced persons camps to show our support for the internally displaced persons in northern Uganda.
03-30-2007 |
No Comments »Today the U.S. State Department released their Annual Human Rights Report for 2006. It includes detailed, lengthy reports on human rights violations in 193 countries, and is actually fairly fascinating reading if you have the time to wade through it (IMO).
Conspicuously missing from the list of countries reported on–The United States!?!
Mentioned, in the report, as the first (and perhaps most) hopeful example of progress on Human Rights was Liberia
I remember being in Liberia in 1999 during Charles Taylor’s 6 year reign as president (between the first 10 years of civil war and the second 4 years of civil war). The people I met were completely terrified to talk about politics at all. I guess they feared Taylor, but they feared resumption of the civil war even more.
The people of Liberia were beautiful and very engaging. I remember sitting around the campfire one night with four ladies who were washing the cooking utensils. They sang a lovely melodic song, in English–I couldn’t understand a word. So they translated for me into an English I could understand. The lyrics were “Jesus you are so bright like a beautiful flower and you shine like the morning star”.
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03-07-2007 |
10 Comments »A nearly miraculous 6 month ceasefire between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the government of Uganda is set to expire Wednesday, February 28th (that is, today). This is enormously heartbreaking, as it means that a situation has been *so* bad for so long for so many children, and which looked to be getting better, may now be getting worse again.
If I think about this too much, I start crying.
Does god hate africa more than he hates the rest of us?
02-28-2007 |
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