Greater Newark Responds to the
Crisis in Sudan
 
STATEMENT ON THE ATROCITIES AND
URGENT HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS IN THE SUDAN

August 2004

Coalition members:

• American Jewish Committee of Metro New Jersey
• Anti-Defamation League New Jersey Region
• Darfur Rehabilitation Project, Inc.
• Drew University Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study
• Essex County Latino CBOs Collaboration
• Hopewell Baptist Church
• International Public Policy Institute
• NAACP, Newark Branch
• Newark-North Jersey Committee of Black Churchmen
• Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, Interreligious Affairs Commission
• Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey
• Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience Seton Hall University School of Law, Center for Social Justice
• The Newark Museum
• United Jewish Communities of MetroWest, Community Relations Committee
   

The above coalition of ethnic, academic, religious, and community-based organizations (in formation) has come together to express alarm at the escalating humanitarian calamity occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Over the last seventeen months an estimated 30,000 civilians have lost their lives in an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by a government-backed Arab militia known as "Janjaweed." The Janjaweed is committed to wiping out the native black African inhabitants of the territory. More than 130,000 have been forced from their homes and have fled to neighboring Chad and more than one million persons have been internally displaced. The systematic rape and branding of women, destruction of food and water supplies, burning of entire villages and a policy of forced slavery for those who survive are all common practices of Janjaweed in their onslaught of terror.

The Sudanese government has unnecessarily restricted and delayed the flow of humanitarian aid thus depriving the victims of relief. If humanitarian aid is not allowed to flow freely in the country in the near future, according to some estimates, the death toll from disease and malnutrition could reach into the hundreds of thousands and perhaps as many as one million people by December.
  
Greater Newark Responds to the Crisis in Sudan has been formed with the commitment that we cannot afford to be indifferent to the atrocities occurring in Sudan. Recognizing the dire situation, the United States Congress declared genocide in Sudan on July 22, 2004. Under the United Nations Genocide Convention adopted in 1948, nations vowed to "undertake to prevent and punish the crime of genocide," defined as certain acts, when committed "with intent to destroy" a targeted group, in whole or in part. Remembering the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust and the genocide of 800,000 Tutsi people in Rwanda, for which this year marks the tenth anniversary, we should never again allow ourselves to be bystanders and permit genocide to occur.

It is the Coalition's purpose to:

1. raise the consciousness of citizens of Greater Newark about what is occurring in Sudan;
2. prevail upon the United States and the international community to act decisively to stop the genocide; and
3. take action to encourage financial support to organizations providing humanitarian relief.

We call on the government of Sudan to take immediate and decisive action to stop the atrocities and slaughter perpetrated against its own people, to disarm the militias and to allow relief workers to deliver humanitarian aid without unnecessary delay or restriction. Furthermore, the government of Sudan should take concrete steps to redress the property and personal losses of more than one million of its citizens who have become refugees and promote efforts to rebuild villages and return the displaced. We call upon the United Nations to immediately pressure the government of Sudan to take the above steps without delay to stop the ethnic cleansing and prevent further atrocities and deaths. The international community must also do everything in its power to stop the genocide and ensure adequate funding is provided to meet the needs of the victims.