New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature Story

by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Staff Writer

How many here are under 25?” asked Matthew Emry, facing an audience at Drew University in Madison. “How many over 55? How many female?”

Innocent questions, perhaps, but for Emry, a senior program officer with the American Jewish World Service, they were a way to bring home the tragedy of Darfur, the region of Sudan where more than two million people have been killed or displaced during a regional genocide.

“When we look at any given population who are being impacted by conflict and crisis, you are seeing a majority of the population being children, adolescents, and women,” he explained.

Emery was part of a forum at the Darfur Day of Conscience hosted at the university on Feb. 7.

The forum was the final event in a day-long program that also featured a morning workshop for middle and high school teachers and an afternoon presentation by Abdelbagi Abushanab, president of the Newark-based Darfur Rehabilitation Project.
The program was sponsored by the university’s Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study and a range of campus groups as well as the New Jersey Amistad Commission and the NJ Commission on Holocaust Education.

Dr. Geraldine Smith-Wright, a professor of English at Drew, served as moderator for the concluding panel, which included Dr. Matthew Levinger, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Academy for Genocide Prevention, and Assemblyman William D. Payne (D-Dist. 29). She said she hoped the audience would come away from the forum with the idea of moving “from talk to walk.”

In his remarks, Emry outlined the scope of the genocide in Darfur, where women are particularly vulnerable and rape is a weapon in the Khartoum government’s war on black Darfurians. With husbands, sons, and parents missing or among the dead, women and young girls in displaced persons’ camps are forced to walk miles in search of water and wood for fuel, leaving them at the mercy of the Jangaweed, the militia sponsored by Omar al-Bashir’s government.

Because of the social stigma of rape, victims are reluctant to come forward and often forgo the opportunity for medical and emotional counseling. They also lose their economic future, Emry said. “Women who are raped do not wed, plus they must care for the children, who are shunned by the community as well.”

Emry offered several suggestions for bringing more attention to the crisis, including increasing financial support, contacting media ombudsmen to demand more coverage, and holding more educational programs like the one at Drew.

Levinger and Payne said American reaction too often comes down to economics: $50 million that had been earmarked for African Union peacekeepers in the region was stripped from the 2006 budget. Thirty-four senators signed a letter to President George W. Bush, asking for “specifically designated and robust funding to meet the emergency needs in Darfur” for the 2007 fiscal year and the upcoming supplemental appropriations request. Political leaders “have to be persuaded that the costs of inaction outweigh the costs of action,” Levinger said.

Emry expressed little faith in political promises, however. “It makes me laugh when [they] say, ‘We’re going to pass a resolution, pass a bill, launch an investigation…’” said Emry. “We can write reports till our faces are blue, but unless real action is taken, they don’t mean anything. They can’t just sign their name and think they’ve done enough.”

Never again?

Levinger described his department at the Holocaust museum as a new initiative of the its Committee on Conscience, which was created to respond to contemporary genocides.

“We owe an obligation to our fellow humans anywhere in the world to act to resist violence that aims to destroy entire populations,” he said. “We talk about the lessons of the Holocaust, but the Holocaust really has no lessons. The only lesson is that humans are capable of incomprehensible cruelty. The lessons lie in our response to that encounter with mass violence.”

Levinger said that there are currently 7,000 monitors in the Sudan, a figure he called inadequate. “[W]e can’t just say ‘These people are nuts and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ A robust peacekeeping force…would send a clear message that the international community was not prepared to tolerate that kind of deterioration.”

Payne also lamented that the international community has not learned from the past.

“We’ve heard ‘Never again’ over and over. The phrase has lost its meaning.” He compared Darfur with the genocides of World War II and those in Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. “They cried out for help, and we did not help.”

Payne, who serves as vice chair of the State Assembly budget committee, was the primary sponsor of a bill prohibiting investment of pension funds in foreign companies doing business with Sudan. The bill was signed into law by then Gov. Richard Codey last July.

Recalling the protests of the late 1960s, the assemblyman urged students to take the point in the continuing struggle. “Regardless of how far away it is, we have to speak up and do something about it,” said Payne, brother of U.S. Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-Dist. 10), who has taken a lead role in Congress on the Darfur issue.

“The educational community — university students, high school teachers, members of the community at large — are essential audiences to our work,” Levinger said. “Often it is students who have been among the most creative and passionate advocates for recognizing our common humanity.”

Two organizations geared especially for students are HelpDarfurNow.org (middle and high school) and Standarfur.org (college).

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