Publication Date: Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Our Town: 'A shame on humanity'
Our Town: 'A shame on humanity'
(October 12, 2005) by Don Kazak
Samuel Garang Akau is one of the fortunate ones.
A tall, thin man of 23, he was able to leave his native Sudan four years ago and come to America, aided by a church group. His country has been wracked by ongoing civil war for most of its history since it became a nation in 1956.
That war has now turned into genocide, with an estimated 180,000 killed so far in the Darfur region. Some 2 million people have been driven from their homes. The conflict has been largely between black Africans like Akau and Arabs.
The Darfur genocide is slowly capturing the world's attention.
Akau looked out over the Palo Alto Civic Center Plaza last Thursday and spoke to a hundred or so people gathered there for a noon rally.
"By being here, you show that the people of Darfur are in your thoughts," Akau said.
Later, he mentioned that he has a brother who escaped to Kenya, and another brother is in San Jose. His parents, he says matter-of-factly, were killed in the war.
Akau is now living on the Stanford campus. After arriving on the Peninsula, he attended De Anza Community College for two years and was accepted as a transfer student at Stanford last year. He is beginning his senior year, majoring in English and political science.
When asked what he was going to do after he graduates next June, Akau finally smiled. "Get a job," he replied.
Another African Sudanese who spoke at last week's rally, Gamila Abdelhalim, is a lawyer educated at the University of Khartoum. She practiced law in Sudan for four years, then spent seven years working for the United Nations. Now, the 40-year-old East Bay mother of four has her own business.
She worries about her parents, who are still in Sudan, although not in Darfur. She has other family members there, too.
Wearing a traditional Sudanese loose-fitting dress and head-scarf, Abdelhalim thanked the crowd for caring about her country: "Peace be upon you," she said.
"Every day at Ramadan dinner (the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began last week), I think of the people of Darfur," she said. "They are Muslim, like me.
"Their suffering is indescribable and the fact that it continues every day is a shame on humanity."
She said she stopped reading news about Darfur: "I couldn't take it anymore." Her soft voice gathers purpose as she concludes, "For heaven's sake, just stop the killing."
The rally was co-sponsored by a number of faith groups, including several local Jewish congregations. The Rev. Diana Gibson of Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice also was a sponsor, as was American Muslim Voice.
Samina Faheen Sundas of Palo Alto, executive director of American Muslim Voice, said she was part of the rally because "I am interested in anything that goes wrong for human beings."
The rally was one of several held around the country last Thursday by Jewish groups in support of Darfur. The national Jewish community has taken on the Darfur genocide as a cause, with memories of its own genocide.
Rabbi Henry Shreibman of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in San Rafael blew a shofar -- a long, curved horn -- to start the rally, blowing the ancient call for "danger, emergency."
"This is the first genocide of the 21st century," he said.
"But not on our watch!" he said loudly, getting the crowd to repeat it with him.
The measure of humanity is "not how we treat our own, it's how we love people who are different from us," he said.
"It should concern us as people of faith," Laura Pierce-McKenzie of Palo Alto's First Presbyterian Church said. "If we do it together, we have an opportunity to tilt the world a little toward justice."
Gibson and Rabbi Ari Cartun of Congregation Etz Chayim in Palo Alto sang Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind."
"Unfortunately, it's still relevant," Cartun said of the old, familiar song.
Someday, it would be good if no one ever had reason to sing that song again.
Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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