Yesterday obliges us: Save Darfur!

On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition "Forced ways" of the Centre against Expulsion in Berlin the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) together with refugees living in Germany from the West Sudanese region Darfur recalls today Thursday morning and later in the afternoon with a vigil at the Kronprinzenpalais the genocide against - up to now - 400,000 Muslim black Africans. "SAVE DARFUR: 2.5 million people driven out already! - YESTERDAY OBLIGES US", says the banner of the human rights organisation, calling on the general public to take action.

"After the failure in Ruanda and Bosnia the world swore: `Never again!´ But day by day the expulsion and genocide in Darfur continue and German and international politics just look on without raising a finger", criticised the founder of the GfbV, Tilman Zülch. "We appeal to the German government to support the plan of the UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, to send a UN peace-keeping force to Darfur with a robust mandate and to force Sudan´s fundamentalist regime to end its campaign of expulsion and extermination. The memory of the century of the European expulsions and of the expulsion and death of millions of East Germans and Sudeten Germans oblige us to come to the help of today´s refugees - everywhere in the world."

"If we do not react 2.5 million people in the West Sudan will have to continue living cooped up together in refugee camps. They will continue to suffer from hunger and contagious diseases and remain helplessly exposed to rape and murder. Their lives lie in our hands." This call to save the people in Darfur was started by the American Jewish World Service and supported by 29 Jewish organisations and institutions in 47 US federal states and by many Muslim and Christian organisations.

If the international community does not intervene the number of genocide victims will soon reach half a million, warns the GfbV. Many of those expelled die on the long treks through arid and desert land or try in vain to reach a refugee camp. 3.5 million are threatened by starvation. The Islamist-fundamentalist and Arab-nationalist Sudanese government under General Omar al-Bashir repeatedly stops the arrival of humanitarian aid. In the South Sudan three million Africans have already fallen victim to the crimes of genocide of this regime and in the Nuba mountains 500,000. In Darfur the militia, supported by the army, commit massacres against civilians. Village are bombed by the air force, wells are poisoned and harvests destroyed.