Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy

One of many destroyed villages in Darfur Sudan

Darfur needs aid, OSU speaker says

By Theresa Hogue, Gazette-Times reporter
May 24, 2006

Civilians suffering, villagers being killed

Mohamed Yahya shared his thoughts on the past and future of Darfur on Wednesday at his lecture at the LaSells Stewart Center of Oregon State University. A crowd of more than 100 attended. In 1993, he was attending the University of Cairo, far away from his parents and eight brothers and sisters who lived in a little village in Darfur, a large region of Sudan.

He was isolated from news of his home town, so isolated that it took a week before he learned that his village had been destroyed, four of his siblings killed, one sister raped and the rest scattered. Two of his grandparents were burned to death in their hut, unable to escape as quickly as the younger villagers. Friends, neighbors and family members were gone forever, the rest fled before the hands of the Janjaweed, an Arab militia group who, in one day, attacked 50 villages.

There was no news of these attacks, nothing in the newspaper, nothing on the television. Yahya and other Darfurians learned of the attacks from those who had fled. Thirteen years later, the killings continue, and to this day Yahya only knows the location of one brother and one sister.

“I don’t know where the rest are,” he said.

Sudan has been under the control of Islamic military rule since the 1950s. Muslims make up only 20 percent of the population but hold most of the control. Since the 1950s, several civil wars have broken out, led by the majority groups balking under Islamic rule, but so far the military regimes have maintained control.

But Yahya said it is the civilians who are suffering under the system, as systematic killing of villagers of all faiths in the region has continued for decades. In fact, the genocide has been largely ignored by the world, something that Yahya was determined to change as soon as word came to him in Cairo about his family and his home town.

Yahya began organizing other Darfurians, and eventually became part of the Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy in Sudan. He learned English “to address this issue widely,” he said. And although raised to fear and hate Christians, Jews and Westerners, he said he has learned that they have become his biggest allies as he tries to spread the word about genocide in Darfur.

“Innocent people, (unarmed) people, have been attacked, destroyed, raped and displaced,” he said. Many have fled to refugee camps, but when forced to go outside the camps for water and firewood, women are often raped, and men are killed.

Yahya said he can’t understand the unwillingness of the United Nations to participate in peace-keeping in the region. Although international pressure finally resulted in a peace treaty between the government and some of the rebel groups, Yahya said the killing continues, and the treaty is full of empty promises.

“We have to intervene. Who is going to do it? There is no answer to this question,” he said.

Yahya is calling on the United Nations and the United States to send peace keeping troops to the country to protect refugees and prevent the Janjaweed from destroying more villages.

“It is really very confusing when genocide is taking place in the 21st century and nothing is done to stop it.”