From an email I received from Save Darfur:

In Darfur, men are often killed or captured when they leave refugee camps to collect firewood. So the women venture out instead—and regularly fall prey to a targeted campaign of rape encouraged by the Sudanese government.

China blindly backs the Sudanese government and allows this brutality to continue. While the Chinese government basks in the glow of the Olympic Games, it is still selling Sudan weapons that enable these atrocities.

This week, our partner organization, Dream for Darfur, is highlighting China’s role in this deteriorating situation as part of their alternative “Darfur Olympics.” Will you join them?

Click here to help Dream for Darfur raise awareness about China’s role in violence against Darfuri women. And urge Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to take immediate action.

While China hosts the Olympic Games under the banner of peace and brotherhood, Dream for Darfur’s daily webcasts are revealing the devastation enabled by China’s weapons. Each day this week, Dream for Darfur is focusing on a different crisis facing the people of Darfur. Today, they’re turning the world’s eye to widespread sexual violence.

Sexual violence in Darfur is not just a series of random acts. It is a weapon of genocide. Peacekeepers have tried to protect women, but they have failed because they are short of resources and stretched too thin to do the job.

Show your support for Dream for Darfur’s efforts. Click here to support the Darfur Olympics and urge Secretary Rice to help protect Darfuri women.

The world cannot sit by while sexual violence rages in Darfur. Today, Dream for Darfur is speaking out against this weapon of genocide. Add your voice, and demand protection for the women of Darfur.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times

NYALA, Sudan, Aug. 28 - Some of the same Arab tribes accused of massacring civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan are now unleashing their considerable firepower against one another in a battle over the spoils of war that is killing hundreds of people and displacing tens of thousands.

In the past several months, the Terjem and the Mahria, heavily armed Arab tribes that United Nations officials said raped and pillaged together as part of the region’s notorious janjaweed militias, have squared off in South Darfur, fighting from pickup trucks and the backs of camels. They are raiding each other’s villages, according to aid workers and the fighters themselves, and scattering Arab tribesmen into the same kinds of displacement camps that still house some of their earlier victims.

United Nations officials said that thousands of gunmen from each side, including some from hundreds of miles away, were pouring into a strategic river valley called Bulbul, while clashes between two other Arab tribes, the Habanniya and the Salamat, were intensifying farther south.

Darfur’s violence has often been characterized as government-backed Arab tribes slaughtering non-Arab tribes, but this new Arab-versus-Arab dimension seems to be a sign of the evolving complexity of the crisis. What started out four years ago in western Sudan as a rebellion and brutal counterinsurgency has cracked wide open into a fluid, chaotic, confusing free-for-all with dozens of armed groups, a spike in banditry and chronic attacks on aid workers

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read more HERE

As a U.S. Olympics gold medalist in speed’skating, Joey Cheek is not used to standing still. However, he waited patiently at the entrance of the Chinese Embassy for more than a half-hour to deliver petitions with 42,000 signatures, urging China to use its influence on Sudan to stop the genocide of the people of Darfur.

Finally, Chinese officials let him in to hand over the petitions, organized by the Washington-based Save Darfur Coalition. Cheek has long been active in raising money for Darfur refugees. He donated his $25,000 in award money from his 2006 Gold Medal to the Darfur cause.

The campaign to pressure China, the largest foreign investor in Sudan, did not stop with the petitions and a vigil outside the embassy last week.

“We absolutely are moving forward,” coalition spokesman Allyn Brooks-LaSure said yesterday. “We have no intention of yielding in actions to get China to take more forceful actions.”

More at the Washington Times

Give a visit to the Save Darfur site.

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Violence has escalated in Sudan’s Darfur region since January, throwing another 160,000 people out of their homes and forcing 4.2 million people, about two-thirds of the population, to go on relief aid, the United Nations reported on Tuesday.

Some 2.1 million people have been uprooted from their villages in addition to the more than 200,000 who have fled the country, mainly to neighboring Chad, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, said.

Particularly worrying are attacks against relief workers, which have increased 150 percent over the past year, OCHA said.

In June, one out of every six convoys leaving provincial capitals in Darfur was hijacked or ambushed by “armed groups,” a term usually applied to bandits or anti-government rebels. Since January, some 64 vehicles have been hijacked, with 132 staff temporarily detained, often at gunpoint.

“This kind of lawlessness by armed groups of different political affiliations has forced relief organizations to suspend programming and relocate out of dangerous environments on 15 occasions, temporarily depriving over 1 million beneficiaries of life’saving assistance,” OCHA said.

More at Reuters

SAVE DARFUR

From an email I received today from the Save Darfur organization:

Greetings,

Next Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will have an unprecedented opportunity to help end the genocide when she attends a meeting about Darfur with top officials from the U.S., China, France and other key nations.

China, France, and the U.S. all have great influence over Sudan, but acting individually, none has yet been able to put enough pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the violence.

By acting together, however, we believe these three nations can lead the world in ending the Darfur tragedy.

Ask Secretary Rice to use this one-of-a-kind opportunity to urge China and France to join forces with the U.S. on Darfur diplomacy. Click here to send your message to Secretary Rice today.

The Bush administration took a desperately-needed first step last month when it announced its “Plan B” sanctions against the Sudanese government. Now Secretary Rice must use this meeting with French, Chinese and other leaders to increase the pressure on Sudanese President Bashir.

This kind of opportunity may only come along once. The United States, China and France must seize this chance to lead. Click here to tell Secretary Rice not to let this opportunity slip away.

The people of Darfur have waited more than four years for world leaders to make a concerted effort to end the violence. Secretary Rice must make sure Monday’s meeting in Paris marks the beginning of sustained, unified world diplomacy.

Click here to send your email to Secretary Rice by the end of Friday to make sure she receives your message.

It is times like this when making your voice heard can remind our leaders how much power they actually have in bringing peace to Darfur.

As always, thank you for your dedication to those who are suffering - and for your hope that our leaders will rise to the occasion.

Best regards,

Colleen Connors
Save Darfur Coalition

P.S. Take this opportunity to learn more about what Secretary Rice and her French and Chinese colleagues can do to bring an end to the genocide. Read the ENOUGH Project’s Darfur Strategy Briefing entitled “An Axis of Peace for Darfur: The United States, France and China.”

P.P.S. We-re just $28,000 away from reaching our $400,000 goal by midnight today, Wednesday, June 20th to support our Divest for Darfur campaign and other crucial projects. Help put us over the top — click here now to make a secure, tax-deductible gift that will help put a stop to the violence in Darfur before more lives are lost.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Washington issued a damning human rights report on Sudan, saying genocide in Darfur continued and blaming both government and rebel forces for attacks in the remote region.

It said there was widespread impunity for crimes including torture and that thousands more people had been killed by government forces and its allied militias, known locally as Janjaweed, in Darfur in 2006.

“Genocide continued to ravage the Darfur region of Sudan,” the report released on Tuesday said.

“The Sudanese government and government-backed Janjaweed militia bear the responsibility for the genocide in Darfur and all parties to the conflagration committed serious abuses.”

Khartoum denies genocide and blames the Western media for exaggerating the four-year-old Darfur conflict. European governments are reluctant to use the term.

The International Criminal Court said last week it had reason to believe war crimes had been committed in Darfur by a junior government minister and a pro-government militia leader.

“During the year, the government resumed aerial bombardment of civilian targets, including homes, school and markets,” the U.S. report said.

Continue reading at Reuters