Peace Talk — Summer 2006
The Quarterly Newsletter of Peace Action MaineSince Sudan won its independence from Great Britain in 1956, the Black African areas of the country, which make up 80 percent of the population, have been struggling against the Arab-dominated government for autonomy in their regions and representation in the government.
Darfur is the westernmost province of Sudan. Six million Black people live there, and although they are Muslims, they are being slaughtered by the Muslim government in Khartoum in the same way that the Black Christians in the south have been slaughtered for years. Since 2003, in its effort to put down the Darfur rebellion, the government’s Janjaweed army has burned more than a thousand Darfurian villages and caused hundreds of thousands of Darfurians to flee the campaign of rape and murder it is pursuing.
In the spring of 2004, the Fur Cultural Revival of New England, a Portland-based organization of refugees from the Darfur region, with which I am allied, approached Portland Atty. Cushman Anthony about gaining some assistance in publicizing what was happening in Darfur. At the time, there was a debate raging in the press about whether the slaughter of Darfuris by the government of Sudan was actually “genocide” or just “ethnic cleansing.”
Our first speaking engagement was a presentation at First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland. We began collecting signatures on petitions and passing out leaflets about the crisis. That led to a number of speaking engagements. Judy Katz of Congregation Bet Ha’am in South Portland signed our petition and contacted the congregation’s social action committee, which invited us to speak at the temple. The congregation has supported our efforts ever since.
At a conference on genocide that was held at Colby College in the fall of 2004, members of the Fur Cultural Revival of New England participated on a panel. We panelists suggested that the Maine State Retirement System (MSRS) should divest $50 million from 18 companies doing business with the genocidal government of Sudan. Divestment, we said, was a project that could educate large numbers of people in the state of Maine and the legislature. The money that those companies contribute to the Sudanese economy helps the Sudanese government purchase the weapons used to kill the Muslim Darfuris as well as other Black Muslims and Christians in the southern part of the country.
The divestment campaign was jump-started by the Young Liberals Club of Yarmouth High School, under the leadership of its president, Rob King, and the faculty advisor, John Beebe. Divestsudan.org lists divestment projects in the state legislatures of New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon, Arizona, Louisiana, and Delaware. California’s state treasurer divested, as well as a number of colleges and universities.
After the Fur Cultural Revival spoke at a special assembly on the genocide in Darfur, the students at Yarmouth High School signed hundreds of postcards to State Treasurer David Lemoine, asking him to support divestment.
We lined up support from members of the Portland branch of the NAACP; Senator Ethan Strimling (D-Portland) is a member of the Executive Committee of the NAACP, and he agreed to sponsor the legislation, L.D. 1758, in the Maine State Senate. At the 2005 Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast, Governor John Baldacci pledged to support divestment, telling us that he remembered the Divest from South Africa campaign, and that he voted for the state of Maine to divest from northern Ireland during his days as a legislator.
Members of the Action Committee of Peace Action Maine, especially those with investments in the Maine State Retirement System, wrote to the MSRS requesting that it divest.
Senator Strimling obtained the support of Representative Deborah Simpson of Auburn in the House. The first hearing was held before the Labor Committee on January 31st, 2006. We were deeply moved by the outpouring of support from Cush Anthony and Greg Field of Peace Action Maine, Rachel Talbot Ross of the Portland Branch of the NAACP, John Bernard from the Maine People’s Alliance, Matthew Kongo of the Sudanese Community Association of Maine, Edward Laboke of the Maine Chapter of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and many silent supporters in the audience including Sue Rudalevige from the Maine Council of Churches, Luc Nya from the Department of Health and Human Services and Ed Gorham from the Maine AFL-CIO.
At the Labor Committee, our coalition agreed to allow the Maine State Retirement System 18 months in which to complete divestment.
At the legislative hearing on February 1, 2006, members Salih Ahmed, Ezzeldin Abdullah and Mohammed Ali Zacharia of the Fur Cultural Revival testified about the slaughter of their relatives and friends by the janjaweed militia, backed by the government of Sudan. After moving testimony by Cush Anthony for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Rachel Talbot Ross for the NAACP and Greg Field for Peace Action Maine, we heard testimony from a dynamic organizer at Deering High School and Congregation Bet Ha’am, Adam Zuckerman. Zuckerman has organized his fellow students around the Darfur issue. STAND (Students Taking Action Now on Darfur) is an organization with branches on college campuses across the country. Zuckerman was instrumental in getting STAND established in a number of area high schools and colleges. We are particularly proud that we managed to overcome some initial resistance to the bill by Republicans and that the bill passed both houses of the legislature unanimously.
After Governor Baldacci signed the Divest from Sudan Bill into law on April 18th, Zuckerman did not give us time to take a breath. He and his mother, Roberta, with the backing of Congregation Bet Ha’am, organized a bus to the April 30 Rally for Darfur in Washington, D.C. Fifty-five Mainers, including 15 who were born in Darfur, traveled overnight to attend the rally with 20,000 others from around the east coast. Similar rallies were held in San Francisco, Denver, Dallas, and even in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine.
The show of support for Darfur in this country may have helped bring about the signing of the May 5th peace accord in Abuja, Nigeria by the government of Sudan and some of the rebel groups in Darfur. But the members of the Fur Cultural Renewal of New England are taking a cautious and vigilant approach to the peace accord, which the government had already begun to violate soon after the signing.
The people of southern Sudan signed a peace agreement with the government in January of 2005, only to see it repeatedly violated by the government. News accounts blame the Sudan Justice and Equality Movement for refusing to sign an agreement, but they do not mention that the agreement did not indicate who would disarm the janjaweed and when, did not guarantee the safe return to their villages of people living in refugee camps, and did not guarantee that the slaughter would stop. The Fur Cultural Revival is hopeful that the presence of United Nations peacekeepers will make it easier for human rights activists to report the atrocities and for charitable organizations to operate their relief programs. This is especially important now that the World Food Program has announced that it will be cutting the rations in half for the two million people who are living in refugee camps in Darfur and Chad.