Darfur - Breaking the Heart of God

After graduating from Calvin College, Ryan Spencer Reed, an aspiring photojournalist, took a rather bold step for such a young man – he sold his car to pay his way to eastern Africa. Ryan wanted to record the suffering of the people of that area in order to bring attention to it. What he found when he got to the Darfur region of Sudan shocked and moved him. The people of that region were being systematically slaughtered and driven off their land by the government of Sudan and its allies, the Janjaweed. To date, between 300,000 and 400,000 Darfurians have been killed.
So Ryan did what he set out to do when he left Calvin – he took photos, thousands of them. From these images, he developed a large-format black and white photographic documentary called Sudan: The Cost of Silence, which has been shown at museums in Germany, South Africa, Turkey, Canada, Italy, and even at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
We are proud to bring this photo exhibit to Northbridge from April 26th to May 10th. A gallery is being prepared at the Linwood Mill to showcase the exhibit while it is here. The exhibit will be part of a larger event called Discover Darfur, which is our own effort to raise awareness of the atrocities taking place in that region. Planned in conjunction with Spiritual Emphasis Week at WCS, this event will also include a presentation by Liz Walker, former anchor of the CBS Channel 4 evening news.
After leaving her anchor position at CBS, Liz went to Harvard Divinity School to become an ordained minister. In 2001, she was asked to participate with a team of ministers traveling to southern Sudan for Christian Solidarity International. Their mission was to purchase the freedom of over 6,000 enslaved people at the cost of $33 per person. They accomplished their mission, but it changed Liz’s life forever. She made many more trips to southern Sudan and along with several other women established a humanitarian work there called My Sister’s Keeper. When Liz speaks in the evening on May 1 in the Northbridge Middle School auditorium, she will also show her documentary “A Glory from the God”. This stirring documentary, filmed mostly in Sudan, tells the story of Boston minister and pediatrician Gloria White Hammond, who has become a leading advocate for the people of Darfur.
While the suffering of the people of Darfur is undeniable, the situation is a complicated one that merits much thought and prayer and action. Darfur comprises the western region of the country of Sudan. Sudan is the largest country in Africa located just south of Egypt and is characterized by huge regional and socio-racial disparities and divisions between its Arab heritage to the North and African heritage to the South. The two groups are divided along linguistic, religious, racial, and economic lines generating much tension. These tensions resulted in two civil wars since the country's independence from British rule in 1956. Sudan’s second civil war, running from 1983 through 2005, was the longest running civil war on the African continent, with the government-backed Arab Muslim North ravaging much of Christian southern Sudan's social and economic infrastructure. This war was marked by hunger, disease, death tolls in the millions, and the massive displacement of about 5.5 million southern Sudanese.
Just as this civil war began drawing to a close, new conflicts began to flare-up in the western region known as Darfur. Darfur has (or at least it once had) a population of 6.4 million inhabitants living an agrarian lifestyle in small villages. These settled farmers are referred to as “Africans” and are mostly Muslim. Two rebel groups representing the Africans, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) accused the Sudanese government of oppressing non-Arabs in favor of Arabs and of not providing adequate resources to the Darfur region. When the rebel groups began attacking government targets in 2003, the regime of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir unleashed its fury on the innocent Africans of Darfur. The government mounted a campaign of aerial bombardment targeting the villages of Darfur; then Arab militia groups, known as the Janjaweed, followed with ground attacks.
These Janjaweed (translates as ‘devil on horseback’) ride into a village after it has been bombed, killing the men, raping the women and girls, looting the homes, destroying food and water supplies, then burning the village to the ground. Survivors flee to dangerous refugee camps in Darfur and Chad. To date, 2.5 million Darfurians have been driven from their homes in addition to the hundreds of thousands that have been killed. President Bush has declared that the atrocities occurring in Darfur constitute “genocide.”
Imagine if the government of the United States decided to get rid of all the people in New England because of the color of their skin or their ethnic heritage? Imagine if all the men in your community were systematically killed and the women and girls raped and raped again by marauding troops financed and supported by the government? Imagine if all the homes and towns were burned to the ground? Imagine if you escaped to a refugee camp but there was hardly enough food or water for the thousands of people there? Imagine if the world stood by and did - nothing.
Unfortunately, world leaders have done little to end this on-going tragedy, but in 2004 a grass-roots movement began in the United States to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and put pressure on our leaders to intervene. Human rights organizations and celebrities have tried to draw attention to the suffering people of Darfur. Sadly, the atrocities continue. Thousands continue to find their way to refugee camps even as the camps are strained beyond limits to provide for basic needs. More voices need to be raised, more action needs to be taken, more prayers need to be uttered.
As people of faith we are continually looking outward at our world and watching for ways to touch areas of pain with the love of God. Micah 6:6-8 declares, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Darfur needs justice, we are called to respond with kindness, and we bow in humility before our Lord because, “There but for the grace of God go I”.
Does the tragedy that is Darfur break the heart of God? I believe it does. Let your heart be broken, too, by Ryan’s moving photographs and Liz’s compelling documentary, then consider being a part of the healing work.
Anne White (former WCS Elementary Secretary)
on behalf of the Discover Darfur Committee at WCS