The Channels

Issue date: 9/22/08 Section: Opinion

Your home is torched, your friends are murdered and you have nothing but the clothes on your back.

The help that you and your family need cannot be obtained because of the extreme barriers put up by the government, who is seeking to kill you.

This could be the case if you lived in Darfur.

History has a funny way of repeating itself, and it's sad to say that genocide still exists. During history class, while studying the horrific events of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide during the first World War, I prayed that it would never happen again. But it happened in Bosnia, and even more recently in Darfur.

Darfur is a region in Africa that is experiencing major ethnic turmoil. According to Salih Booker, the executive director of Africa Action, the region is currently undergoing a "government campaign to eliminate a portion of its population."

Ten years before Darfur, Africa experienced a similar event in Rwanda. 500,000 people were murdered over the course of 100 days, primarily because they were either Tutsis or Hutus, two minority groups in the region.

This ongoing idea of ethnic cleansing is so crazy, and I keep wondering what drives someone to do this.

The Sudanese government has been destroying mostly African Muslim communities, mainly because of their "disobedience to the authorities' rule," according to Booker. The government has also set barriers that block aid and relief from outsiders.

This has been a challenge for those who truly want to help the estimated 1 million people displaced in Darfur, and who are set to face the same fate as the over 38,000 already killed.

As Americans, we need to find a way to bring help to these people, who are in desperate need of assistance. Granted, there are barriers that the Sudanese government has put up against outside aid. But we need to be more persistent and aggressive in breaking them down.

President Bush has acknowledged this as genocide, but has not made any attempt to use our resources to help save the lives of these people.

We can't wait for our government to do something about Darfur, because, for as awful as it sounds, they won't do anything. There is really nothing in Africa that America truly values, and therefore it isn't covered by the media. As a result, many Americans are clueless as to what is going on.

I know that there is a way to help and overcome this horrific situation. The youth of America should stand up and speak up. My only solution is to take small steps in breaking down government barriers, then move throughout the region with aid and relief. The reason that the Holocaust was allowed to happen was because no one spoke up and acknowledged that the government in power was wrong.

In all seriousness, if we don't help Darfur, who will help us? This is a perfect example that history repeats itself, and one day this can happen to us. I know it sounds impossible, but you never know. With the words, "Treat those as you would want to be treated," tattooed in my mind, I feel it's our duty as human beings to help those in need.

Are we Americans as fat and greedy as we are often viewed in other countries? What happened to America being the "police of the world"? Do we only step in when something we want is at risk?

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