Darfur's violence and sorrow spreads to Chad

What are you discovering about the violence?
The difference here is the racist element to this killing. This is Arab-on-African violence, this is not a religious war. Both sides — both the victims and the perpetrators — are Muslims. They worship from the same book, the Koran. The fact that they are both believers in Allah, just adds to their horror. People here keep saying, how can anyone who believes in Allah do this to us?

To make matters worse, they know the perpetrators as their former neighbors and friends. They are looking at the face of people that they once lived next door to.

We met a woman who threw her body on top of her elderly husband because he couldn’t move fast enough in the fire. She was burned with second degree burns on her chest and she’s probably about 80 years old. And her husband didn’t survive.

We met another young man who was bayoneted in both eyes. The last thing he ever saw was violence.

This is a different kind of ugliness that mirrors what we saw in Rwanda and what we saw in Kosovo and Bosnia. It is evocative of the hatred we saw during the Holocaust.

That’s why so many American Jews and other religious leaders have been pushing to get the U.S. government and the world to do more to stop this kind of shame. There is a sense in America that when people say “never again” that it should stand for something. So, they are pushing hard to do something about it.

Now, this was your second trip to Chad, in the border area near Darfur, does it seem like the situation is getting worse? 
Yes, there is no question that the situation is growing worse and that more people are getting killed. The violence is moving deeper into Chad. There is no question that this thing is spiraling out of control. So many villages are being set on fire that humanitarian workers are struggling to keep count, that’s how bad it is.  

The violence in Darfur is so extreme, it seems almost so horrific that many Americans can’t even imagine it or relate to it. Is there a story you heard there that you think really sums up the gravity of the crisis?
The story of the 17-year-old girl who was raped last month deeply affected me. She went to go gather firewood for her family and was doing her chores with six other girls when three janjaweed — the Arab militias — chased them down. One of them caught her and asked her what tribe she was in and whether they owned any land before they gang-raped her.

What this speaks to is the deliberate political effort to terrorize these people. This girl’s life can never be normal again. In this culture, if you are raped, you are shunned for the rest of your life. You may never marry. People believe that you are somehow guilty of the rape. This young girl was actually bitten by the man who raped her to mark her so that she would have the stigma forever.

And this is what we saw in Bosnia, where there was a deliberate effort to destroy the soul of the people, to terrorize them and to defile their women. And that’s what’s happening here.

This 17-year- girl looks like she could be any girl down the street. She is beautiful, thoughtful, and helpful to her mother — just a girl you would want as your daughter.

How this happened to this young child is just a horror. Her mother was just so lovely with her.

I’m the mother of a 14-year-old and I can only imagine what it must be like for her mother, given the deliberate nature, the deliberate effort to destroy her life. Her mother has lost all hope for her daughter being happy. How does one go on?

We were surrounded by women who were raped at one point and they started singing a song about the janjaweed and how they had destroyed their lives. These very stoic, proud women started sobbing because they say there is no one to protect them. They say that the men only have bows and arrows and the Arabs come in with rocket-propelled-grenades (RPGs) and automatic weapons in Land Rovers, and in Darfur they even had airplanes and helicopters. So there is great, tremendous sadness. And yet, a faith that Allah, or the world, or both may save them.

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