MaineToday.com, ME
May 11 2007
Students hear firsthand tales of mass killing
By JOSIE HUANG, Staff Writer
Friday, May 11, 2007
Jack Milton/Staff Photographer
Ekhlas Ahmed asks a question Thursday during a panel discussion at a
forum called Confronting Genocide: A Portland Youth Forum, held at
the Sheraton Tara Hotel in South Portland. SOUTH PORTLAND – Over the
last school year, Charlie Hood has studied diligently about genocide
in Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina in his humanities class at Casco
Bay High School in Portland.
In a conference on genocide Thursday at the Sheraton Hotel, he
sparred with other 10th-graders about whether the United States
should lead interventions in countries that violate human rights.
He said no lesson, however, matched the experience of hearing about
the horrors of systematic, mass killings from Thursday’s panel of
Portland community members who have been touched by it.
>From Cambodian refugee Pirun Sen, he learned what it was like to fall
asleep every night under the Khmer Rouge regime and worry about
surviving until the next morning.
He heard Mansour Ahmed, who emigrated from Sudan three years ago,
describe his frustration with the international community’s inability
to stop the unchecked killing of local tribe members by militias
linked to the government.
He discovered Gerard Kiladjian’s efforts to raise awareness about the
Armenian genocide of 1915 and have the Turkish government accept
responsibility for it.
"It’s one thing to read about it in your book," said Hood, 16, "but
going to something like this and hearing people who lived it is a
different thing. It’s opened up my eyes a little bit more and put a
face to the stuff we’re studying all year."
Thursday’s event, "Confronting Genocide: A Portland Youth Forum," was
organized by the Lewiston-based KIDS Consortium, which works with
schools across New England to create projects that encourage students
to confront real challenges in their communities.
Human rights have been a yearlong topic for sophomores at Casco Bay
High School, a two-year-old expeditionary learning program housed at
the Portland Arts and Technology High School.
Students have viewed films on human rights violations in Cambodia and
put on a photography-and-writing show at the SALT Gallery, featuring
Portlanders who have come from countries with human rights crises.
Hood, an aspiring filmmaker, said he plans to work with other
students on a film using materials from the exhibit.
The Thursday event gave students a chance to talk to panelists, who
included Ahmed’s wife, Zhara Suliman, a fellow member of the Fur
Cultural Revival of New England, a Portland-based group of refugees
from Sudan’s Darfur region; and Wells Staley-Mays, a local activist
and historian with Peace Action Maine who helped convince the Maine
State Retirement System to drop investments in companies doing
business in Sudan.
With relatives living in southern Sudan, Marcy Angelo was
particularly desperate to figure out what she could do to stop the
slaughter of civilians. "Clearly, they don’t want us there and will
continue to kill our people," she said.
"First off," Ahmed said, "keep telling others that there is something
against human beings in Sudan. Tell everybody, make conferences, go
anywhere, make e-mails, telephone."
Hope rang through some of the questions the students posed.
Turning to Zhara Suliman, Kristina Madjerac asked, "I was wondering
if after the genocide is over and your country begins to rebuild
yourself, would you want to go back to your country?"
Suliman, dressed in a bright green scarf and shirt, managed a smile.
"I absolutely want to go back," she said, explaining that her
relatives are in Sudan. "But first of all, I want this war to stop
and this genocide to stop."