‘BEFORE TODAY IS OVER, HOW MANY WILL DIE?’: DARFUR GENOCIDE BROUGHT HOME TO CHARTER-SCHOOL STUDENTS
by Rita Savard

The Sun
April 1, 2008 Tuesday
Lowell, Massachusetts

Apr. 1–HELMSFORD — The girl had a name.

No older than 7. Black hair in ponytails. Her large brown eyes burn
a hole through you.

She used to go to school, used to laugh and play. She used to know the
touch of her mother’s hands. They were hardworking hands, but gentle.

Then the men came. They burned homes and forced people into the
streets. Carrying machetes and guns, their hands were rough and
stained with blood.

Now the girl’s family is gone. Instead of a name, she bears a number.

In Darfur, Sudan, the death count has reached 400,000. About 1.8
million displaced. Thousands more missing.

The numbers continue to climb.

"Right now as you listen to me, people are dying," said Evan Hirmer,
a student at Innovation Academy Charter School. "People just like
you and me, being killed by the hands of other human beings."

Hirmer and his classmates look over the faces of the dead. Mothers
and fathers. Grandparents. Teenagers just like them.

They hear the message. But they want adults to hear, too, and take
action to stop genocide.

"What will you think about when you go home today?" Hirmer asks his
classmates and their parents.

In the basement of St. John the Evangelist Church yesterday, tents
were pitched. The event was called Camp Darfur. And behind five canvas
doors, students retraced history by remembering the dead in pictures
and words.

A circle of tragedy and tears with numbers too large for hearts to
bear — the

Armenian Genocide of 1915, 1.5 million killed; the Holocaust in 1938,
11 million systematically murdered; Cambodia 1975, 2 million massacred;
Rwanda 1994, 800,000 slaughtered.

Everything leading to this moment. To mass killings happening halfway
around the world in a place called Darfur.

"Nothing is being done to stop it," said English teacher Emily
Richardson. "We wanted to not just teach students about what is
happening in the world, but to empower them to change things. They’re
using their voices to make a difference."

But the pictures flashing on computer screens and hanging on tents at
Camp Darfur are the same pictures being broadcast into living rooms
around the world via satellite from TV news stations.

Guest speaker Max Levi believed no one stopped Hitler sooner because
they had no way of knowing what was happening.

Levi was fortunate enough to escape Germany before Hitler began
forcing Jews out of their homes and on transports to ghettos and
concentration camps. Levi was 16 when he arrived in New York in 1937.

Two years later, he joined the Army.

Levi told a hushed audience how shocked he was when the camps were
discovered. Millions of Jews exterminated by Nazis. The ones that
managed to survive were walking skeletons.

"So many dead, and still no one can answer why," said Levi, now 86.

"In the old days, we thought it’s because no one talked about it."

But today, news of the violence in Darfur can be seen on TV and read
in newspapers.

"I have no answer to why genocide is still happening now," Levi said.

Hirmer believes it’s politics.

"That area of the Sudan is rich in oil," said the 14-year-old.

Chinese oil companies have played a role in backing the Sudanese
government with weapons, he said. The Sudanese government, which
has publicly denied stoking the civil war, has provided money and
assistance to the Janjaweed, a militia that began mass killing in
Darfur in 2003.

China, said Hirmer, stands to benefit from receiving oil at a cheap
price. China is also the Unites States’ biggest trade partner, he said.

Violence against civilians in Darfur has surged in the past three
months. The Sudanese government’s February offensive in West Darfur
saw displacement and killing of civilians on a scale not seen since
the darkest days of the crisis in 2004.

Hundreds of children are unaccounted for, following militia attacks
on villages in Sudan’s West Darfur region. Thousands more remain in
refugee camps. Waiting and hoping.

Still, help doesn’t come.

"I’m angry at the government for not doing anything," said
15-year-old Caitlyn Leedberg of Billerica. "As human beings, we have
a responsibility to stop mass murder."

Students report that the United Nation’s top humanitarian official
has said the conflict is "going from real bad to catastrophic."

The U.N. has yet to call the killing in Darfur a genocide.

When Marie Okabe, deputy spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon, was called to answer the question of how many deaths
constitute genocide, she did not return the phone call.

"Before today is over, how many will die?" wonders Hirmer.

Hitler. Gandhi. Martin Luther King Jr.

Students said every single event in history, good or bad, has had
one person at the base of a movement. All it takes is one person to
change history forever.

Collecting signatures to stop genocide now, Innovation Academy hopes
to send a message to President Bush and the world.

What will you think about when you put down your newspaper?

"Kids are taking a stand," said Leedberg. "Will you?"