Darfur

The New York Review of Books has a terrifying article on the genocide in Darfur.

"I came across an oasis along the Chad border where several tens of thousands of people were sheltering under trees after being driven from their home villages by the Arab Janjaweed militia, which has been supported by the Sudan government in Khartoum. Under the first tree, I found a man who had been shot in the neck and the jaw; his brother, shot only in the foot, had carried him for forty-nine days to get to this oasis. Under the next tree was a widow whose parents had been killed and stuffed in the village well to poison the local water supply; then the Janjaweed had tracked down the rest of her family and killed her husband. Under the third tree was a four-year-old orphan girl carrying her one-year-old baby sister on her back; their parents had been killed. Under the fourth tree was a woman whose husband and children had been killed in front of her, and then she was gang-raped and left naked and mutilated in the desert.

Those were the people I met under just four adjacent trees. And in every direction, as far as I could see, were more trees and more victims—all with similar stories."

This should not be happening, it's revolting and there is no excuse for it.

"At one roadblock, a mother named Mariam Ahmad was forced to watch as the Janjaweed emasculated her three-week-old son, who then died in her arms."

How can this go on? How have we failed to learn our lesson? Things need to fucking change.