My Letter to Judge Greg Mathis
TO JUDGE GREG MATHIS, SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE
VIA FACSIMILE
YOUR SUDAN COMMENTARY WAS IN THE CHICAGO DEFENDER RECENTLY….
You said, “Why is it that when Black Africans are being victimized by the tens of thousands, no one intervenes to free them from tyranny and genocide…We must pressure our government and the United Nations to step in immediately to end the slaughter of Black Sudanese by its Arab countrymen. To sit on our hands again and watch another African slaughter would be a travesty.” I’m with you 100%.
Please read portions of a memo I sent to a staffer for a congressman in Washington:
Today I was on the Interactions radio program on WBGX 1570 AM and briefly talked about the situation in Sudan. For sake of time, the host asked me to give my phone number for more information. My cell phone must be in a coma because it is not ringing. Over a year ago I was at a small community meeting on a Sunday afternoon at Washington Park talking about the genocide. You know how passionate I am. I gave all the facts and figures about the Black Sudanese being slaughtered. If anyone did not know what the word genocide meant before, they found out then. I thought people would get riled and upset at all these Black folks getting killed.
I was very naïve.
All but one were falling asleep on me. They were going into comas. I assure you I’m not talented enough to make genocide boring. One of them seemed to come to life when I told him it was Arabs who were doing the killings and not white folks.
Judge, here are portions of my radio commentary that was aired in March 2003 on WBEE in Chicago:
“Some of you in the listening audience may be telling yourselves ‘Sudan is thousands of miles away so I cannot relate to that.’ Let me tell you what South African Bishop Desmond M. Tutu said in 1984: ‘Some people may want to say to you that what you do ten thousand miles away doesn't affect South Africa, but what you do reverberates around the world.’ Many of you remember his opposition to the white minority regime in South Africa that imposed apartheid or legalized segregation on the Black population. That was an evil system. You also remember the massive protests and rallies against apartheid in South Africa in the United States and all over the world. I witnessed the arrests of the wife of a prominent civil rights leader, a state senator, and a congressman at the Chicago South African consulate in the 1980’s. But why are there no massive protests and rallies against the current genocide in Sudan against Black Africans?”
“Why the silence? Yes, even chattel slavery, which we African Americans are intimately familiar with, is going on right now in Sudan, Arabs enslaving Blacks. There are people who deny that is going on today. However, Rev. Al Sharpton went to Sudan and has testified that chattel slavery is indeed going on now. Only Rev. Sharpton and very few others have been outraged that this can be allowed to continue… Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and President of international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, said in the Wall Street Journal, ‘When several thousand Europeans are killed and tens of thousands displaced, the world calls it genocide. But when 1.9 million black Africans are killed and millions more are displaced, tortured, and even sold into slavery, the world remains strangely silent.’”
“‘However, a holocaust goes on at this moment in Sudan. In the 1990’s, 750,000 Black African civilians were murdered in Rwanda. That was also true holocaust and a clear case of genocide… I just wonder where the outrage was then any government, including our own in 1994, did not take any action to stop the slaughter in Rwanda. Journalist Barbara Reynolds wrote a commentary in 1999 that was published in the Chicago Defender that was called “Why Kosovo and not Rwanda?” I ask why Kosovo and not Rwanda and not Sudan? Colin Powell, who worked behind the scenes with the Sudan Peace Act, calls it ‘the worst human rights nightmare on the planet…’ After around 2 million dead Black Africans, I wonder how many more dead bodies will it take to make the situation in Sudan qualify to be a tragedy.”
Judge, a colleague of mine, Imam Najee Ali, wrote in a letter to the editor to the Defender: “What troubles me is the silence by the Arab American and Muslim leaders through out America and the world concerning the murders, rapes, and displacement of our African brothers and sisters. Many of these Arab and Muslim leaders were hysterical over civilian casualties in Iraq; were outraged by the plight of the Palestinians in the Middle East, complained about being the victims of racial profiling after Sept. 11, and there is always vocal outrage against the state of Israel, but the genocide of the African population in Sudan is being ignored by these Arab and Muslim leaders.”
Judge, I will be brutally frank. I promise you, I will not be very nice. Like Najee Ali with Muslims, I’m very dismayed and appalled by the thundering silence of many Black “leaders.” I remember when apartheid at the top of the charts years ago. People were angry enough, nationally and internationally, to protest and call for an end to apartheid. You know how angry we African Americans were. We really rocked the house. I was there when three prominent people got arrested at the South African Consulate in Chicago. It was front- page news in the Defender because I was their news photographer at that event. However, I do not understand when real slaughtering, burning, bombing, torturing, maiming, raping, and slavery happens to Black Africans, why these same people who yelled and screamed about apartheid in South Africa are silent or barely whispering on Sudan. If a person can march in the streets and publicly rally on apartheid on many occasions, but only issue a two-page press release, one time to my knowledge, on actual slaughter going in the millions in Sudan, that is very pathetic. Some of these Black folks even accuse the United States of genocide against African Americans but say nothing at all about bloody genocide against Black Africans. Buy them dictionaries and have them read to you the definition of “hypocrite.” My family and I have felt the effects of racism. However, I have not been bombed, burned, raped, tortured or sold into slavery lately. I call all of them “Mother Africa’s Sometimey Lovers.”
In 1999, Dr. Charles Jacob of the American Anti Slavery Group reported that Secretary of State Madeline Albright told him and others in a meeting of NGO’s “The human rights situation in Sudan is not marketable to the American people.” She means you and me, right? Since when does genocide have to be “marketable”?
Judge, fasten your seat belt and hold on tight. I have to say this because it is true. This quote is from the Center for Religious Freedom website http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/sudan/ : “President Clinton never raised his voice publicly to decry the genocide in Sudan and failed to rally our allies to press the regime. In testimony before Congress on September 28, 2000, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted it was ‘struck by the huge disparity between the genocidal scale of atrocities being committed by the government of Sudan and the muted response of the President and Secretary of State of the United States.’ Clinton ignored the strong appeals for U.S. non-military leadership by Congressmen Frank Wolf, Chris Smith, Don Payne, and Tom Tancredo, by Senators Sam Brownback, Bill Frist, and Jesse Helms, and by the Congressional Black Caucus. Clinton deferred the request of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust poet Elie Wiesel to meet over U.S. policies on Sudan, ‘site of the world's most long-lasting religious persecution and genocide,’ which Wiesel wrote ‘haunted’ him.” Our first Black president., right? He said nothing and did nothing. Genocide is my poltical acid test and he got an F-. (Ed. I later found out he did name former congressman Frank Johnston to be Special Envoy to Sudan)
Sorry Judge Mathis. I take no prisoners.
I’m not a fan of George W. Bush nor am I campaigning for him. I’m independent politically. (Few I really do respect in his administration such as Colin Powell). However, suppose that quote read: “President Bush never raised his voice publicly to decry the genocide in Sudan and failed to rally our allies to press the regime…Bush deferred the request of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust poet Elie Wiesel to meet over U.S. policies on Sudan, ‘site of the world's most long-lasting religious persecution and genocide,’ which Wiesel wrote ‘haunted’ him.” Wouldn’t unholy hell break loose? Wouldn’t people accuse him of racism and aiding and abetting genocide? As I said I’m not a fan, but at least he said on October 21, 2002: “I have today signed into law H.R. 5531, the ‘Sudan Peace Act.’ This Act demonstrates the clear resolve of the United States to promote a lasting, just peace; human rights; and freedom from persecution for the people of Sudan. The Act is designed to help address the evils inflicted on the people of Sudan by their government -- including senseless suffering, use of emergency food relief as a weapon of war, and the practice of slavery -- and to press the parties, and in particular the Sudanese Government, to complete in good faith the negotiations to end the war… I commend the Congress for passing the Sudan Peace Act. This Act, passed with bipartisan support, demonstrates that the Congress shares my commitment to help end suffering and promote a just peace in Sudan. For too long, the people of Sudan have endured slavery, violence, disease, and forced starvation.” Right after he signed that bill into law, Bush met Francis Bok, an escaped Sudanese Black slave. That is reported to be possibly the first meeting between an American President and an escaped Black slave since the 19th Century.
I have been yelling and screaming for over a year that this has been going on for 22 years and over 2 million died and the body count rises daily. Yesterday, I contacted the Sudan Desk at the State Department, and I’m waiting to get accurate information to the situation in southern Sudan as the U.N. focus is now in Darfur that is in the western region of the country.
I’m very proud of Congressman Rush because he participated in a protest outside of the Sudanese Embassy and got arrested for it. Not many have stepped forward to do that. And his office is doing everything possible to give the situation more public attention. People such as you and he who take action show integrity.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR NOT BEING SILENT
Robert
P.S. Contributions for humanitarian aid to Darfur can be sent to Catholic Relief Services, Sudan-Darfur Conflict, P.O. Box 17220, Baltimore, MD 21298-6993.
VIA FACSIMILE
YOUR SUDAN COMMENTARY WAS IN THE CHICAGO DEFENDER RECENTLY….
You said, “Why is it that when Black Africans are being victimized by the tens of thousands, no one intervenes to free them from tyranny and genocide…We must pressure our government and the United Nations to step in immediately to end the slaughter of Black Sudanese by its Arab countrymen. To sit on our hands again and watch another African slaughter would be a travesty.” I’m with you 100%.
Please read portions of a memo I sent to a staffer for a congressman in Washington:
Today I was on the Interactions radio program on WBGX 1570 AM and briefly talked about the situation in Sudan. For sake of time, the host asked me to give my phone number for more information. My cell phone must be in a coma because it is not ringing. Over a year ago I was at a small community meeting on a Sunday afternoon at Washington Park talking about the genocide. You know how passionate I am. I gave all the facts and figures about the Black Sudanese being slaughtered. If anyone did not know what the word genocide meant before, they found out then. I thought people would get riled and upset at all these Black folks getting killed.
I was very naïve.
All but one were falling asleep on me. They were going into comas. I assure you I’m not talented enough to make genocide boring. One of them seemed to come to life when I told him it was Arabs who were doing the killings and not white folks.
Judge, here are portions of my radio commentary that was aired in March 2003 on WBEE in Chicago:
“Some of you in the listening audience may be telling yourselves ‘Sudan is thousands of miles away so I cannot relate to that.’ Let me tell you what South African Bishop Desmond M. Tutu said in 1984: ‘Some people may want to say to you that what you do ten thousand miles away doesn't affect South Africa, but what you do reverberates around the world.’ Many of you remember his opposition to the white minority regime in South Africa that imposed apartheid or legalized segregation on the Black population. That was an evil system. You also remember the massive protests and rallies against apartheid in South Africa in the United States and all over the world. I witnessed the arrests of the wife of a prominent civil rights leader, a state senator, and a congressman at the Chicago South African consulate in the 1980’s. But why are there no massive protests and rallies against the current genocide in Sudan against Black Africans?”
“Why the silence? Yes, even chattel slavery, which we African Americans are intimately familiar with, is going on right now in Sudan, Arabs enslaving Blacks. There are people who deny that is going on today. However, Rev. Al Sharpton went to Sudan and has testified that chattel slavery is indeed going on now. Only Rev. Sharpton and very few others have been outraged that this can be allowed to continue… Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and President of international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, said in the Wall Street Journal, ‘When several thousand Europeans are killed and tens of thousands displaced, the world calls it genocide. But when 1.9 million black Africans are killed and millions more are displaced, tortured, and even sold into slavery, the world remains strangely silent.’”
“‘However, a holocaust goes on at this moment in Sudan. In the 1990’s, 750,000 Black African civilians were murdered in Rwanda. That was also true holocaust and a clear case of genocide… I just wonder where the outrage was then any government, including our own in 1994, did not take any action to stop the slaughter in Rwanda. Journalist Barbara Reynolds wrote a commentary in 1999 that was published in the Chicago Defender that was called “Why Kosovo and not Rwanda?” I ask why Kosovo and not Rwanda and not Sudan? Colin Powell, who worked behind the scenes with the Sudan Peace Act, calls it ‘the worst human rights nightmare on the planet…’ After around 2 million dead Black Africans, I wonder how many more dead bodies will it take to make the situation in Sudan qualify to be a tragedy.”
Judge, a colleague of mine, Imam Najee Ali, wrote in a letter to the editor to the Defender: “What troubles me is the silence by the Arab American and Muslim leaders through out America and the world concerning the murders, rapes, and displacement of our African brothers and sisters. Many of these Arab and Muslim leaders were hysterical over civilian casualties in Iraq; were outraged by the plight of the Palestinians in the Middle East, complained about being the victims of racial profiling after Sept. 11, and there is always vocal outrage against the state of Israel, but the genocide of the African population in Sudan is being ignored by these Arab and Muslim leaders.”
Judge, I will be brutally frank. I promise you, I will not be very nice. Like Najee Ali with Muslims, I’m very dismayed and appalled by the thundering silence of many Black “leaders.” I remember when apartheid at the top of the charts years ago. People were angry enough, nationally and internationally, to protest and call for an end to apartheid. You know how angry we African Americans were. We really rocked the house. I was there when three prominent people got arrested at the South African Consulate in Chicago. It was front- page news in the Defender because I was their news photographer at that event. However, I do not understand when real slaughtering, burning, bombing, torturing, maiming, raping, and slavery happens to Black Africans, why these same people who yelled and screamed about apartheid in South Africa are silent or barely whispering on Sudan. If a person can march in the streets and publicly rally on apartheid on many occasions, but only issue a two-page press release, one time to my knowledge, on actual slaughter going in the millions in Sudan, that is very pathetic. Some of these Black folks even accuse the United States of genocide against African Americans but say nothing at all about bloody genocide against Black Africans. Buy them dictionaries and have them read to you the definition of “hypocrite.” My family and I have felt the effects of racism. However, I have not been bombed, burned, raped, tortured or sold into slavery lately. I call all of them “Mother Africa’s Sometimey Lovers.”
In 1999, Dr. Charles Jacob of the American Anti Slavery Group reported that Secretary of State Madeline Albright told him and others in a meeting of NGO’s “The human rights situation in Sudan is not marketable to the American people.” She means you and me, right? Since when does genocide have to be “marketable”?
Judge, fasten your seat belt and hold on tight. I have to say this because it is true. This quote is from the Center for Religious Freedom website http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/sudan/ : “President Clinton never raised his voice publicly to decry the genocide in Sudan and failed to rally our allies to press the regime. In testimony before Congress on September 28, 2000, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted it was ‘struck by the huge disparity between the genocidal scale of atrocities being committed by the government of Sudan and the muted response of the President and Secretary of State of the United States.’ Clinton ignored the strong appeals for U.S. non-military leadership by Congressmen Frank Wolf, Chris Smith, Don Payne, and Tom Tancredo, by Senators Sam Brownback, Bill Frist, and Jesse Helms, and by the Congressional Black Caucus. Clinton deferred the request of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust poet Elie Wiesel to meet over U.S. policies on Sudan, ‘site of the world's most long-lasting religious persecution and genocide,’ which Wiesel wrote ‘haunted’ him.” Our first Black president., right? He said nothing and did nothing. Genocide is my poltical acid test and he got an F-. (Ed. I later found out he did name former congressman Frank Johnston to be Special Envoy to Sudan)
Sorry Judge Mathis. I take no prisoners.
I’m not a fan of George W. Bush nor am I campaigning for him. I’m independent politically. (Few I really do respect in his administration such as Colin Powell). However, suppose that quote read: “President Bush never raised his voice publicly to decry the genocide in Sudan and failed to rally our allies to press the regime…Bush deferred the request of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust poet Elie Wiesel to meet over U.S. policies on Sudan, ‘site of the world's most long-lasting religious persecution and genocide,’ which Wiesel wrote ‘haunted’ him.” Wouldn’t unholy hell break loose? Wouldn’t people accuse him of racism and aiding and abetting genocide? As I said I’m not a fan, but at least he said on October 21, 2002: “I have today signed into law H.R. 5531, the ‘Sudan Peace Act.’ This Act demonstrates the clear resolve of the United States to promote a lasting, just peace; human rights; and freedom from persecution for the people of Sudan. The Act is designed to help address the evils inflicted on the people of Sudan by their government -- including senseless suffering, use of emergency food relief as a weapon of war, and the practice of slavery -- and to press the parties, and in particular the Sudanese Government, to complete in good faith the negotiations to end the war… I commend the Congress for passing the Sudan Peace Act. This Act, passed with bipartisan support, demonstrates that the Congress shares my commitment to help end suffering and promote a just peace in Sudan. For too long, the people of Sudan have endured slavery, violence, disease, and forced starvation.” Right after he signed that bill into law, Bush met Francis Bok, an escaped Sudanese Black slave. That is reported to be possibly the first meeting between an American President and an escaped Black slave since the 19th Century.
I have been yelling and screaming for over a year that this has been going on for 22 years and over 2 million died and the body count rises daily. Yesterday, I contacted the Sudan Desk at the State Department, and I’m waiting to get accurate information to the situation in southern Sudan as the U.N. focus is now in Darfur that is in the western region of the country.
I’m very proud of Congressman Rush because he participated in a protest outside of the Sudanese Embassy and got arrested for it. Not many have stepped forward to do that. And his office is doing everything possible to give the situation more public attention. People such as you and he who take action show integrity.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR NOT BEING SILENT
Robert
P.S. Contributions for humanitarian aid to Darfur can be sent to Catholic Relief Services, Sudan-Darfur Conflict, P.O. Box 17220, Baltimore, MD 21298-6993.
posted by Robert at 9:37 AM
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