Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / Dec. 5, 1991, edition 1 / Page 5
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Forum Sudan: 'Urgent help needed now' We have just received a first hand report from the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association (SRRA) concerning the emergency life and death situation in Sudan, Africa's largest land-mass nation. Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese children, women and men are fac ing death as a result of Sudan's ter rible civil war compounded by Pochala and Kapoeta as well as other relief centers in southern Sudan. For the record, the govern ment of Sudan based at Khartoum in the north is controlled by Arab fundamentalists and military dicta tors. The -southern region of Sudan is populated by indigenous Africans. The civil war is fueled by more than differences in race, reli CIVIL RIGHTS JOURNAL By BENJAMIN F. CHAVIS JR. widespread famine. This is an urgent plea for help. v We are grateful for the support many of you have given to peoples and struggles that we have endorsed in the past. Today, there is no greater human crisis in all of the world than the critical situation in Sudan. Many of the Sudanese who are at risk of immediate starvation are the thousands of persons who had taken refuge in Ethiopia from the war in Sudan but are now back inside of southern Sudan. We spoke with Paul Anade Othow, a native of Sudan and coor dinator of the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association, who just returned from a trip to southern Sudan. The world media does not focus on Sudan, yet, mass killings and mass starvation is now the daily reality. According to Othow, Sudanese are now refugees in their own country. Those who have returned from Ethiopia are referred to as "returnees." It is an interna tional outrage that the repressive government of Sudan has recently increased its attacks on villages and towns in southern Sudan where thousands of returnees have gath ered to receive aid and relief, Othow visited the towns of gion, and culture. This hideous onslaught is being waged by the government of Sudan against the people of Sudan for the control and exploitation of the vast mineral and oil resources of southern Sudan which has been estimated to be potentially Africa's largest oil reser voir. Listen to the eyewitness report of Paul Othow: "In Pochala, I saw more than 140,000 returnees who had been refugees in Ethiopia and among them in one place called Gorkuo, I saw more than 9,000 unaccompanied children. The con ditions there were very severe and appalling. There were almost no shelters for these people and most of all there was not enough food for them to eat." Othow explained that the local people welcomed the returnees back to Sudan but the war has pre vented the kind of sustained relief efforts that are necessary to save this mass of people from dying. In the towns of Nasir and Pokok, Othow saw 150,000 more Sudanese suffering from displacement and hunger. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been helpful but the air dropping of food items has been grossly inadequate. Othow stated, "A family of 5 to 10 persons now can only expect to get at best a few grams of sorghum when it is distributed and they will have to wait sometimes 3 to 4 days for the next distribution. It is a slow and awful process of unnecessary death,and destruction.N The Sudan Relief and Rehabili tation Association based in Wash ington, D.C. is now working with the Red Cross and other internation al agencies to develop a plan to resettle the returnees to safer areas in southern Sudan. Yet, past attempts to resettle returnees have been disrupted by the military junta in Khartoum. Othow stressed, "We hope the whole world will at least take note of the flagrant criminal acts being perpetrated by the gov ernment against the people of southern Sudan." Othow witnessed the killing of innocent civilians in Kapoeta from bombings by the government. Othow explained that the foreign policy of the United States in the past has supported the various gov ernments of Sudan and has not raised effectively the issue of human rights for the people of Sudan. Othow emotionally sighed, "We appeal to you, especially the American citizens, to speak out and to put pressure on the junta in Sudan to stop killing innocent peo ple. We appeal to you to help the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association to find the resources that are necessary for the rehabilita tion and development of the returnees as they are resettled in their homes and villages." If you wish to join us in help ing the work of Paul Othow and the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association, you can contact them at SRRA, P.O. Box 27209. The people of southern Sudan need our help and they need it now. It can happen here, believe it or not Let's not celebrate too soon, for Duke. Yes, David Duke lost the election in Those excuses won't wash. Louisiana. But the past Klan leader, ,Evcry Duke voter knew that he still neo-Nazi, preacher of racism and espouses racist beliefs. He was say TO BE EQUAL By JOHN E. JACOB anti-Semitism got a clear majority of the votes cast by whites and gal vanized the far right throughout the nation. Duke has laid the groundwork for a future run at taking power in the state and the nation, wearing the mask of a friendlier, face-lifted fas cism. So anyone who thinks that, as the old saying had it, "it can't hap pen here," is living in a fool's par adise. The Duke vote forces us to ?confront the strength of American racism. We just can't ignore its appeal by making excuses about why so many white people voted ing what he always said, just using sanitized language and a smoother style. Not all of those Duke voters are necessarily racists, but they cer tainly are not sufficiently repelled by racism to reject it, and that is both sad and troubling. We need to understand that the ease with which Duke can climb out of the sewers of the radical rigty to become a serious candidate is largely due to the way respectable political leaders have used code words to manipulate racial issues. Their rhetoric legitimizes people and positions oncc dismissed as wacky. If Duke wore his Klan hood and waved Mein Kampf at election rallies, he'd have been dismissed as a lunatic. But in his newly adopted guise as a populist conservative, he sounded like national leaders who for many years have been prattling about "welfare cheats,11 "forcing busing," "crime in the streets," and other code words. The conventional explanation for Duke's political success is something called "middle class anger." I don't buy that. Yes, the economic squeeze on working people sparked frustrations that find an outlet in anti-establish ment candidates, but it's dangerous to ignore the purely racial aspects of what is, after all, a barely hidden appeal to racism. We should recall Lyndon John son's explanation of the interaction between race and class in American history and politics: "If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you picking .. Please see page A6 Hatian refugees face double standard "Give me your tired, your poor, ;your huddled masses yearning to breath free." These are the words ; which supposedly define the immi gration policy of this nation of set tlers and immigrants. Having suc cessfully seized this land from the indigenous people, however, the immigration policy of the United States has largely been guided by the goal of maintaining American as a white nation. The warm embrace of the Statue of Liberty, therefore, and the welcoming/pro cessing center at Ellis Island were largely meant for Europeans. Despite the fact that the popu lation of various people of color is on the increase in the U.S., these increases in many instances are occurring inspite of U.S. immigra tion quotas not because of them. And Africans from the continent and the Diaspora, black people, have faced the most restrictive immigration quotas. In a nation obsessed by race and plagued by racism, restricting the growth of the How else does one account for the gross discrepancy between the U.S. acceptance of people fleeing political persecution in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Vietnam or By RON DANIELS VANTAGE POINT m black population has been and con tinues to be of great importance. Other people of color arc far more likely to be accepted as immigrants to the U.S. than black people. The point is that there is a double stan dard. That double standard is cur rently victimizing Haitian refugees seeking to gain access to the U.S. Cuba and the refusal lo acccpt peo ple fleeing persecution in Haiti? The U.S. admitted thousands of boat people from Vietnam and Cambodia after the Vietnam war and hundreds of thousands of refugees have been accepted from Please see page A6 ( Crown yV Drugs Crown \V Drugs Crown \V Drugs Crown \V Drugs CrownvV Drugs COUPONS EXPIRE DECEMBER 7, 1991 withlhlT* ~ Coupon Hofert's 100 Light Set_? clear or multi IHMHH With this MM.lilYI'Ji'L'f Expire Coupon ^?^?SEBSHSHSBa^ 1277/91 Boxed Cards by Kristen with retail *?-?^ I $497 and up I 1 #1880 With this Coupon With this Coupon MAX FACTOR Cleo Traditional ^ Jumbo Wrap Av oc" ce cM h With this Coupon Christmas Trees with retail JRL *39?? and up JBI $1 AOO Crown \V Drugs Crown \V Drugs With this Coupon Expires "MP With this 12/7/91 Wm Coupon Commodore Red Velvet > 4 Loop Bow 12" X 16" With this Coupon Expires J|P With this 12/7/91 B|j| Coupon (CALIFORNIA FOR MEN ~Cologne Spray or Splash 3.4 oz. $* 099 ?With this | Coupon Crown \V Drugs Expires 1277/91 VIDAL SASSOON 1500 Watt Dryer #VS-203 $1297 Expires 12/7/91 COVER ORL ? 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Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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Dec. 5, 1991, edition 1
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