DCOH in Darfur Days
Canadian STAND students use film to bring awareness at their university campus.
(http://www.themuse.ca/view.php?aid=41027)
Days brings grim reality
Student activists encourage genocide awareness
By Katie Hyslop
Darfur Days are coming to Memorial this month, asking students to pay attention to a grim situation – genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND) Memorial, a faction of STAND Canada, are holding three events this month in order to educate the public about the situation in Darfur, where since 2003 the Sudanese Armed Forces and Janjaweed militias have been carrying out a systematic genocide campaign against non-Arab tribes, which has resulted in the deaths of 200,000 to 400,000 people, and the displacement of over 2 million.
On Tuesday, March 18, STAND will show The Devil Came On Horseback, a documentary based on the memoirs of the same name by former US Marine Brian Steidle who spent time in Darfur in 2004.
The second event, on the following Tuesday, March 25, will be “Darfur and the Responsibility to Act” a panel discussion with Anne Wagner, directory of advocacy for STAND Canada, Natalie Oman, professor of philosophy at MUN, and keynote speaker Sergeant Debbie Bodkin.
Bodkin, a detective with the Waterloo, Ontario Regional Police Department, spent six weeks in Darfur in 2004 as part of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into Darfur.
“They’re going to speak for awhile, and then we’re going to have an open discussion and ask questions. And at each of those two events, we’re going to be showing … a small film that we made the other day, and we’re going to be showing our film, which is a 10 minute thing on what people in St. John’s know about the crisis going on there and how little, or how much, they know,” said Andrea Gunn, promotions and media co-ordinator for STAND Memorial.
The third event will be a fundraising concert for STAND, but Gunn says they ran into venue difficulties earlier this week and have yet to reschedule.
“We’re not actually raising money for Darfur in any way, we’re just raising awareness and the more money we have, the more events we can put off,” she said.
STAND Memorial made themselves known on campus last November when they set up information booths and telephones in the University Centre food court encouraging students to call anti-genocide hotline 1-800-GENOCIDE.
Students were given the option of being connected with the offices of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, or Leader of the Opposition Stéphane Dion, in order to tell them that they wanted Canada to take action against the genocide.
“It went off really well, there were hundreds of phone calls to Parliament that day, it was one of the best responses. And that hotline is still open and we still need people to call as much as possible just to get the message out to the different politicians that we do care about Darfur,” said Gunn.
“A lot of people called Stéphane Dion’s office, and the secretary was very nice, and she wrote down a lot of what we had to say, and she was more responsive than the other people that we called, and she was really nice to us. Then a few weeks later Dion announced his policy for Darfur – I don’t think that’s a direct response, but it’s just nice to think that maybe we might have done something there.”
Gunn says students who want to help can come to these events, call the hotline, or attend their weekly meetings every Thursday at noon in UC6011. But she says the best way for students to help Darfur is by educating themselves.
“The can get educated, keep their eye on the news – that’s one really important thing, keeping educated and knowing what’s going on, tell a friend,” she said.
The Devil Came On Horseback is screening in the engineering building, room EN2043 at 7:00 pm, March 18, and “Darfur and the Responsibility to Protect” will also be in EN2043 at 5:30 pm on March 25.¬
Tags: 1-800 GENOCIDE, activism, brian steidle, canada, darfur, debbie bodkin, memorial, MUN, natalie oman, stand