And the idea came to Marybeth because it seems nobody cares about Darfur, she said. "The U.N. called it the worst crisis against humanity today, and the media hardly covers it."
Darfur. Where the Sudanese government has sponsored one of the two sides engaged in merciless battle with sophisticated arms and vehicles, where tens of thousands of land-tilling citizens have been displaced, and where more than 400,000 men, women and children have died in such brutal fashion the mind cannot comprehend the inhumanity of it all. Last month the U.N., after a summer in which the hell in Darfur exacerbated, passed a resolution to send 20,000 peace troops into Western Sudan, only to encounter an unequivocal threat from the Sudanese government—We are a sovereign state and will treat any U.N. member as a foreign invader—and so left the poor people of Darfur to their own fate.
Darfur. Where the oil runs deep, and allies such as China and Russia have provided support, and the government has forbidden outside media to enter and internal media to exit.
Darfur. Where, according to Pastor John—who lived there, who documented atrocities there with his camera, and who cannot give his real name to the media because he is returning there next month and has family and friends who've died because they spoke to journalists—the conflict boils down to this:
"There is a faction of the Islamic world that believes Muslims not born of Arabic descent—like Africans—deserve to die. The government has provided the Janjaweed tribes with the resources to kill all non-Arab peoples in Sudan. It's ethnic cleansing."
And so Marybeth raised the money and manpower for the event, not just to raise awareness of Darfur, but also to get people—young people, above all—involved in the Darfur crisis. That is, to mobilize them, to show them that youth, like her, can lobby and get policies changed, and to empower them to speak up, to make their voices heard.
That's why she did it. The situation in Darfur became worldwide knowledge in February 2003, but the world has yet to enforce an effective intervention. "We will continue through with this type of effort as long as we need to," said Marybeth.