Enslavement of men, women and children, torture, frequent rape, rivers of blood flowing freely in the streets of villages. These are some of the horrific images of the current genocide in the Sudan. With Holocaust Remembrance Day upon us, it seems the world is on track for spending another day regretting the efforts it did not make. Of all the ways in which the Holocaust’s shameful stain is visible, none is more evident or more alarming than the continuous slaughter of millions of people in the Sudan.
The Sudan’s geographic and cultural divisions have sparked a kind of civil war, with the predominantly Muslim Janjaweed north wreaking havoc upon the predominantly Christian south. Northern Janjaweed raiders are mercilessly killing and raping villagers, torching homes and farmland, poisoning wells and destroying the lives of countless human beings, in every sense of the word. Such cold, calculated and premeditated acts of evil leave one not only horrified, but also mystified as to what would drive people to murder their fellow human beings. It makes one wonder if we have undergone millions of years of evolution only to display such ferocity and hatred.
During the Holocaust, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, grandmothers and grandfathers would be separated from one another and mercilessly forced to toil in weather of all kinds. As the “selection process” would transpire, those family members who hadn’t previously been corralled into different barracks like cattle would be herded to stand in different lines. All the people on one line would be motioned toward the gas chambers while those on the other line would be sent back to their barracks. This was done to prevent families from being together in either life or death. While the perpetrators of the Sudanese genocide haven’t been using the same means, they are achieving the same ends.
The Janjaweed militia units have been accomplishing this by mercilessly slaying all the families’ males and then raping the females with just as much fervor, and just as much prejudice, with which they slew their brothers, husbands and sons. These brutal rapes have been integral in not only dismantling families but also their victims’ cultural identity by helping create a “mixed class” of both Muslim and Christians.
Throughout history, man has proven his ability to utterly destroy not only specific individuals and families, but entire races of people. However, just as often as there have been acts of violence and prejudice on the part of the few, there has been inaction on the part of the many. If we have learned anything from the Holocaust, it’s that we must prevent the cries of the victims of genocide of the 20th century from echoing throughout the 21st.
“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall — from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” “I don’t think my family is still alive. I would like to say, just go and help these people because if you don’t go quickly then you will go and find nobody there.” One of these quotes comes from a Holocaust survivor, the other from a survivor of the genocide in the Sudan. Can you tell the difference?