Listen up! George Clooney and author/activist John Prendergast of the Enough Project are talking to you.
Yesterday, the two wrote and sent a mass email to friends of the organization, alerting us to what they believe is a “brief window of opportunity to do something that has rarely been done: stop a war before it starts.”
To avoid massive bloodshed in Southern Sudan, they are summoning us to write both President Barack Obama and the country’s president (and indicted war criminal) Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Reminding supporters of the conflicts in Darfur, Congo, Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina, they offer up a chance to champion “robust diplomacy” as individuals.
“If we get involved now, we have a shot,” Clooney said Tuesday on the Today Show. He stressed that international pressure, the likes of what he is asking for now, worked in Darfur in 2005 but not before 2.5 million men, women and children lost their lives. “Tell our president that the people of Southern Sudan can’t afford for us to be late again,” he warned. Time, however, is running out.
On Jan. 9, Southern Sudan will vote for independence. Both the northern and southern regions are now preparing for war, leaving civilians at grave risk of major human rights violations. The Enough Project letter came on the heels of reports early this week by military officials of a massive military buildup in Northern Sudan. Clooney explains, “If we think that somehow, if we don‘t get involved and lay off — that somehow, when there‘s more at stake, there‘s oil at stake, that people aren’t going to be killed — and we‘re going to have to trust this same group of people, then it‘s a very naive choice.
According to the Enough Project statement, Obama has said, “The stakes are enormous,” and the CIA warns that “mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan.” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called it a “ticking time bomb.” Having recently returned from the Sudan themselves, Clooney and Prendergast are now stepping up to convey the sense of urgency they witnessed first hand. This leaves just 90 days to gather the momentum of the international community behind the rights and freedom of the people of Southern Sudan.
You paying attention yet?
Our president has the power to gather the political will to stop a genocide before it starts, and we must demand that he do so. The international community has 90 days to potentially save millions of lives. Can you find a moment to write a few words in support of diplomatic efforts in Sudan?
Make that 89 days …
Write to President Obama on George Clooney’s Sudan Action Now site.
Photo by the United States Government via Flickr.