The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Tuesday he feared that the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan could potentially grow to the scale of Rwanda's 1994 genocide when more than 500,000 were killed.
| A little late to the party, aren't you Jesse? |
Jackson was visiting to draw attention to himself the need for urgent action on Sudan. "After the Rwandan crisis of '94, we said it will never happen again. But it could happen again unless there is immediate relief," Jackson told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from Benghazi, Libya where he was to meet later on Tuesday with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to discuss Sudan. "For too long the world was silent on Rwanda," Jackson said of the 100-day-long massacre of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates by Hutu extremists in 1994. "There is a paralysis of action on the growing crisis in Sudan."
Jackson said he planned to go to Sudan on Thursday and Friday to raise his profile and get on teevee visit the ravaged Darfur region and to meet with government officials in Khartoum and with U.N. officials. He did not say specifically what he would be asking of those officials. "Obviously this is a crisis of huge proportions. They need food and medicine and a safe passage to get those displaced people returned home," Jackson said.
| Not to mention some security forces capable of killing the Janjaweed on sight. |
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