God’s Instruments

  It was an ordinary day for 11-year-old Randa. A student at a grade school in southern Sudan, Randa had just sat down to begin her English lesson. It was the last thing Randa ever did. Moments later, Russian-made bombers began dropping anti-personnel bombs all over the school. Randa and 13 of her classmates were killed, along with their teacher. Some were decapitated by flying shrapnel. Other children had arms and legs torn from their bodies. It was just an ordinary day for Sudan's radical Muslim regime. As a government spokesman put it, "The bombs landed where they were supposed to land." It's because of atrocities like these that human rights workers in the U.S. are launching The Sudan Campaign, beginning next Tuesday, May 23, 2000. It's a two-week drive to publicize the slavery, persecution, and genocide being inflicted upon millions of Sudanese Christians by the militant Muslim government. A broad coalition of human rights groups will participate in the campaign. Thousands will engage in prayer vigils, peaceful protests, teach-ins, and a march to the White House to petition the President. Colorado school teacher Barbara Vogel is bringing her class of fourth-graders -- pint-sized abolitionists who raise money to buy the freedom of Sudanese slaves. They've done more than most Congressmen to ease the suffering of Sudanese Christians. Dr. Charles Jacobs, director of the campaign, says the most important goal is to get President Clinton to pressure Sudanese leaders to improve human rights. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom tells the horrific story. Its report details the bombing of schools and churches -- rape, murder, starvation, and the enslavement of Christian populations. Two million people have already been killed. These are horrors almost too great to imagine. And after all, Sudan is far away from our comfortable lives in America. We see very little on the news about what's going on there. Maybe that's why, a few months ago, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told human rights workers a blunt truth: That the Sudan issue is not "marketable" to the American people. You and I have to do everything we can to make this issue marketable -- not only to ordinary citizens but to our poll-driven President and Mrs. Albright. Instead of letting them think of Sudan's victims as a vast blur of anonymous people, we have to make little Randa, her classmates, and her teacher just as real as those 13 children and one teacher murdered at an American school, Columbine. We must help them understand that the parents of Randa and her "unmarketable" classmates are just as grief-stricken as those Colorado parents. Yes, it's too late to help these children, but you can help others by taking part in The Sudan Campaign. You can learn more about it from our BreakPoint website at http://www.breakpoint.org. And if you live anywhere near Washington, please plan to get involved. We need to prove that Americans do care about this issue. Working together, we can make these ordinary days of slavery and slaughter a thing of the past.

05/19/00