Students have a duty to combat genocide

In April of 1994, the world watched silently as genocide took
the lives of nearly a million Rwandan men, women and children in
less than 100 days.

Despite strong declarations of “never again,” we are
once again acquiescing to genocide in the Darfur region of
Sudan.

In contrast to Rwanda, this genocide is occurring in slow motion
and below the radar of consistent press coverage, but the crime is
no less horrific.

Since early 2003, Sudanese troops and government-sponsored
militias have carried out the coordinated and targeted killing of
the black African population in Sudan’s Darfur region.

For the first time in history, the U.S. Congress, State
Department and executive branch have all declared that an ongoing
massacre amounts to genocide and that the Sudanese government is
directly responsible.

Some authorities suggest that to date 400,000 people have been
slaughtered and 2 million more have been driven from their
homes.

A systematic policy of rape has maimed and humiliated scores of
Darfurian women, while the government’s blockade of
humanitarian aid to the displaced has left more than 3 million
people in danger of starvation.

Three years into the first genocide of the 21st century, the
Sudanese government continues to pursue its policy of ethnic
cleansing.

A Physicians for Human Rights report from this month notes that
“by eliminating access to food, water and medicine, expelling
people into the inhospitable desert terrain, and then in many cases
blocking crucial outside assistance, the government of Sudan and
its associated Arab militias have created conditions calculated to
destroy the non-Arab people of Darfur.”

In other words, it has become a genocide by attrition.

Today, the University of California is in a unique position to
influence the course of this crime and help save the innocent
people of Darfur.

As a result of the combined efforts of thousands of UC students,
the Board of Regents will meet at UC San Diego on Jan. 19 to
consider the divestment of over $100 million ““ the process of
removing foreign investments tied up in companies that directly or
indirectly facilitate government-sponsored genocide in Sudan.

As the students of the UC, it is our responsibility to ensure
that our university does not continue to passively condone
violence.

Martin Luther King Jr., whose life we celebrated this week,
said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
… Whatever affects one directly affects all
indirectly.”

On Thursday all 188,000 students of the UC must come together
and provide a voice to the millions of Darfurians who have lost
theirs.

Join the thousands of students, faculty and staff who have
expressed their concern by signing the petition for divestment at
www.ucdivestsudan.com. If you would like to join hundreds of UCLA
students in San Diego, contact us at [email protected] for a free
bus trip.

Rosenthal is a law student at UC Davis and is the UC student
regent. Miller is a graduate student at UC San Francisco. Sterling
is an Afro-American studies student at UCLA. The three are the
co-chairs of the UC Sudan Divestment Taskforce.