wfn.org | [ENS] Episcopal Migration Ministries marks World Refugee Day

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Daybook, from Episcopal News Service

July 18, 2005 - Monday Mission

Episcopal Migration Ministries marks World Refugee Day

Indianapolis Bishop Catherine Waynick, advisor John Prendergast
described
crisis in Sudan

By Daphne Mack

[ENS] "I believe citizen action is our only hope," crisis advisor John
Prendergast told those gathered at Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
World Refugee Day commemoration held June 27 at the Episcopal Church
Center
in New York.

Prendergast, who is special advisor to the president of the
International
Crisis Group, and Bishop Catherine Waynick of Indianapolis were the
featured
speakers for the event held under the theme "Portraits of Suffering and
Courage: Lifting up Sudan."

"Congress needs to hear from us citizen groups [in order] to act,"
Prendergast said. "Letters are still the quantifiable manifestation of
public sentiment."

"One of the heart breaking things about the refugees and internal
refugee is
that we have more than a generation who has only heard what things were
like
before the war," Waynick said. "They have never seen their homeland."

Calling the gathering "...a day where we lift up the suffering and
courage
of 35 million persons in the world, either refugees or internally
displaced
persons," Richard Parkins, EMM director, prefaced the viewing of a
10-minute
excerpt of a documentary on the exodus from Darfur, seen previously on
CNN,
by saying it was a "very poignant explication of the current human
tragedy
happening in Darfur."

Fear of retribution

"The refugee plight is common," Prendergast said, referring to the
video.
"Every one of these people have lived through 10 lifetimes of human
suffering."

Prendergast has traveled to Darfur three times in the past nine months
and
"there is an underground railroad in effect between Darfur and Chad
where
thousands still haven't settled anywhere out of fear of retribution."

He and Actor Don Cheadle, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his
performance in "Hotel Rwanda," wrote about their visit to Darfur and the
refugee camps in late January saying, "If we continue to stand idly by,
the
culpability for the continuation of the atrocities will be all of ours."

Systematic campaign

The crisis in Darfur began in early 2003, when an armed conflict started
between an alliance of the Sudanese government forces and ethnic Arab
militia and two non-Arab African rebel groups called the Sudanese
Liberation
Army/Movement (SLA/SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
Instead
of fighting the rebels, the government forces have waged a systematic
campaign against unarmed civilians belonging to the same ethnic groups
as
the rebel groups --- mainly the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa.

According to Human Rights Watch
(http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/darfur/index.htm) Darfur's population is
estimated at 5 or 6 million; a census has not been taken for many years.
The
majority of the population is African and estimates of the affected
range
from 1 to 2 million, which is about 12 to 33 percent of the population.

Of the 1 to 2 million, nearly 158,000 are believed to be in Chad as
refugees. There may be another 1 million people in Darfur who have not
been
hit directly by the crisis, but are affected because displaced family
members staying with them have stretched and depleted their resources.

Prendergast stated that the three deadliest conflicts have taken place
in
Africa's Eastern Congo, Sudan (Darfur and southern Sudan) and Uganda.
Citing
that 6 million people have died in all three conflicts, he called it a
"modern day holocaust." However, the level of attention these situations
have received has been minimal.

"Beyond the occasional documentary and one minute segments on NPR
(National
Public Radio) it's atrocious, in terms of the attention that these
people
suffering within this conflict need and demand [and are not getting],"
he
said. "The Congo is the epicenter of resource generated human suffering
on
the continent."

Delaying technique

Watching the response to the devastation in Rwanda has produced a
pattern of
non-involvement, Prendergast said.

"The plights are portrayed as tribal and common and [we're told] there
is
nothing we can really do," he said. "It's a delaying technique."

He said the international community uses the divisions as an excuse for
inaction. For two years, the Bush administration said it couldn't
respond
more forcibly to Darfur because China and Russia were sitting on the
Security Council and would veto anything more from happening,
Prendergast
said.

"We apply humanity band aids over these gaping human rights wounds and
then
we cite the massive amount of humanitarian assistance that we provide as
the
demonstration of our political will," he said. "But there is still time
to
act in all these situations."

Support for Darfur

Prendergast identified civilian protection, accountability and promotion
of
peace as areas of priority to provide the protection "from the violence
that
continues to rack all through societies."

"Church-based groups, in my view, remain the central back bone of a
larger
national effort to try and encourage and congeal our government to
respond
to people like Adam [in the documentary] and the millions like him with
nowhere to go," said Prendergast.

EMM's Parkins announced that the Executive Council had adopted, at its
June
13-16 meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, a comprehensive resolution
affirming
the Episcopal Church's continued support for peace in Darfur, and that
many
of the ideas that Prendergast outlined were encompassed in the
resolution.

"So the call to advocacy is a particularly welcome call and our church
has
been strongly committed to peace in that part of the world," Parkins
said.

Benedictine spirituality

After opening with prayer, Waynick spoke about the triad relationship
that
exists with her diocese, Bor and Brasilla. It resulted in her traveling
in
2002 to Bor with the bishop of Brasilla.

Waynick said she was the first bishop to visit the Sudan since 1979 and
ordained the first three female bishops there.

She shared vivid memories of the people she met and the difficult and
dangerous circumstances that they as visitors had to endure because
churches
were often bombing sites but, "What we encountered was a really
remarkable
living out of what we've come to know as a Benedictine spirituality that
any
visitor that comes to us will be regarded and treated as the Christ,"
she
said. "That marvelous spirit of hospitality was always present no matter
how
humble the circumstances of the people we were visiting."

She reflected on a House of Bishops meeting in Burlington, Vermont in
2001,
where she met some of the "Lost Boys" of the Sudan.

The Lost Boys were the 20,000 children, mostly boys, between 7 and 17
years
of age who were separated from their families during the war in southern
Sudan. These lost boys trekked enormous distances over a vast
unforgiving
wilderness, seeking refuge from the fighting. Hungry, frightened and
weakened by sleeplessness and disease, they crossed from the Sudan into
Ethiopia and back, with many dying along the way.

"I remember that they were very articulate as they shared with us their
journey, their flight and years of wandering just trying to find a place
to
settle," she said. "I can remember one Sudanese boy asking if God made
them
[Sudanese] for an experiment and not for life."

However, the depth of faith, the deepness, the depth of their desire,
and
strength to return to their homes, to have peace to have some kind of
justice in their lives, was nearly overwhelming, she said.

The Sudanese boy told her that we know God must love us because we are
not
lost anymore and we are not boys. We have a home here.

More information about the work of EMM is available online at
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/emm

-- Daphne Mack is staff writer for Episcopal News Service.

___________________________
To SUBSCRIBE to enslist, send a blank email message, from the address
which
you wish subscribed, to: join-enslist@epicom.org

Send QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS to news@episcopalchurch.org.

The enslist is published by Episcopal News Service:
www.episcopalchurch.org/ens