Area group speaks for oppressed
By Liesel Nowak / Daily Progress staff writer
December 12, 2005
It's not easy getting news out of Darfur.
According to one refugee from the western Sudanese province, you'll need an airline ticket and a visa from the government of Sudan. From the airport in Khartoum, you must drive another three or four days if it's not the rainy season. During autumn rains, it will take a week or more to travel over mud, clay and sand.
There is no Internet access, no e-mail. A letter is likely to be confiscated by the government or its militia, the Janjaweed. Telephone use is also restricted, the refugee said, especially right before or after an attack.
Yet somehow, an organization based in Charlottesville is learning about human rights abuses in the remote region and helping spread the word to the world in an effort to stop a humanitarian disaster.
"It's the only voice for those voiceless for over a decade," said Mohamed A. Yahya, executive director of Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy. "Because our reports are the only available sources ? it is used by different authorities as standards and references, even for researchers, students and those individuals concerned around the world."
Damanga formed from the human rights group Representatives of the Massaleit Community in Exile, or RMCE, which was founded in 1995 to alert the world of the abuses unfolding in Western Sudan.
Over the past two years, a crisis has unfolded in Darfur with reports of ethnic cleansing, forced displacement of 2 million civilians, the bombing and burning of villages, the raping of women and the murder of 70,000 Darfurians.
The Sudanese armed forces and government-trained Janjaweed militia are charged with carrying out the atrocities.
Yahya was a student in Egypt in 1993 when he, fellow students and Darfurians based in Cairo mobilized to create the RMCE. He had just learned that his village was one of 50 burned and destroyed in only two days.
"They killed thousands of innocent, [unarmed] people, indiscriminately, and threw kids in the fire of burning huts," Yahya said.
Among the dead, he said, were 17 relatives, including his two grandfathers.
"From that time, I realized that action must be taken," Yahya said. "I held an urgent meeting with over 50 Darfurians and students in Cairo, and decided to do something to protect our people. So we collected some money from our own poor pockets and sent them to Darfur victims."
Once off the ground, the RMCE started to spread the word through Arabic and English newspapers, letters to foreign embassies, the Internet and conferences.
Yahya said he was the first student to be blacklisted and eventually exiled from Egypt. Unable to return to Darfur, Yahya came to live in the United States, thanks to political asylum.
Though the organization began without funding, Damanga has grown to accept donations from all over the world, including a $50,000 grant recently awarded by the Philanthropic Collaborative, an organization with ties to the Rockefeller family.
"We are very proud and grateful for this wonderful and generous help," he said, "that would absolutely help us push our work forward and support our innocent people in Darfur and everywhere."
