Lesson on Darfur

As our Dina Temple-Raston reported from Sudan and Chad in May, Arab militia backed by the Sudanese government are invading villages in the Darfur region of Western Sudan and engaging in ethnic cleansing against black villagers. Our correspondents interviewed and photographed starving refugees on the Chad side of the border and vacant villages on the Sudan side. A wide array of advocacy groups and politicians are expressing concern — but America's largest teachers union this week sent the world the message it doesn't care.

The International Crisis Group says that more than 300,000 people in Darfur will die of starvation by December if the Sudanese government does not stop blocking delivery of food aid to the region.

"The time to act in Darfur is now. It's time for us to stop saying 'never again,' and start saying,'not this time,' "said Jerry Fowler, staff director of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Human Rights Watch has reported that since August 2003,"Wide swathes of their homelands have been burned and depopulated. Everything that can sustain and succor life — livestock, food stores, wells and pumps, blankets and clothing — has been looted or destroyed. Villages have been torched not randomly, but systematically."

The Anti-Defamation League condemned the Sudanese government for "egregious human rights abuses, including forced starvation through the denial of international humanitarian assistance; abduction and enslavement of women and children; forced displacement of civilians; and bombings of civilian targets and humanitarian facilities."

In May, the American House of Representatives passed by a vote of 360 to 1 a resolution condemning the Sudanese government "for its attacks against innocent civilians" and asserting that "Sudanese Government forces have also engaged in the use of rape as a weapon of war, the abduction of children, the destruction of food and water sources, and the deliberate and systematic manipulation and denial of humanitarian assistance for the people of the Darfur region."

So what did the National Education Association do Monday at its Washington convention on the matter of New Business Item 26, which would have directed the organization to pressure the Sudanese government to "stop its efforts to displace and starve native populations" in Darfur? According to a dispatch from the invaluable Mike Antonucci, who is covering the convention for the Education Intelligence Agency, the union voted the resolution down.

So the desperate refugees from Darfur can know as they seek help from the West that America's largest teacher's union isn't interested in helping.