We’re back at the Chad-Darfur border for the 5th time! Join Katie-Jay, Gabriel, Scott and Colin on another return to the camps. However, the rebels have started advancing from the east and attacked Goz Beida and other towns. The team is safe in Abéché, and will continue reporting.
Edit: Originally sent to our mailing list on 16 June, 2008.
Hello Friends and Familia:
We are starting our second week in Chad, and for the first time in five trips we might not be able to visit a refugee camp. When we left camp Kounoungo this past January, our friend Yakoub told us that the people in his camp felt motivated by our trips and felt proud that we continued to come back. They feel connected to not just us, but to the communities that support them in the US and other countries.
Yakoub and other refugees are so grateful for the aid they receive to keep them alive, but they regain hope and energy when they hear the messages, see the faces, and learn the names of those that are doing selfless work every day to bring peace to Darfur. That “building of community” across continents is priceless. The i-ACT team remains committed to this.
We are in Abeche, in Eastern Chad, unable to move because of heavy fighting in the area. We will continue to report on the situation and how it affects aid work and the lives of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people. We will post video, when there is something visually worth posting. Otherwise, we will continue with journals, reports, and answering any comments and questions that you post on our blog. Click here to read our reports from Abeche.
Thank you for staying involved and for being one of those faces and names that Yakoub says he feels proud to know.
Paz,
Gabriel
for Katie-Jay, Colin, and Scott,
i-ACT Team in Abeche, Chad.
I’ve told you “we’re going back” three times in the past, but this one is a little different. The last time we left Chad after our visits to the refugee camps in the east, we left on a French military plane, being evacuated in the middle of an all out coup attempt that left an already unstable country and region in even worse conditions.
Soon after, the Sudanese government attacked Darfuri villages, displacing tens of thousands of more civilians. This was in February 2008. Of the over 13,000 that reached the border between Chad and Darfur, 8,000 are still sitting in the desert, waiting to be transferred to camp Mile, according to UNHCR. The insecurity has stopped the transfers indefinitely.
Services have been reduced and interrupted at almost all of the camps in Chad. Chadian security officers working at the camps have been attacked and killed, and humanitarian aid workers have been targets. Our friends in the camps, mostly women and children, continue to live the life of a refugee—but the life of a refugee in grave danger.
We are returning after ourselves having been in some danger. That also makes it different. Our experience at the hotel in N’Djamena had an effect on Katie-Jay and I and on all the people around us. We are not taking this lightly. We will take all precautions possible and will make decision based on the best information from experts on the ground.
We want to continue putting a face on the numbers and allowing the voice of the victims to be heard. The innocent civilians of Darfur need immediate protection, and sovereignty cannot be an excuse for inaction from the entire world.
Join us for i-ACT, staring June 10th and for twelve consecutive days of webcasts, interactive blog, and opportunities for action. Scott Warren, the outgoing National Director of STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, and Colin O’Brien, who served as the National High School Outreach Coordinator for STAND, will be going with us on the journey. Students have been the leaders of the Darfur movement, and we are looking for students and their communities to increase the heat and raise the noise this summer to bring peace to Darfur.
It was a busy day yesterday! Gabriel, Connie and Yuen-Lin arrived home safely in time to watch i-ACT featured on San Francisco’s local ABC news last night (video and news article), as well had their question to the candidates answered in the CNN/YouTube presidential debate!
Please read article, by John Morlino: President Bush: Imagine Yourself as a Man in Darfur Click here to read more »
We use technology to reject the standard excuse of inaction - ignorance
We debunk the myth that ordinary people cannot stop genocide
We replace statistics with names, faces and stories
The age of bystanders should long have passed - we have entered an age of knowledge which empowers us to protect. Join us as an upstander. Become an i-ACTivist.
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