Progressive Wednesday

Genocide in Darfur: Watch

May 23rd, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday

This genocide isn’t happening on paper. It’s impossible to comprehend the atrocities in the Sudan by looking at numbers as if solving a seventh grade word problem. Even pictures, video and literary accounts can’t portray the horrors of being perpetually hunted because of race and religion. And these people have been living with those fears every day since February 2003. But we don’t expect you to go and witness it firsthand either. So here are a couple of videos that give a glimpse into life in Darfur.

There are graphic images and depictions that are very disturbing in each of the videos. It’s important to watch these videos because of, not in spite of, those graphic images and depictions. It is as close as we can come to understanding what these tortured and impoverished people go through without actually being there.

The first is a historical photomontage set to the song “One,” by U2 and Mary J Blige. It’s about five minutes long, though it seems like 30 seconds.

If a documentary is more your style, this is ten minutes well spent.