Thursday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan came to Harvard. He had accepted an invitation to come, receive an honorary degree and address the graduates as their Commencement speaker.

Wednesday, the folks at the American Anti-Slavery Group (iAbolish.com) had something to say about it.

Many remember the events of a few short years ago, when for various reasons still debated, the UN was impotent in the face of a genocide in Rwanda that resulted in almost a million dead in a few short months. At that time, Kofi Annan was UN undersecretary general for peacekeeping operations.

In recent years, another African genocide has been ongoing in the nation of Sudan. In southern Sudan, culturally and racially black-African Christians and Animists (practitioners of traditional African tribal religions) have been the victims of Jihad conducted by the Arab Muslims from the north who dominate and are supported by the government in the capital, Khartoum. This campaign has resulted in approximately 2 million deaths and millions more in refugees. Add to that body-count the cultural and societal destruction wrought by such a crisis, and you can, maybe, begin to wrap your mind around the depth of the horror.

It gets worse. In addition to outright murder, mass rape as a weapon and cultural genocide, (On my What I Think page, I say, "I think there's no such thing as Cultural-Imperialism unless people are forced at gunpoint to adopt another culture." Guess what? It's at that level in Sudan.) tens of thousands of black Africans have been carried off into literal slavery by Arab militias in the North.

Yes, real, old-style slavery that's been "out-of-style" in America since 1865...

And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, there's a new crisis afoot. The government in Khartoum has now started supporting Arab-Muslim militias in the West of the country (the "Janjaweed") against the black-Africans (this time fellow Muslims) in that region. An estimated 30,000 civilians have been murdered in that region since February of last year, and more than a million have been made refugees. Government-supported militias have used gang-rape as a weapon, mutilated their victims and taken slaves as prizes.

According to iAbolish: "Sudan was just re-elected to the UN Human Rights Commission, backed by members of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic States. The commission suppressed a report on Sudan's use of starvation as a weapon."

Here is a map of Sudan with the Darfur region highlighted.

Last May, when Sudan was elected for its third term on the Commission, the United States at least took the symbolic step of walking out of the meeting. Where was the rest of the world?

Where is the EU? What is the UN doing? Where is Kofi Annan?

We in America have watched the world, and many of those at home, particularly the media elites, use the UN as a hammer to pound our nation and our President with. We have watched it function as cable for Lilliputians to tie the hands of a Great Nation. And who wields those cables? An institution that can do little more in the face of what its own investigators call "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world" than send a few representatives and food aid. When people tell us what resolutions the UN has passed, and what that body has rendered pronouncements on, they intend for the UN's voice to be a conclusion unto itself - a carrier of moral weight and correctness - the voice of the "International Community" (as if there really is such a thing) as the very synthesis of Morality and Law personified.

The UN's paralysis in the face of the ongoing crisis in Sudan, merely one of many of the UN's moral failures, puts the lie to that vision.

Wednesday, a diverse group of people came together in Harvard Square to speak out.

This issue speaks loudly to a wide range of political views. On one end are people like me, who are tired of people like Kofi Annan who stand on shaky personal moral ground at the head of an organization with even shakier foundations, taking any opportunity to speechify and take barely concealed shots at, not the real purveyors of death and human horror, but at the United States. We believe that the UN is not simply a body that makes some bad decisions. We believe the UN is flawed at its core and that the more people that come to understand that, the better.

On the other end of the spectrum are folks who do believe in the existence of an international community with the UN as an important and indispensable representative. The issue of the Sudan speaks to them because they truly desire that the UN fulfill its mission and do the right thing. They want to shame Kofi into either harnessing the force of his personality and thereby gain a bit of moral authority to attack this issue, and in turn hoping to shame the body into action...or resign.

Both ends of things recognize the human disaster of the situation and understand that something...something should be done about it.

The crowd gathered on Cambridge Common seemed to be representative of this wide spectrum and the organizers did a good job of staying on message. Unlike a lot of demonstrations of this nature, the crowd was focused on the issue (One word not heard from any of the speakers was a common one - or so I understand it - at events like this. You know, starts with a P, ends with a "stine"...isn't a Jewish name...).

It was a beautiful day for a march. Sunny, warm. I parked just outside Harvard Square and walked in to the Common. Members of the press were there interviewing some of the participants when I arrived.

It wasn't exactly a press feeding frenzy, but they were there. Where was the AP? Reuters? The networks? The cable outlets? Not in view. Think it would have been different if the protesters had been decrying Bush for Iraq, rather than a collection of African speakers saying, "I'm a proud American now, and I'm speaking out because I haven't forgotten..." I think so.

The signs were laid out in preparation for volunteers to hold them:

Turnout was a light at first. Where were International ANSWER and all the other groups who are supposed to be so concerned with "human rights?" You might almost be forgiven for believing that a lot of those groups only use the banner of Human Rights to mask another agenda.

I counted about 50 people before things got started:

By the time things got going, I'm guessing there were in the neighborhood of 100-200 people:

The message:

The MC for the event, Dr. Gloria White Hammond, who welcomed the crowd on behalf of the event's sponsors, My Sister's Keeper, the Black Ministerial Alliance, the American Anti-Slavery Group, the Ten Point Coalition, the Sudan Alliance, the North American Fashoda Association and the Darfur Peace and Development Organization.

"For more than two decades now, the government of Sudan which is based in Khartoum, has brutalized the citizens of its country. Over twenty years now they have raised a campaign of genocide in the south, operating in collusion with the Arab militia which goes into the villages, typically kills the men and takes the women and children hostage where they are carried to the north and marketed as chattel slavery. I have been to Sudan...I spoke with a young man who, when I looked out at a crowd larger than this, had a face so grotesque...I'm a pediatrician. I have seen grotesque faces. His deformity was so bad I assumed it was a congenital deformity, but no, his mother assured me. He had sustained an injury four years earlier when he was charged to keep the cattle. He lost a cow. His master was so angry with him that he literally took an axe and chopped the boy's nose off. I have been to Sudan...I talked to a young girl who, at twelve years... was so brutally raped that she nearly lost her life...I have been to Sudan...

...through it all [the UN] has watched. But tonight, we say to Kofi Annan in his role as the leader of the United Nations that the buck stops with you Kofi!"

Read Dr. White Hammond and Francis Bok's (see below) Boston Globe Op-Ed which, to the Globe's credit, appeared yesterday:

Annan's dishonor in Sudan

Read the rest here.

Following a prayer by Reverend Gerald Bell of the Black Ministerial Alliance (sorry. the picture came out blurry) - "...This is a race war. Radical Arab Muslims are targeting African Muslims tribes who refuse to be subjected to the strict Shariah law. Khartoum is blocking food, medicine and Human Rights monitors from reaching the area by plane..." - Francis Bok addressed the crowd. Francis was a slave in Sudan for ten years and now lives in the Boston area. Read his story here.

"...I'm lucky because I've made it to be in this greatest country. The free country that permit me to turn[?], to become a young abolitionist to fight for my people and to fight for millions of people, twenty-seven million people that are still enslaved around the world..."

John Eibner of Christian Solidarity International:

"...we have a continuation of the genocide process in Darfur, where the Islamist regime of General Omar Bashir and his colleagues have become the number one killer of Muslims in the twenty-first century. Over 30,000 Muslims, black Muslims have been killed by that regime in the middle of what we're told is a peace process..."

Director of Boston University's African Presidential Archives and Research Center, former Ambassador to Tanzania, Rev. Dr. Charles Stith:

"...Brother Kofi, the people are talking to you. It is important to condemn the atrocities in the Sudan, but talk is cheap when the cost is the significant loss of human life which we see....and if we need to do flyovers, drive-by's, drive-ins, walk-thrus, pray-ins, lay-ins, whatever kind of intervention in which we need to engage to stop the murder it needs to be done. Kofi, time for talk is over and the time for action is now."

One of the organizers leads a chant with a hip-hop beat. "Fired up, not gonna take it no more, we're standin' up for the people in Darfur..." Too complicated. Didn't work. Simpler please. Nice effort, though.

Ernest Rudwe Zungoga (sic?), a Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan Genocide:

"...that [concentration] camp held around 100,000 people, but only around 10,000 of us managed to survive...It's ten years after what happened...It's ten years after three of my siblings died...but sometimes I get discouraged...I'm still living with my memories, but I don't want any human being to live with those memories...

...there were UN soldiers...they were passing in front of my house...[I] was thinking they were going to help us, but instead, they passed by my house and they went [maybe five houses from my house] and they picked up the nuns from Italy. And these were maybe 100 soldiers who came to pick up three nuns from Italy after passing 100's of thousands of people that were dieing. They were UN soldiers in Rwanda...Kofi Annan refused the request to intervene..."

The speakers were causing some deep feelings to surface. This African girl was openly weeping:

Suleiman Gido, President of the Darfur Peace and Development Organization:

"...we receive reports on a daily basis...3 million people are affected by the war in Darfur. 2 million people are internally displaced. 180,000 refugees...of which 90% are women and children...51,000 people [have been] killed...almost 8-900 villages of native Africans have been burned...2865 rape cases have been reported in one month...900 girls raped...300 between 7 and 11...We don't need more reports. We need action today. People in Darfur need protection. They don't need your food Kofi Annan...send not only the observers, but the protectors..."

Rev. Dr. Walter Edward Fauntroy, retired Congressman, founder of the Congressional Black Caucus:

"...I chained myself to the door of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington D.C. And when the Congressman got arrested, Johnny Cochran and Ken Starr represented me. And when they learned that spectrum of the American people was concerned about it, George Bush appointed John Danforth an envoy to go there and work out a peace settlement..."

He made a good speech, then he sang a Whitney Houston song. One Moment in Time. The whole song. A Capella (see second picture). Ummm...well, he beats Robert Byrd I guess...

The final regularly scheduled speaker was Dr. Charles Jacobs, President and Founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group.

His was one of the best speeches, and I have re-produced it here in full. Highly recommended:

Kofi Annan is the top diplomat in the world, but today we need less diplomacy and more truth.

The truth is, Kofi Annan does not need to come to Harvard tomorrow, he needs to go to Sudan. He needs to be with the African Muslims in Darfur who are being slaughtered and dispossessed and starved to death. He needs to go to the South where Khartoum's militia has forced 100,000 Shilluks off their land. He needs to go to the North, and he needs to tell Khartoum to free the slaves.

There are tens of thousands of slaves like Francis Bok, still serving their masters in Sudan. Kofi Annan needs to tell the truth: For a decade Khartoum wages what it calls...what they call a Jihad against Christians and tribalists in the South.

Kofi Annan never once said that the war was a Jihad. It's not diplomatic to say...but it's the truth.

Two million people died because of this war. Tens of thousands were enslaved. Arab militias storm African villages, kill the men and capture the women and children like Francis Bok.

Kofi Annan needs to tell the world about Jihad slaves. It's not diplomatic...but it's the truth.

Kofi Annan never said the word "slave!" The United Nations calls them, "Abductees." Abducted people...abducted people.

But these people in Sudan are slaves. It's not diplomatic...but that's the truth.

Shamefully, shamefully Sudan sits on the Human Rights Commission. Shamefully, Kofi Annan has not said one word about that. It's not diplomatic, but here's the truth: If the slave-master, and one who slaughters innocents by the hundreds of thousands...if he sits on your Human Rights Commission, then Mr. Annan, your United Nations is broken.

The United Nations is broken. One half a million people are going to starve and the world watches and the United Nations is broken and it can't be fixed with a speech at Harvard.

Tell Kofi Annan we do not, we do not need a speech at Harvard where you don't say "slave" when there's slaves and when you don't say "Jihad" when it's a Jihad and when you don't mention the slaughter of African Muslims when it's a race war, and where you beg Khartoum for permission to feed the starving people. You don't need to beg, you need to make a plan to rescue people.

If you want to make a speech, Kofi Annan, go to the United Nations Security Council, and here's your speech:

'Friends, I can no longer serve as the Secretary General of the world body if you do not immediately evict Sudan from the United Nations Human Rights Commission. [loud applause] [To allow a nation?], that engages in racist slaughter and slavery, sit on that commission that judges other nations makes us a laughing stock. It's a travesty.

I hereby declare, that if Sudan is not evicted from the Human Rights Commission, I will resign my post.'

That's the speech you have to make, Kofi Annan. And for making that speech, and for doing the right thing in Sudan, we here have your honorary degree. It's not from Harvard, but it's from us, presented by the people of Massachusetts, for standing with the victims of murder, racism and ethnic cleansing. For using the power of the United Nations to stop a genocide. For going to Sudan to free the slaves. For speaking truth to the power of UN voting blocs, including the fifty-seven member Organization of Islamic States. For standing with the victims of unholy war - the black people of North Africa who want nothing more than to live by their own customs and their own religion and to live in equality with the Arabs of Sudan.

Now I want to do one more thing. All the Sudanese people, will you raise your hands? Sudanese people, come to the front, come to the front...

We want to tell you something. The world has abandoned you, but we will not. We are the sons and daughters of African slaves and the sons and daughters of American Abolitionists and we have fought for freedom for ourselves, and we will use our power and our energy to reach out to you, to protect you - our bothers and our sisters - and I call on the people here today to make this pledge and stand by this pledge. This is not the last rally, this is the first. And if you do stand with us, and carry us forward, then we can say, in the words of Harriet Tubman, "I have seen their tears, and I have heard their cries, and I'll give every drop of my blood to set them free."

Thank you.

Inviting the Sudanese to the front - an emotional moment:

I missed this man's name, but I believe he is from the North American Fashoda Association:

"...We don't have the media in Southern Sudan, unfortunately...I was a slave one time, and I almost thought we should forgive and forget, but since the government is still doing it, and the kid's are being taken today while we're speaking, how can we remain silent...Expell Sudan from the Human Rights Commission, not tomorrow, but today...Kofi Annan, what are you doing?..."

From the Southern Sudanese Association of America, Bismark Infaius (sic?):

"...First of all, I would like to convey my condolences, and the condolences of my people to the American people for having lost one of the greatest Presidents of this greatest nation, Ronald Reagan. He had a vision for Sudan, we need him..."

My tape ran out at that point. (Lucky you! This post is long!)

There was one more gentleman who spoke, then the crowd was gathered-up and the march began. I must say it held together pretty well, and it seemed that most of the folks who had been watching the proceeding followed all the way through with the march as well. With a guy on the megaphone leading the chants (the young lady doing the hip-hop thing gave it a try again as well...no...still not working for me) the group of about a hundred people did a circuit of Harvard Square with police escort, finally coming to a stop in front of the exit to the Harvard Square T-station.

See the church in that second to last picture? Walking back to my car I passed it and saw an event still going on. Noam Chomsky and Boston City Councilor Charles Turner were in there giving some sort of talk on "community" (at 10-20 bucks a pop), and I couldn't help but chuckle. Compared to what was happening outside, there on the street, I couldn't imagine a more irrelevant event than what must have been happening inside that church.

Here is the Boston Globe's article on the protest (at least they covered it): Protesters call for UN to act in Sudan - Demonstration tied to Annan visit

Here is a link to iAbolish's page on the Darfur crisis. There are links to a lot of articles and some in-depth reports you can read to familiarize yourself with the issue.

Thank you for reading (or skimming) this report through to the end. I debate with myself when I put up posts like this. Should I bother giving all this information, and risk overwhelming the reader with data, or should I put up a shorter, more concise post that's more likely to be read? So far I've opted to provide the data and let the reader skim at will. After all, there's no paper being wasted here. I hope you've gotten something out of it. I certainly did by attending.

Kofi Annan got his honorary degree, his injection of legitimacy and another chance to enable the elites, the press, the politicians and the world to take yet another shot at one of the world's great hopes for freedom - the United States of America and our President. Yet it is possible, it is just possible, that by speaking, and marching, and blogging, and commenting, that little by little some cracks will form in the dam. The truth may out.

Who knows? Maybe someone could...literaly be set free.

Update: Spartacus was inside the ceremony, and reports on parts of Kofi's speech not widely reported (I wonder why).