'Never again'. But do they mean it?, GENOCIDE Survivors Talk to UK Independent

The Independent, UK: Day for Darfur inspires protests in 32 countries , By Paul Vallely, Published: 16 September 2006

Note: Will heroes emerge for Darfur? Maybe the folks pictured below, and dozens more HERE from Saturday's AfricaAction.org demonstation September 9, 2006? Maybe nobody?

Susan Pollack, SURVIVOR, THE HOLOCAUST IN EUROPE

I was 13 years old when German troops came to my village of Felsogod in Hungary and took my father. I never saw him again. Then they came for me and my family and sent us to Auschwitz. My mother was gassed to death as soon as we arrived. I survived Auschwitz, slave labour, selection at the hands of Doctor Josef Mengele and a death march to Belsen before I was 15. I can still see the mountains of corpses at Auschwitz. After the Holocaust, the world said "never again". Today they are still saying it, but when genocides like Darfur go on unchecked, I'm beginning to wonder if they mean it.

Beatha Uwazaninka, SURVIVOR, GENOCIDE IN RWANDA

When the genocide began, I was 14 years old and it was hard to make sense of it.

For three months, I was on the run, hiding in sugar cane fields and the houses of the dead. I narrowly avoided being raped and murdered but a million of my people, including my family and friends, were massacred in the space of a hundred days while the world looked on.

I have rebuilt my life and have a baby girl now. For her sake, and the sake of millions of others all over the world, I have to speak out about what is going on today in Darfur.

Kemal Pervanic, SURVIVOR, ETHNIC CLEANSING IN BOSNIA

Life in the Serb concentration camps was horrific. I witnessed atrocities daily. You live day-to-day, keeping your head down in case you catch a guard's eye; seeing men called out who never return; hearing their tortured screams. Despite the lessons of the failures in Rwanda and the Balkans hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been killed in Darfur and no one cares enough to stop it. Western governments dithered over Bosnia. This time, despite the fact that it's Muslims being killed, it is Arab governments whose silence is allowing the conflict to continue unabated.


And today from the Washington Post: For Darfur Women, Survival Means Leaving Camp, Risking Rape; By Craig Timberg Washington Post Foreign ServiceSaturday, September 16, 2006

The tall, light-skinned man reeking of sweat and cigarettes often gallops his horse right into the nightmares of Darelsalam Ahmed Eisa, 18. Each time, she said, he throws her to the ground, pushes up her skirt and forces himself inside her while muttering: " Abdah. Abdah. Abdah ."

Slave woman. Slave woman. Slave woman.

He was in her dreams just last night, she recalled, as real and horrifying in his green camouflage uniform as he was the day he raped her two months ago. But when Eisa awoke this morning, there was no time for terror, no time for tears. She covered herself in an orange and blue cloth, grabbed the family's ax and departed for the perilous Darfur countryside, out of the relative safety of a sprawling camp for people displaced by the violence in this region of western Sudan.

In the wilderness, Eisa can find grass for the donkeys and firewood for cooking. But it is also where government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed roam, terrorizing villagers. Violence and disease in Darfur have killed as many as 450,000 people since 2003, and an estimated 2 million have been forced to flee their homes....

'Never again,' But do they, do we mean it? Now history will know the answer. Jay