Nelson Lecturer: Darfur Crisis Demands a Response

CHICAGO, IL (September 9, 2005) - With little extra effort and some political will power, the world could stop the genocide in Darfur, said holocaust and genocide expert Eric Markusen during the first Burton Nelson Memorial Lecture Wednesday night at North Park University.

Markusen was a member of the Atrocity Documentation Team assembled by the U.S. State Department to travel to the Chad-Sudan border in 2004. He is the senior research fellow with the Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

The United Nations has declared the situation in Darfur "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," Markusen said. Since 2003, more than 400,000 lives have been lost due to violence, starvation and disease in Darfur, which is about the size of Texas. More than 2.5 million people have been displaced from their homes and more than 200,000 have fled into refugee camps. The camps have little food, water and other basic necessities.

Although he has investigated brutality and poverty in Ethiopia and Srebrenica, Markusen said he has "never seen anything on this scale." He added that he fears the people of Darfur will be forgotten amid the devastation of last December's tsunami and continuing recovery as well as last week's loss of life and devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Markusen says the Sudanese government views the ethnic cleansing as legitimate social policy, even though the rest of the world has condemned its actions as genocide. He describes the Sudanese government as "one of the most vicious, cruel regimes in the world today." To force change, he argues that countries and businesses should divest from the nation, suggesting that doing business with Sudan today is like doing business with Hitler in 1942. Many nations, including China, continue to be a major business partner with the country because of recently discovered oil in Sudan, he notes.

Using NATO fighters to establish no-fly zones to stop attacks from the air also "would send a very effective message to the government," Markusen suggests. He added that governments should better fund the cash-strapped African Union peacekeeping forces that have had to limit or halt operations because of lack of fuel and equipment.

Markusen said the investigators learned from refugees in the Chad refugee camps that 61 percent of them had seen at least one family member killed, with most having seen several murdered. He added that an estimated 30 percent of the women had been raped, 81 percent of the people had their villages destroyed, and 80 percent of their livestock and seeds specially engineered to grow in the harsh conditions were stolen.

The lecture is the first annual lecture to honor the late Burton Nelson, longtime professor of ethics at North Park Theological Seminary and noted Dietrich Bonhoeffer scholar. Nelson died last year.

In remarks preceding the lecture, Dr. John E. Phelan Jr., dean and president of the seminary, remembered Nelson as "the conscience" of the school and noted his commitment to "making a difference in the world with action and by speaking out." Phelan added, "He did this in a way that showed hope."

"I'm moved by this," commented Nelson's widow, Grace, following the lecture. "This feels right to me." North Park Prof. Don Wagner says he hopes to make the lecture an annual event.

In keeping with Nelson's commitment to action, sample letters to members of Congress and President Bush were handed out for people to use so attendees can write and encourage further responses by the United States. To view a copy of the sample letter, please see Sample Letter. It is recommended that individuals use the sample as a guide, putting thoughts into one's own words as much as possible.

Markusen presented a second lecture Thursday evening on "The State of Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Scandinavia."

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