In further commemoration of Yom Hashoah, I wanted to link to LAmom’s latest post on Darfur, Sudan. She has done an excellent job of keeping this tragedy on my radar screens, and I would hope that we would not lose sight of the fact that this is another example of man’s inhumanity to man, and that we must do what we can to bring it to an end.
The troubling question for me, as a pacifist, is what really can be done? Obviously, we can contribute to humanitarian assistance. We can advocate that our government take a moral stance. But what else can we do?
In dire circumstances such as Darfur and even more clearly, the Holocaust, is war ever justified? I suspect that if we were truly committed to our faith, we could nonviolently overturn these types of horrors (at the cost of our own lives).
What can we do, as followers of Jesus who believe he calls us to nonviolence, not only to provide humanitarian assistance, but to actually stop the violence of others? I’m not sure, but I would be interested in what others have to say on this.
May 6th, 2005 at 12:44 am
Hi! Thanks for the link!
An approach that some are using is the power of the pocketbook — divesting from any companies that do business with the Sudanese government. Of course, that also impacts civilians in the country, so I don’t know if that would conflict with pacifist principles.
The thing that the Coalition for Darfur and others are trying to do is to shine as much light on the situation as possible. If the atrocities being committed in Darfur got as much media coverage as a celebrity sex scandal, the government would have to respond. I think that’s what brought down apartheid; it started getting too much attention on the world stage.