The following comments were presented by Faith McDonnell, director of IRD’s Church Alliance for a New Sudan during the Olympic Dream for Darfur Rally at the Coca Cola Building in Washington, DC on June 20, 2008
We are here today, launching the Genocide Olympics protest movement in front of the Coca Cola Company, because of silence in the face of genocide. Most of the corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics, including Coca Cola, have not used their positions of influence as Olympics’ sponsors to put any meaningful pressure on China in the face of a multitude of human rights abuses. China’s human rights abuses are legion—including the repression and persecution of religious believers, the occupation of Tibet, the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees, its draconian “one child” policy, and especially the human rights abuse we are here to address today: its partnership with the genocidal National Islamic Front regime, currently known as the National Congress Party, in Khartoum. If they would, these companies like Coca Cola could use their leverage as corporate sponsors of the Olympics to pressure China. And if China would use its leverage as one of the Khartoum regime’s top oil investors, it could help to force the Khartoum regime to stop its ongoing genocide in Darfur.
Right now, the Khartoum regime is continuing its destruction of Darfur—killing, displacing, and replacing Darfurians and re-creating Darfur in its own vile image. And for this genocide in Darfur; as well as for brutal human rights violations in eastern Sudan, Nubia, and Abyei; ongoing violations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement; and for all of its failures to act in accordance with the demands of common humanity, Khartoum has suffered no measurable consequences, neither from the U.S. government, nor from the United Nations or the world community.
This is why it is imperative for Coca Cola and the other corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics to act rather than remain silently complicit in genocide. At this point in time, through the People’s Republic of China, to the regime in Khartoum, there is an interconnectedness that they cannot avoid. This is what calls to my mind the profound truth uttered in the film, It’s a Wonderful Life:
Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives, and when he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?
Stopping the genocide taking place in Darfur is about lives touching lives. It is about men, women, and communities taking responsibility for their brothers and sisters. It is about holding our government to accountability when they attempt to portray the perpetrators of genocide and their victims as morally equivalent. It is about holding corporations to accountability when they remain silently complicit in the face of genocide. It is about “being around” for the people of Darfur.
| Employees look down on the protest. |
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