via David Weinberger
The fact that millions of people have been moved to buy tickets and witness ?The Passion of the Christ? is especially poignant in the shadow of an immediate tragedy facing our collective human soul: The Passion of the Present, now, in Sudan.In Darfur, a region in southern Sudan approximately the size of Texas, over a million people are threatened with torture and death at the hands of marauding militia and a complicit government. Imagine a militia that forces parents to choose whether their children will be burned alive or shot to death. Imagine that in the very same month the world remembers the genocides of Cambodia and Rwanda, the unfolding news of another in Sudan is barely heard and largely ignored.
Genocide evokes not only the moral, but also, the legal responsibility of the world community. Under international agreement, a nation must intervene to stop a genocide when it is officially acknowledged. “Officially” is the key word here. Though President Bush has publicly protested the “atrocities” in Darfur and U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan has urged the international community to act, no nation has officially acknowledged the truth: Sudan has become a bleeding ground of genocide. And in the void of our collective silence, the Sudanese government continues to act with brutal impunity.Perpetrators of genocide do not want anyone watching. But individuals working in organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, GOAL, and Doctors without Borders are watching, and witnessing, and courageously standing up to care for victims of human rights violations. These individuals represent, for all of us, a personal capacity to bear witness to the passion of the present ? one candle lit against the darkness. However, before one can light a candle, someone has to strike a match.
These are times when faith seems to be more lost than found, and belief in making a difference is hard to hold onto, especially amidst the relentless images of war exploding through cyberspace and the media. But imagine if millions of people were moved by the Passion of the Present. A donation – the cost of a movie ticket – to any of the human rights organizations across the world would transform our global landscape. The candlepower of truth could extinguish the firepower of genocide.
This planet has long endured holy wars that take lives. Imagine one that saves them.
