Darfur Activist Loses China Visa

Well isn’t this messed up. Joey Cheek, co-founder of Team Darfur, who participated in the conference call set up by the Afrosphere Action Coalition, has had his visa revoked by China

Former Olympic speedskater Joey Cheek had his visa revoked by Chinese authorities Wednesday, hours before he was set to travel to Beijing to promote his effort urging China to help make peace in the war-torn Darfur section of Sudan.

Cheek, the president and co-founder of a collection of Olympic athletes known as Team Darfur, was planning to spend about two weeks in China, when he received an unexpected call from authorities.

The 2006 American gold medalist said they told him they were denying him entrance into the country and were “not required to give a reason.”

“I didn’t see it coming,” Cheek said. “I figured once they gave me a visa, I wouldn’t imagine they wouldn’t allow me to come in later. That was a big shock. I wasn’t expecting to get a call the evening before I was leaving for Beijing.”

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the U.S. would protest China’s decision to deny the visa.

One of Cheek’s key initiatives was urging the international community to persuade Sudan to observe the ancient tradition of the Olympic truce during the Beijing Games.

It’s obvious what’s going on here. I don’t think you can be any more obvious.

Olympic Athletes and Bloggers on Darfur

Last month, Yobachi, of Blackperspective.net and the Afrosphere Action Coalition held a conference call with Team Darfur co-founder and Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek, who is working hard to raise awareness about the genocide in Darfur. I was supposed to be one of the participants, but due to work and technical difficulties, I didn’t get a word in until the very end, and I’m not sure I said or asked anything of import. Anyway, here’s the official press release and podcast of the event.

On July 9th, the Afrosphere Action Coalition hosted a conference call with Team Darfur co-founder and Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek about activist advocacy for ending genocide in Darfur Sudan; particularly as it relates to the Olympics and China’s role in Sudan. Team Darfur boast “360+” former and current international competitive athlete.

The podcast page for the conference call is located at www.utterz.com/u/utt/u-NTExODkxNQ#utt-NTExODkxNQ

Yet also, bloggers and website editors can post this podcast directly to ones own site, as can be seen here: www.blackperspective.net/index.php/afrosphere-action-coalition/aac-on- darfur-and-humanitarian-issues/ by posting the following embedded code just as with a youtube video or other embedded media:

Many bloggers participated in the call with 2006 Olympic speed skating gold medlist Joey Cheek; who donated his “$25,000 gold medal award from the U.S. Olympic Committee to refugees from Darfur.” – npr.org

Team Darfur world class distance runner Jon Rankin called in as well, though we were not able to get him into the conversation.

In Team Darfur we see athletes standing up for doing right in the world based on their values, passions, and convictions. Such an effort by those in the spot light should be lauded in view of the behaviors we often hear about our athletes.

Joey Cheek discussed with bloggers Team Darfur’s call for an Olympic Truce and how it is, base on the Olympic’s own charter, that such an issue does indeed belong in the discussion with the Olympics

From Olympic Truce letter: “In our common aspiration to realize the ideals of the Olympic Games, we, the undersigned, urge the international community to convince the Government of Sudan to observe an Olympic Truce for Darfur before, during, and after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Through this letter, we issue an urgent call to the conscience of the international community. The violence in Sudan has gone on for too long. We hope you will use the opportunity of the Olympic Truce to work to end it.” This is discussed starting about the 10:42 mark of the podcast.

Relevant websites: Afrosphere Action Coalition google site: sites.google.com/site/afrosphereactioncoalition/Home – Team Darfur: teamdarfur.org/

Afrosphere Action Coalition,

Coordinators:
Daz Wilson purplezoe.blogspot.com/ * Yobachi Boswell www.BlackPerespective.net * Francis L. Holland francislholland.blogspot.com/

In Solidarity: Global Day for Darfur

Today is the blogging Global Day for Darfur, as organized by Danielle at Modern Musings. There are 25 bloggers participating today, so head over to Modern Musings for a list of participants and please read what they have to say.

The mission of this blogging day is to Educate, Motivate, and Activate.

See also great sites like Human Rights Watch, Dream for Darfur, and Darfur: An Unforgivable Hell on Earth for up to date information.

The genocide in Darfur has been going on for five years now. This from Save Darfur:

After five years of conflict in Darfur, children are reaching school age having experienced nothing but armed conflict. A million Darfuri children have grown up displaced, living in camps for refugees and internally displaced persons, many without opportunities for education, without knowing the meaning of home.

This from Human Rights Watch:

(New York, April 7, 2008) – Five years into the Darfur conflict, women and girls need protection from rape and brutal attacks still being committed by government forces and armed groups throughout Darfur, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

Neither government security forces nor international peacekeepers have provided sufficient protection for women and girls, who remain extremely vulnerable to rape and other abuses during large-scale attacks and even in periods of relative calm, Human Rights Watch said. Survivors of sexual violence face numerous obstacles to justice, leaving them without meaningful redress. Where the perpetrators are soldiers or militia, the chances of prosecution are still more remote.

The Olympic Games being held in Bejing this year has brought a renewed scrutiny on China and its human rights record. Senators Clinton and Obama have called on President Bush to boycott the Olympics Opening Ceremony. I applaud their stances, but I also think it is important to remember the role that U.S. imperialism often plays in its attempts to “help” countries in need. So yeah, what about the Congo? It is important to stand in solidarity with the Darfur victims, to aid them as best we can, but we must be careful to insure that any U.S. involvement in this crisis is not just another profit oriented excursion at the expense of dark-skinned folk’s lives.

What can we do to help?

Email Corporate Sponsors of the Olympics

Turn it off

Petition the International Olympic Committee

Ask the Candidtates

Ask President Bush and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to take immediate steps to stop the killing in Darfur.

Explore all of the other options of what you can do

Peace, to have meaning for many who have only known suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health and education, as well as freedom and human dignity.

Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-1971)

April 13 in Solidarity: Global Day for Darfur

Danielle Vyas, of ModernMusings.com leads the charge:

The Mission is to build upon Amnesty International’s global efforts within the blogsphere.

The Strategy is to Educate, Motivate and Activate toward ending the genocide in Darfur.

Educate through analysis of reports and news materials, compilations of facts through viral multimedia like podcasts and videos posted on Youtube and linking to articles, blog posts, and viral media to expand public knowledge of the Darfuri genocide. Any and all aspects can be focused on; such as the root causes of the murder, who is behind it, and what the international community has done to promote the murder and to end it.

Motivate through the capacity within humanity for empathy. Motivate through love. Pull at heart strings, communicate the sameness of Darfuri families and your own, and share the simple, common fact that we are all the same and the suffering of the Darfuri people is felt within our hearts. Motivate through the anger for the greed, the murder, and the lack of action.

Activate through petitions, open letters, letters to all our elected officials as well as U.N., Sudanese and Chinese officials, and speaking out to the corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics as China plays a key role.

I will be adding some facts, links and viral media in the coming days which anyone can grab and use. I will also have some fact sheets and other materials to spread. Since we are building a movement, I will prominently display all participants’ contributions and continue with the link love.

I’ll be taking part on the 13th, along with

Blackperspective.net
Electronic Village
Eddie G. Griffin
Black Women Vote
The Jose Vilson
Musing of the Night
Trav’s Thoughts
Ultraviolet Underground
Vanessa Unplugged
A Political Season
Darfur: An Unforgivable Hell on Earth
Black and Missing but not Forgotten

and hopefully many more. If you’d like to participate, drop a line at ModernMusings so you can be added to the list of participants.

And check out this nifty slideshow she created.

Blogging Against Genocide

Today is the Amnesty Internationals Day of Action for Darfur, which coincides with United Nations Day.

Here’s the deal:

Earlier this year, with your help, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) agreed to send 26,000 AU/UN peacekeepers into Sudan to help bring peace to a war torn region. A well-trained, fully-resourced peacekeeping force will bring much-needed stability and security to a land of over 2 million displaced people. However, at this point, support is only a promise, not a guarantee.

It falls to us to ensure that the UNSC fully implements their plan of action in order to bring peace to Darfur. Without swift action, civilians will continue to be pawns in violent war games. The killing, rape and abduction will not stop until order is restored and accountability enforced.

Remember to sign the Global Petition for Darfur by October 24th and your signatures will help send the message to the White House that the violence in Darfur will not be tolerated.

Thank you to the over 466,000 people who have already signed the petition, including the members of the 400,000 Faces for Darfur Facebook group.

These videos speak for themselves.

Now, if for some reason you have no clue what I’m talking about¹ you should check these links:

The Save Darfur Coalition

Amnesty International: Crisis in Darfur

Darfur: An Unforgetable Hell on Earth

Coalition for Darur

Sudan Watch

Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop

Here are ways that you can take action:

Sign the Global Petition to End the Violence in Dafur

Write to the White House and put pressure on them to step up and help stop this atrocity.

Contact your Congressperson and let them know how you feel about their neglect.

We must remember the great words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

and

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people

To sit back and ignore this crisis because “it’s not happening here” does a grave injustice to the cause of anti-oppression work. If we allow the U.S. government and ourselves to sit back and ignore this crisis, we might as well sit back and ignore the crises that happen here as well. As long as oppression and hate and genocide are allowed anywhere in the world, it will be allowed and justified at home.

But on the other hand, I feel that I also must remind that it is often easier to stand against oppression that isn’t happening in your own back yard. It’s a two-way street, with a cul-de-sac up the road and one of those three-way intersections a half a mile away where you have to take a left exit to go where you want. It ain’t always easy. Stand up against world-wide oppression, but don’t think that gives you a pass to ignore what is going on in your own neighborhood. You will be tired. You might also find yourself confused at times. But you won’t be nearly as tired and confused as those slaves were after an 18-hour day in the fields.

So, stand up against the genocide in Darfur right now not because it makes you feel good or like you’ve done your good deed for today, but because you hate the worldwide subjugation of women, the continued denigration of people of color in the U.S. and across the world, the notion that “gay=stupid,” the idea that to be disabled is to be inferior, the idea that transsexuals are abominations, the idea that Jews are only in it for the money, the idea that “your” religion is better than “their” religion and so you have the right to kill “them” off, that the U.S. equals “god’s plan for the world.”

I could go on and on, but I hope you get my point:

It won’t work like that.

1. and I must say if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you should be very ashamed of yourself [↩]