By Cheryl Rossi-Staff writer
But the Darfuri national felt compelled to get involved when he heard in 2003 that villagers in Western Sudan were being raped and killed by the Arab-dominated Sudanese government's proxy Janjaweed militia.
He started a B.C. chapter of the Toronto-based Darfur Association of Canada in 2004 and sought organizations to help him bring awareness to the atrocities occurring in the homeland he'd left in 1990.
The Muslim man found a strong ally in the chair of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, Mark Weintraub, who he met while speaking about Darfur at SFU.
"We who brought to the world the mantra of 'never again,' we who know what it's like to be targeted and know how important it is to have a world community who cares, were motivated and mobilized once we started hearing about a possible genocide in Sudan to do all we could to activate public opinion, and to get the Canadian government to take a lead role in the international community to ensure that a genocide would not occur," Weintraub, a Vancouver lawyer, said.
Abdalla is now a full-time human rights activist, who represented the people of Darfur during the seventh inter-Sudanese peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, from November 2005 to May 2006. He's also a freelance consultant for the U.N. in West Africa. He flew to Nairobi, Kenya, Jan. 13 to try to address the inequitable distribution of power and wealth in Darfur.
Canada became the second largest donor to a humanitarian crisis for the first time in its history when it committed half a billion dollars to Sudan in 2005, Abdalla said.
The government's commitment resulted from hard work by people from the Lower Mainland and B.C. Abdalla and Weintraub joined organizations across the country to bring awareness to the genocide and pressure the Canadian government to take action. They encouraged B.C. Senator Mobina Jaffer, already the special envoy to Sudan, to tighten her focus on Darfur, and she obliged.
An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 in Darfur have been killed and 2.5 to 3 million refugees are living in camps. After the African Union produced a peace agreement that was rejected by most last May, the situation went from horrific to worse.
"We've been trying to get the international community to bring in a robust United Nations peacekeeping force to bring security and tranquility to the region and tackle or reverse the humanitarian crisis," Abdalla said. "Canada has not been doing as much as it's supposed to do recently within the past few months, and maybe that's due to the change of government. The new government needs to be put up to speed in terms of what needs to be done."
Senator Mobina Jaffer is no longer the special envoy to Sudan, and humanitarian groups want another to be appointed.
"We are told that there are Canadian flags in Darfur on helicopters and on other transport vehicles and that the people of Darfur see Canada as playing a lead role of conscience, and given the energies and efforts we have expended to date, we would like to see the job finished," Weintraub said. "That can only come through continued pressure on our leadership, letters and telephone calls and within church groups and human rights groups and synagogues and mosques and schools, that this issue continue to have a profile, because, in fact, the profile seems to be bearing some fruit, albeit several years too late for those who have died."
