You remember that a few years ago, it was discovered that slavery was being practiced in Sudan and in other Arab countries in North Africa. Well, in the past few months alone, 30,000 people have been killed by roving bands of armed thugs know as the "Janjaweed," a word that literally means "armed men on horseback." They have set upon areas in the West like Darfur and attempted to annihilate people in a campaign that has been called by both houses of Congress as genocide.

In Sudan, it is particularly ugly. The roving bands have been accused of raping women of the South in a program of ethnic cleansing, attempting, as one said, "to produce a lighter population." But one of the leaders of the Janjaweed refuted the charge of rape in an interview published in the Economist magazine, by saying that force against them was not necessary since they invite such action by their sexually-oriented dancing.

I was invited by [Joe Madison] to come up there one day and I found a line of people marching outside of the Sudanese embassy. Very prominent were the blue picket signs made by a strong delegation of Service Employees International Union workers who were there, along with others, all chanting to a familiar song let by one of the original South African protesters, former Congressman Rev. Walter Fauntroy, "We shall not, we shall not be moved"; and "Stop the killing, stop the killing now!"

Minority & ethnic groups
International