c. 2004 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Religious and humanitarian groups rallied from coast to coast Wednesday (Aug. 25) in solidarity with more than a million refugees in Sudan who fled their homes in fear of government-backed militias.

The “National Day of Conscience” demonstrations were organized by the Save Darfur Coalition, a broad-based network of religious and aid groups that are demanding international intervention to stop what they call a genocide campaign by the Sudanese government.

Six people, including actor Danny Glover and the Rev. Bill Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, were arrested outside the Embassy of Sudan in a raucous but peaceful protest.

“The violence and killing in Sudan can be prevented if we as a world community come together and raise our voices,” Sinkford said. “The faith community has to be on the side of peace. It’s actually very simple.”

Scores of demonstrations and vigils were planned in cities and towns across the country. The Sudan crisis has forged alliances unseen since the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s among groups that often have little in common.

The United Nations estimates that 1.4 million people have sought safety in refugee camps _ along with 180,000 across the border in neighboring Chad _ as they flee roaming bands of government-backed militias.

Critics accuse the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum of orchestrating a systematic killing campaign against black Africans that has destroyed villages and left between 30,000 and 50,000 people dead.

Government leaders insist they are trying to squelch rebel insurgents, and the Khartoum government has so far resisted a plan by members of the African Union to deploy 3,000 African peacekeepers.

The crisis has hit hardest in the western Darfur region, a Texas-size area that aid groups say is unsafe and where women are systematically raped and children live on the edge of starvation.

A 30-day deadline imposed by the United Nations for Sudan to rein in the militias expires Monday (Aug. 30), and a preliminary State Department report found “a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities,” according to The New York Times.

Both houses of Congress declared in a July 22 joint resolution that the evidence points to genocide, but European governments have taken a more cautious view. If the United Nations finds evidence of genocide, it would be legally obligated to intervene.

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, told reporters in a conference call that the world cannot wait for formal declarations of genocide before deciding to act.

“We feel compelled by our own humanity to sensitize as many people as possible to our own moral imperative which is to tell the Sudanese victims, `You are no longer alone,”’ Wiesel said.

MO/PH END ECKSTROM