Letter to the editor

Voice covers important issue

I would like to commend Josh Dahlke for the article he wrote last week, “Facebook group raises awareness, support for Darfur.” This issue has received little attention and any attention that can be brought to it helps.

I first heard about the genocide in Darfur, Sudan about two years ago when I was a member of the UWRF chapter of Amnesty International.

Amnesty International may not be active on the UWRF campus any longer, but that doesn’t mean there are not any caring, passionate students here that care about humanitarian issues such as the atrocities in Darfur. It’s astounding to me that hundreds of thousands of people can be murdered without much of the world even batting an eyelash. I’ve seen a couple of students pics up the Feb. 9 issue of the Student Voice and say “what is Darfur?” An educated college populace should at least be aware of this issue, but if UWRF students didn’t know about Darfur before this article they do now.

In a world where so much attention is being paid to the Middle East and North Korea, Africa has fallen by the wayside. In the mid-90’s extremist Hutu militia groups killed possibly a million or so Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda while much of the world sat back and ignored it. Genocide is happening again today in Africa as numerous native Sudanese are being murdered by the Janjaweed.

I’m glad Mr. Dahlke has brought some light to this issue and I’m also please Jeremy Riddell-Kaufman has used the social network of Facebook for such a positive cause. Getting people informed about this issues is the first step when in comes to making a difference.

Derrick Knutson
Student