Dear friends,
Please join AJWS this Thursday, September 18 at 5:30p.m. for a conference call to discuss the New York City September 24 vigil to spotlight China ’s role as the primary supplier of weapons to Sudan. With full knowledge that they are being used as genocidal tools in Darfur, China provides an estimated 90 percent of the small arms Khartoum has purchased since 2004—despite a U.N. arms embargo that Sudan openly refuses to abide by. Help us pressure China to end weapons sales to Sudan and for an expanded and enforced arms embargo to stop the flow of arms to the government in Khartoum . On Thursday’s call, we will discuss the program on September 24, a letter we will deliver to the Ambassador at the Chinese Mission and ways to turn people out to the event.
Here are the call-in details:
Date and time: September 18 at 5:30 p.m.
Call-in number: 888.757.2748
Access code: 172687#
Kindly RSVP to me at mburak@ajws.org
The New York event will take place at the Chinese Mission to the U.N. in solidarity with nationwide events happening at Chinese Consulates in San Francisco, Chicago and at the Embassy in Washington, D.C. We are still recruiting speakers but have already confirmed a powerful line up: Ruth Messinger, President of American Jewish World Service, Motasim Adam, Founder of the Darfur People’s Association, and Reverend Daughtry, Founder and President of the National Religious Leaders of African Ancestry. If you have any speaker ideas of survivors of the Rwandan, Cambodian and Bosnian genocides and the Holocaust, please let me know.
In preparation of the event, AJWS is circulating a letter signed by Holocaust and Genocide survivors calling on the Government of China to end its supply of weapons to Sudan. China’s role in Darfur echoes its involvement in the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Serbia. The letter states, "Olympic gold medals and fanfare in Beijing can’t obscure this blood on China ’s hands, but positive diplomacy and an end to arms sales can. When your nation takes presidency of the U.N. Security Council in October, how will the world view you?" The survivors challenge China to let its country be known as a peacemaker rather than as a supplier of the tools for annihilation. We will read this letter out loud on September 24 and deliver it to the Ambassador at the Mission. Stay tuned for the final draft of the letter to be sent tomorrow.
We hope you will join us!
Thank you for your commitment to the people of Darfur,
Meredith
Meredith Burak, Consultant
American Jewish World Service
45 west 36th Street, New York NY 10018
t 212.792.2821 f 212.792.2930
