hear their heartbeat

Fighting and genocide in Sudan has been a terrible feature of our world for several decades. A friend of mine was an aid worker in Africa maybe 25 years ago, and the Sudan was considered too unsafe then for his organisation to attempt to bring help to the suffering people of southern Sudan.

In the last decade, the western region of Darfur has been in the news as hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes, victims of Arab militias who burn villages, destroy livestock and water sources, kill and rape. More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003. Amnesty International says that there is "incontrovertible" evidence that the Sudanese government and military are supporting these militias by supplying them and by bombing villages.

Now, as reported in the Melbourne Age newspaper, Google Earth has joined with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in a project to publicise this genocide and hopefully bring effective pressure to bear to stop the killing. Google Earth provides high resolution satellite imagery that allows users to zoom in on Darfur and see the destruction for themselves.

It would be good to pass on these links to others and so give greater publicity to the people of Darfur's plight.

We hear their heartbeat In the trees Our sons stand naked Through the walls Our daughters cry See their tears in the rainfall." U2, "Mothers of the Disappeared"