..dont look away..

Hello hello..

Finally my exams are over!! and now I'm in London getting very excited about my eurotrip which starts TOMOROW!! woohoo.. =) It's been quite depressing though, yesterday when I was moving out of my room at Stephenson Hall, I was looking around my room and seeing it just as how I saw it when I first moved in.. it was sooo sad.. it looked so bare.. with no character.. it's funny how being in one place for about 9 months or even less can change the way you see it, and the way it is so much.

Anyway, my "problems" aren't really the focus of this post today. Lately I've been so caught up in all my little "problems" and not really thinking about the bigger picture of anything really. And often, whenever you're down people always say "you should be thankful, think about all those people that don't have food or clothes blablabla" and you might not admit it but you know that in your mind you're just thinking to yourself "yea yea, how is THAT going to make me change how I'm feeling at this moment?" and to an extent, that's true, being conscious of other people's sufferings aren't going to change the way you feel at that moment, because when you're feeling down and you feel like you're so alone in a sea of people nothing is going to make you feel better. There are only things that can change the way you feel, or see things. But in thinking of those things you forget about your own problems for that one moment, and then you forget why you were even thinking of them in the first place.

I just finished reading a few articles on the people living in Darfur and the situation there as of now. And I never really thought myself ignorant of issues such as these, but reading the articles has really opened my eyes and made me realise how insignificant my problems really are. Sure, it doesn't mean that I'm not upset anymore about my problems, and I'm probably going to go back to thinking about them tomorrow or something, but for now.. it makes me feel really silly to be worrying about all these things. Can you imagine, if I went to Darfur right now and complained to someone there about my "problems"? I'd probably get laughed at.

The situation in Darfur is.. {and I can't even find a suitable word to describe this} ..painful, saddening, horrific... I think you get the picture. The governement there supporting militia to kill, rape, burn villages and ultimately displace people in the western Sudan region. With horror stories such as women getting their husbands killed and having their sons thrown into fires right before their eyes, you really start to wonder about whether people can really called people anymore. They are worse than animals. UN resolutions have been passed as to the situation in Darfur only to pass unimplemented simply because some countries would rather not give up their oil source. The UN Security Council consists of the US, Britain, France, Russia and China. And because before acting they prefer to be in agreement nothing has happened. The reason being because China, with backing from Russia have abstained on resolutions, preventing action. Why is China blocking? Because it gets 10 per cent of its oil from Sudan and in return, is shielding Khartoum. Incredible don't you think?

What really shocked me is the extent to which women get treated where War is prevalent. Wherever there is war, women get used. They get raped and used and not because soldiers are lonely - it's not about the sex at all - but about destroying the future. "Raping a woman is such an effective weapon because it affects an entire community, for decades....Children who witness the crime are traumatized, men flee from their partners out of shame, and women become 'damaged goods', sometimes literally, if they can no longer have children because of the violence."
"Through raping wives and daughters, the attackers actually target the 'real enemy': the men behind them. Having to have your enemy's baby goes one step further and turns this sexual violence into a tool for 'ethnic cleansing'".

And raping women during wartimes is not new at all. It happened in the second world war, in Rwanda, even in Iraq now. Rape wasn't even taken as a serious crime in the International Criminal Court until the last decade. Why? Because the international institutions are filled with male judges, prosecutors and researchers. You'd think that with all the hype of equality between the sexes and women's right would have changed all this. You really start to think whether or not society still harbours an unequal attitude towards women or not - even in peacetime! Women in a great number of parts in the world are still seen as the property of men, and not their own person. Apparently in Sudan, rape within marriage is not seen as a crime, beating your wife because she has "misbehaved" is widely condoned.

However, as gruesome as all this is, you really get to know how much strength women really have. Women in Darfur constantly leave their camp to collect firewood. They go unprotected, with the risk of getting raped by militia and the majority of them do. "But if the men go, they risk being murdered, and if no-one goes, the family will starve." Talk about being stuck between a cock and a hard place. (pun intended).

Darfur means "Homeland". Ironic isn't it.

Anyway, this has really been a somber (sombre?) post but I couldn't help it.. Here are some site recommendations incase you want to find out more.
www.globefordarfur.org
www.sudanreeves.org
www.refugee-rights.org
www.darfurcentre.ch
www.ecosonline.org
www.sudantribune.com
http://sudanwatch.blogspot.com
www.unsudanig.org

I probably won't be posting much over June because I'll be away, but I will if I can... and *ahem* I'm expecting my inboxes to be full of mail because *ahem* someone's birthday is coming up soon lol. I hope everyone has a GREAT holiday, for those of you who are home already or will be going soon, you lucky butts! But I can't complain, I'll be traipsing around Europe ;)

See you soon! xxx