We are the last hope for millions

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From Amnesty USA:

Have you seen Hotel Rwanda? It’s the heart-breaking – and by all accounts accurate -- account of the 1994 massacre of nearly 800,000 innocent men, women and children in Rwanda. The senseless slaughter took place in less than four months.

Actor Don Cheadle was nominated for an Academy Award for his role playing a real-life hero, Paul Rusesabagina, in Hotel Rwanda. Whether Cheadle wins this Sunday at the Oscars or not, he has already helped tell a story too recent and too important to forget.

The horrors of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 are pregnant with lessons and warnings to all of us who care about human rights and global justice. Yet while Rwanda slowly heals from its incomprehensible nightmare, a human horror of comparable scope has befallen the people of Sudan.

Only weeks ago Cheadle was in the Darfur region of Sudan, hearing eyewitness accounts of Janjawid atrocities firsthand. Cheadle makes the connection in a recent op-ed written on his return from Sudan:

At a moment during "Hotel Rwanda" when all hope for a meaningful international response to the genocide seems lost, the main character Paul Rusesabagina proclaims, "We must shame them into helping." Nothing else had worked. Pictures, pleas, facts, international conventions, and United Nations resolutions all had produced a cowardly retreat by a world unwilling to stand up to evil.

Millions are depending on Amnesty. It is why I am so proud to be part of Amnesty International, and so grateful for your past support.

You are one of a million ordinary people who have made a personal commitment not to stand idly by while such atrocities abound. It is why I ask each of you to renew your commitment, today, right now, by joining Amnesty and donating as generously as you can to support our life-saving work in Sudan, in the Congo, and wherever people are crying out for fundamental dignity and justice.

Amnesty was the first international human rights monitor on the ground in Darfur, where some estimates put the death toll from government-condoned attacks, dislocation, and disease at more than 10,000 people each month. Amnesty has been at the forefront of global demands that the perpetrators of violence in Darfur, and in Sudan’s blood-soaked southern region, be held accountable for their acts.

How the world responds to genocide and other crimes against humanity represents one of the greatest moral tests of our lifetime.

In a recent interview, real-life Paul Rusesabagina said of Hotel Rwanda, “This movie is a message of hope. It is a message of hope for those people who might think that was the end of evil. That was not the end of evil. We can always try to do something good whenever there's a will.”

Our test is upon us. Please join with me today in making a generous donation to Amnesty International.

Sincerely,

Bill Schulz
Amnesty International USA

P.S. Your donation will send a message of concern the whole world will hear.