Editor’s note: A Grade 12 English class at Prince Albert Collegiate Institute has been working on editorials on world issues. Daily Herald managing editor Perry Bergson visited their classroom last month to lend a hand. The results will be showing up the pages of the Daily Herald in coming weeks.
The violence happened because the government was attempting to counter the rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. The Janjaweed consists mostly of people with Arab descent, while the rebel groups and citizens are primarily ethnic Africans.
Instead of attacking the people who were in the rebel groups the Sudanese government primarily attacked the villages from where the members of the rebel groups came from. More than two million people were displaced from their homes and over 200 000 were murdered.
Sudan is divided by religion, tribal differences, economic disparities, and ethnicity; it is one of the most diverse countries in Africa. Yet despite these diversities all political power is focused in the north among a small group of Arab-speaking Muslims in the capital city of Khartoum.
But how can we learn from this?
I think it is important, now more than ever, to understand that Prince Albert is growing in diversity every year and that discrimination destroys our society by destroying our people. Although the atrocities and discrimination that happened in Darfur were much more extreme compared to the discrimination that occurs in Prince Albert, I believe that it is important to conquer these hurtful thoughts and actions in order to keep our children and people safe.
The people of both Darfur and Prince Albert have lives and family, it makes no difference where the humiliation, beatings, bullying, and murders occur because of ethnicity when people are being hurt.
I take a stand against discrimination and say that there are many ethnicities, but only one human race.
