Rally decries Darfur killings

Religious organizations, political groups and foreign nationals led thousands of people in a rally yesterday on the Mall to urge U.S. leaders to help end the widespread killings in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The rally brought together an unusual coalition of about 160 Catholic, evangelical, Muslim and Jewish organizations and Democratic and Republican lawmakers to help stop what many have called “a genocide.”

“This issue crosses every religion, every race, every age,” said Rinat Manhoff, 28, who came with about 200 people from Temple Micah in Northwest. “And now there is no excuse for the world not to do something about it.”

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, Catholic archbishop of Washington, was among the key religious leaders who participated in the rally.

“It’s time now to say, ‘No more,’ ” he said. “We’ve been awakened to how these people suffer. We in Washington understand that we are all people, that we are all brothers and sisters. We can make a difference.”

The years of fighting between ethnic groups and Arab militias in western Sudan have killed at least 180,000 people and have left about 2 million homeless. The U.N. World Food Program said Friday that it was cutting rations there in half because of a lack of money.

Organizers estimated that about 75,000 people attended the event on the Mall, including 240 buses of activists from 41 states.

Organizers of the event, sponsored by the Save Darfur Coalition, had a permit for 10,000 to 15,000 people, said Sgt. Scott Fear of the U.S. Park Police. The agency does not give official crowd estimates.

The rally was just one of 18 over the weekend in several U.S. cities and coincided with a U.N. deadline for Darfur’s warring parties to reach a peace deal to end the three-year conflict.

The deadline for peace talks was extended yesterday, after rebels rejected a proposed deal to halt the fighting.

Salim Ahmed Salim, a lead mediator for the African Union, said the talks would continue until midnight tomorrow, pushing back the deadline for talks that have gone on for two years but so far have failed to halt the violence.

Earlier, the rebels called for changes to the pact — after the Sudanese government indicated that it would accept the proposal.

“The African Union has extended the deadline of the peace talks by 48 hours, as requested by the United States and other international partners to allow extensive consultations to go ahead,” he said at the talks’ site in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

“Darfur is about human lives,” said Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, a Republican now running for the U.S. Senate. “It is about our brothers and sisters dying on a continent that is 14 hours away. The power of your compassion [will] help cure the problems of the people of Darfur.”

The international community has poured in help while pressuring both sides to settle the conflict. Ralliers, however, said more needs to be done.

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