My name is Sasha. I am 11 years old. I live in Topanga and I go to school at Malibu High School. I travel a lot with my mom. A few weeks ago I saw a special on the situation in Darfur. I am very interested in it because my mother is from Africa. And I thought that if my mom had been in Africa and not come to the United States, my face might have been one of the faces you saw on TV in a refugee camp in Darfur.
Then I thought, why am I not hearing about Darfur? All I am hearing on the news is about Iraq. I did my research and found out that over 400,000 people have been killed and that more than two million live in refugee camps in Sudan and Chad. The same thing happened when Hitler started his campaign against the Jews. And genocide happened again in Rwanda.
If this were happening in Europe, it would be all over the news. But because this is happening in Africa, we are not doing anything about it. I am outraged that we have so many soldiers in Iraq but we can’t send soldiers to stop the killing in Darfur.
I want all the kids to wake up and realize that we have to take a stand now before it is too late. We need all the kids in Darfur to survive since they are part of our future together on this planet. I don’t understand why the adults are not protesting all over the world. I feel that we have given a lot of time to the adults to do something about this but so far nothing is happening and more and more people are dying. I want to ask the world: “Did we not learn a lesson from what Hitler did to the Jews and what happened in Rwanda?” How can we stand by and go on with our daily lives knowing that there will be deaths in Darfur and that we could have done something about it but didn’t?
We have to put a lot of pressure on our government and wake them up to get the United Nations to join forces with us to help the people in Darfur.
In order for me to get all the kids united and help put the pressure on the government, I need to do a video and put it on TV just for the kids. I want to let them know how I feel about this and ask if they would like to join in. I want to do a Web site for kids all over the world where we can sign petitions for this cause and state other issues we all feel strongly about. I need to do this because we are the future and we want to determine what will happen after all of you are gone. We want our voices heard and our choices respected.
Sasha Kanji Czaplinsky