Stepping-up their protests over the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, organizers with the Washington, D.C.-based human rights group Africa Action say they will stage vigils every Wednesday in front of the White House until the U.S. government takes action to end the rein of terror against thousands of innocent people. 
 
The vigils began last month and have drawn hundreds of participants, including members of the Sudanese community in Washington D.C., students, religious leaders  and human rights activists, according to Akenji Ndumu, an associate with Africa Action.
 
Participants in the vigils, including actor/activist Danny Glover, have demanded immediate action from President George W. Bush to stop the genocide in Darfur, where about 400,000 people have died in the past two years as a result of government policies, Ndumu said. Many were victims of violence and disease.

Recent reports confirm that the security situation in Darfur is deteriorating, and the humanitarian crisis is reaching desperate proportions, according to Africa Action.
 
“The vigils are necessary to let President George W. Bush know that even though he remains silent, the people are not silent, and we’re taking this issue to his doorstep,” Ndumu, who organized the vigils, told BlackAmericaWeb.com Wednesday. 

According to Ndumu, the vigils will take place every Wednesday at Lafayette Park in front of the White House. He said he encourages support from all people, and especially black Americans. 
 
“This is probably the worst humanitarian crisis before the tsunami, and the U.S. government has no policy to stop the genocide,” he said.

Last December, President Bush signed legislation authorizing $200 million in aid, including money for deploying more African peacekeepers in the region, and another $100 million as an incentive for reaching a final peace agreement in the 21-year war between the Sudanese government and the southern rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army. That conflict is separate from the Darfur violence.

The bill Bush signed authorizes the money, but does not actually provide it. The money would have to come from a separate spending bill or by shifting funds from other programs.  
  
Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, questioned whether the genocide is being allowed to continue because the victims are black.
 
"Would the U.S. government act in the same way if this were happening to white people?” Booker said in a statement. “Why should African lives be any less valuable?"
 
Ndumu said although Bush failed to mention the Darfur genocide in his most recent State of The Union Address, Africa Action is calling on the U.N. Security Council to do more to stop the killings in Darfur. After weeks of negotiations, the U.N. Security Council unanimously voted last month to send 10,700 peacekeepers to Sudan.       
 
“Genocide,” Ndumu said, “is an international crime.”  
 
Several calls to the White House press office Wednesday were not returned.
 
Two weeks ago, a vigil was held on the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people were massacred. Speakers included Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Africa; Glover, who was arrested at the protest last August on the steps of Sudan's embassy in Washington; Yves Twagirayezu, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and Fatima Haroun, a Darfuri woman working with the Sudan Peace Advocates Network.
 
"In a mere 100 days in 1994, 800,000 people were butchered in Rwanda, and the U.S. government did nothing,” Booker said. “As we commemorate that sad event 11 years later, the same atrocities are taking place in Sudan, and the president’s apathy again reveals a flagrant disregard for African lives. This time we will not allow the White House to twiddle its thumbs in the face of genocide."
 
Marie Clarke Brill, director of Public Education & Mobilization at Africa Action, said the U.S. government has identified the problem in Darfur, but has done nothing about it.  
 
"The White House has called the atrocities in Darfur genocide and failed to take the action necessary to stop the violence,” Brill said in a statement. “Instead, the U.S. stands back with eyes wide shut and answers the suffering with silence. That is unacceptable! We demand that President Bush break his silence and do everything necessary to move the UN Security Council to form a multinational intervention force to protect the people of Darfur."
 
According to The International Herald Tribune, the Bush administration urged the United Nations to investigate the violence in the Sudan. A UN commission's 176-page report documents a series of crimes, including victims having their eyes gouged out or being dragged on the ground by camels; women and girls kept naked in camps and women forced to hand over their baby sons to be killed.
 
Said Ann-Louise Colgan, director of Policy Analysis and Communications at Africa Action:  “There is a pressing need for a rapid and robust international intervention in Darfur to protect civilians, to enforce the ceasefire and to facilitate a massive expansion of humanitarian operations.  Unless such an intervention is mounted immediately, up to a million people could be dead by the end of this year."