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Hopefully Steven Spielberg’s pressure will at least push China in the right direction in helping the Darfur crisis.  Even the smallest ripple can travel a long way toward changing things in Darfur and China.  I can remember Ronald Reagan’s speech when he uttered the famous words:

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

We need this kind of passion again when it comes to the crisis in Darfur.  We can make a difference with our words, it’s been done before and it will be done again.

If you need good information on the Darfur crisis, then check out this Bloomberg.com article:

 July 25 (Bloomberg) — After serving four years in the U.S. Marines, Brian Steidle was looking for another adventure. So in 2004 he took a job as an unarmed observer for the African Union in Sudan, a country racked by a 20-year civil war.

What he saw during his six-month stay in the western region of Darfur radically changed his life and helped alert the world to a neglected humanitarian crisis.

Steidle’s experience is chronicled in “The Devil Came on Horseback,” a gripping and horrifying documentary about an ethnic slaughter that has claimed an estimated 400,000 lives and driven 2.5 million people from their homes. Since returning from Sudan in 2005, the admiral’s son has traveled the world to spread the word about how Sudan’s Arab-run government — backed by a ruthless militia known as Janjaweed (“devil on a horse”) — has attempted to wipe out Darfur’s black African tribes.

“I knew that bad things happen,” a teary Steidle says near the end of the film made by Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern. “I didn’t know the world would stand by and allow them to happen.” read more…

Steven Spielberg, the famous American film director, jumps head first in to the Darfur crisis by writing an official letter to Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, asking him to help pressure Sudan to end the genocide occurring in Darfur.

The NPR reported on this matter and actually published the letter on their website:

His Excellency Hu Jintao
President of the People’s Republic of China
Zhongnanhai, Xichengqu, Beijing City
People’s Republic of China

April 2, 2007

Your Excellency,

I greatly value my association with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, an event meant to unify nations and people as well as to promote respect for universal moral principles. These first Olympic Games to be held in China also promise to be a fitting symbol of the important role that your nation will play in the affairs of the world in this new century.

My contributions as a filmmaker have led me to the Beijing Olympics. As important as film is to me, however, there is another aspect of my life’s work that is both more personal and more significant.

Among my proudest achievements has been the establishment of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. The Institute has recorded the video testimonies of 52,000 survivors of the Holocaust from 56 countries in 32 languages. These remarkable documents have offered the world faces and voices of men and women who survived the genocide which, in Hebrew, we call the Shoah. These first-hand experiences have been preserved and made available for scholarship and education so that the genocide suffered by the Jews under the Nazis can never be forgotten.

Even more important than the collection of the testimonies themselves is the mission of the Institute: to use those testimonies to overcome intolerance, prejudice, bigotry and the suffering they cause. We are doing that now in many countries around the world, and I hope that China will someday be one of them. I regard the creation of the Shoah Foundation Institute as the most important professional accomplishment of my life. It alerts me, and I hope others as well, to the importance of speaking out on behalf of those who are targeted by governments for murder.

I believe there is no greater crime against humanity than genocide. I feel strongly that every member of the world community has a moral and ethical responsibility to act to prevent such crimes, to eliminate the conditions in which they are bred and to combat them wherever they exist. Therefore, I am writing this letter to you, not as one of the overseas artistic advisors to the Olympic Ceremonies, but as a private citizen who has made a personal commitment to do all I can to oppose genocide through the work of the Shoah Foundation Institute.

For four years I have followed the reports of the chaos and human suffering of the civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan. There is no question in my mind that the government of Sudan is engaged in a policy which is best described as a genocide.

I have only recently come to understand fully the extent of China’s involvement in the region and its strategic and supportive relationship with the Sudanese government. I share the concern of many around the world who believe that China should be a clear advocate for United Nations action to bring the genocide in Darfur to an end.

Accordingly, I add my voice to those who ask that China change its policy toward Sudan and pressure the Sudanese government to accept the entrance of United Nations peacekeepers to protect the victims of genocide in Darfur. China is uniquely positioned to do this and has considerable influence in the region that could lead efforts by the international community to bring an end to the human suffering there.

My hope for all sovereign nations is that they will work creatively to co-exist with great peace and lasting prosperity and that they will treat their citizens with dignity and respect. That hope motivates this letter, which I send to you in the spirit of the Olympic Games themselves.

Your Excellency, I look forward to your response and would be more than willing, if you desire, to meet with you to discuss this further. In the meantime, I will watch with great interest China’s actions in Sudan.

Most sincerely,

Steven Spielberg