After taking a trip to the troubled country of Sudan, George Clooney , who has himself been a long-time advocate for the broken country , appeared before Congress today to testify about the “campaign of murder” being carried out there.
Clooney is fresh off a trip to the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan. “What you see is a constant drip of fear,” he said. He says that there are villagers there who find themselves hiding daily from bombings. “We found children filled with shrapnel, including a 9-year-old boy who had both of his hands blown off,” the actor told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee .
Clooney blames Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir along with two other men in his ranks for the violence being perpetuated in the Sudan. “They’re all charged with war crimes” in Darfur, he said, “and are now proving themselves to be the greatest war criminals of this century by far.”
Most of the violence in the Sudan is perpetuated along ethnic lines and also involves a fight for control over the country’s oil supply, which has since shut down from the conflict. Clooney describes the violence as an effort “to clear people out ethnically because of the color of their skin.”
Clooney told CNN that the White House and Congress support his efforts to help innocent civilians in the Sudan. “There is a lot of ways to attack this problem. One is to do what we did with terrorist groups, which is go after the money,” he says. “The other way is to actually work with China, not try to guilt them, but work with them.”
“It is a campaign of murder and fear and displacement and starvation,” he told the Senate today.
Do you think Clooney is a good crusader for change in the Sudan?
