Five lawmakers arrested at protest

Five lawmakers were arrested at a demonstration in front of the Sudanese embassy today.

Protesting the recent expulsion of 16 aid groups from Darfur, Representatives Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), John Lewis (D-Ga.), Donna Edwards (D-Md.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) were arrested along with Darfur activists for refusing police orders to leave the embassy after speaking.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s recently kicked out 16 aid groups from the region.

“President Bashir has a choice,” McGovern said at the protest. “He can choose to let the humanitarian groups return; he can choose to end the violence and the killing; and he can choose serious negotiations for a just and lasting peace. Or he can continue to commit crimes against humanity– crimes with which he is already charged–and charges that will one day catch up with him and bring him down.”

Lewis, who was severely beaten while protesting for civil rights in the 1960s, expressed outrage at Bashir’s recent move and called on the international community to take action.

“I don’t understand how the world can just stand by and watch the slaughter of innocent victims in Darfur,” said Lewis. “Haven’t we learned the hard lessons of Rwanda and Bosnia, of the Holocaust?”

The event was organized by the Save Darfur Coalition. Jerry Fowler, coalition president, was also arrested, along with John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project, and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.