Protesters call for UN to act in Sudan

Francis Bok said the world has ignored his native Sudan. The 25-year-old said he spent 10 years of his youth as a slave and most of his adult life in churches and universities telling others about the war that took the lives of his parents and two sisters. But he still thinks the world is not listening.

He decided to take his plight to the world, via the front man for the United Nations.

Bok, along with about 100 people, gathered yesterday afternoon in Harvard Square to demand that the United Nations stop the genocide in Sudan and act against its Arab Muslim government. The protest came a day before UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who hails from Ghana, is scheduled to receive an honorary degree from Harvard and deliver the university commencement address.

''This story, the story about my country, should be in the front page of every newspaper," said Bok, who works as a speaker for the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group, which organized the protest along with the Black Ministerial Alliance of Boston. ''Nobody knows about this."

Sudanese war survivors such as Bok, former politicians, and civil rights leaders urged Annan during the hour and a half protest to prevent more bloodshed in Sudan, a nation of 38 million in northern Africa.

The Rev. Charles Stith, the former US ambassador to Tanzania and director of Boston University's African Presidential Archives, said the killings and torture in Sudan have to stop, even if it takes a multinational military intervention.

''It's important for the world to know about the human crisis in Sudan," Stith said. ''This is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world."

The 20-year war between Sudan's Muslim ruling government from the north and the mostly Christian and animist, rebels from the south has claimed the lives of more than 3 million people, and millions more have been displaced, according to the United Nations.

Protesters chanted with a drum beat in the background. Some held banners that read ''Kofi, go to Sudan not Harvard," and ''Kofi stop genocide."

Fred Calm, who held one of the banners, said he understood victims of genocide because his father survived the Holocaust. The world cannot stand still while people are dying, he said. ''The United Nations has neglected the issue," said the 57-year-old engineer from Sharon. ''People are being killed and starved."

Tim Wallace, a 51-year-old engineer from Bedford, said he heard horror stories of torture and slaying from a couple of his friends who visited Rwanda during the mid-1990s and said the United Nations cannot let those stories happen again in Sudan.

The world has to act quickly before it is too late, he said.