April’s Darfur Hero

Tom Lantos 1928 - 2008

The Save Darfur Coalition is honored to name Tom Lantos, who passed away on February 11, 2008, as its Darfur hero. Congressman Lantos represented California's 12th District in the House of Representatives for almost three decades. He was Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and founding Co-Chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Tom Lantos was the moral conscience of the House of Representatives--working for human rights all over the world. As an outspoken leader in Congress on behalf of the people of Darfur and Sudan, he managed the legislation on the floor in 2004 designating the situation in Darfur genocide. After that, he sponsored additional legislation, held hearings, wrote articles, participated in protests and took numerous actions to urge the world to end the Darfur genocide. On April 28, 2006, Congressman Lantos was one of five members of Congress arrested at a protest at the Sudanese Embassy, saying, "If you're looking for lack of international morality, Darfur encompasses all aspects."

In May 2007, Congressman Lantos led 107 of his colleagues in writing a letter to President Hu, appealing to China to do its part as a member of the international community to bring peace to Darfur. He wrote, "The upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are going to be an important event for the image of the PRC....It would be a disaster for China if the games were to be marred by protests...whom will undoubtedly link your government to the continued atrocities in Darfur, if there is no significant improvement in the conditions. [W]e urge you to protect your country's image from being irredeemably tarnished, through association with a genocidal regime, for the purposes of economic gains....unless China does its part to ensure that the government of Sudan accepts the best and most reasonable path to peace, history will judge your government as having bank-rolled a genocide."

In support of our press conference on October 1, 2007, calling on Franklin Templeton to divest its holdings in PetroChina, Congressman Lantos highlighted China's complicity in the Government of Sudan's human rights violations. "Among countries unwilling to support the international community in deploying a robust civilian protection operation to stop the genocide, China assumed a unique culpability," he wrote. "In 2004, it forced the UN Security Council to water down an oil sanctions resolution and threatened it would veto any future resolutions sanctioning Sudan. China shielded Khartoum against international sanction while the Sudanese military drove tens of thousands out of their communities in the oil regions to speed up exploration."

On April 9, 2008, the 2008 Beijing Olympic torch relay stops in San Francisco, part of the district formerly represented by Congressman Lantos, and the only city in North America which will host the relay. We reiterate his request to China to use its unique influence with Sudan to end the Darfur genocide by quoting his statement at a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing on Darfur in February 2007: "Our patience has been totally exhausted. The innocent civilians of Darfur are crying out for our help. We must not continue to fail them."

On behalf of the international Darfur activist community, we express our gratitude for Congressman Lantos' extraordinary leadership and support and our heartfelt condolences to his family, friends and incomparable staff. We will miss him and will persevere in his memory and honor to end the Darfur genocide and bring peace to all of Sudan.