‘We Want to Make a Light Baby’
Arab Militiamen in Sudan Said to Use Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 30, 2004; Page A01
GENEINA, Sudan, June 29 — At first light on Sunday, three young women walked into a scrubby field just outside their refugee camp in West Darfur. They had gone out to collect straw for their family’s donkeys. They recalled thinking that the Arab militiamen who were attacking African tribes at night would still be asleep. But six men grabbed them, yelling Arabic slurs such as “zurga” and “abid,” meaning “black” and “slave.” Then the men raped them, beat them and left them on the ground, they said.
“They grabbed my donkey and my straw and said, ‘Black girl, you are too dark. You are like a dog. We want to make a light baby,’ ” said Sawela Suliman, 22, showing slashes from where a whip had struck her thighs as her father held up a police and health report with details of the attack. “They said, ‘You get out of this area and leave the child when it’s made.’ “
This seemingly world-wide obsession w/ light skin isn’t a natural affection folks are innately born with. That we see it reflected the world over is more a result of global European terrorism (colonization/settling) the world over to where they have the power positions. Even in countries such as Brazil and Venezuela, the ones holding office are closer to European than the general population. Conversely, in countries where such terrorism didn’t quite work, like China, the leaders look like the population. Not to blame whitey again and again, but this is a direct fall out of Europeans traveling to other folks’ countries, stealing their land and natural resources, setting up their forms of economy/government, imposing their methods of schooling/teaching, breaking tribal mores/folkways, drawing country borders to best benefit themselves, installing themselves in power positions… then ‘decolonizing’ the European-invented countries, which is tantamount to having local presidents whilst the businesses (as in any white-majority country) control the real power, worker pay, etc. The the rest of the world wonders why the so-called in-fighting’ as if these ‘countrymen’ are suddenly of the same ilk because Belgium decided to draw a circle around these three tribes. Don’t you know, if Africans went to Europe and threw some Southern Italians in with some Northern Irish and a couple of Huns for good measure… then called it a country, and chose only a German to lead, you ain’t seen ‘in’-fighting. …But now the rest of the world can collectively sit back and critique these darker peoples’ ability to govern themselves. The whole world can assume that preferring lighter skin is normal. And the longer time passes and situations such as these aren’t explained, the more this ‘understanding’ will become fact. And why would the white ‘host culture’ want to explain such action in such a way that truthfully paints their history as the most violent of any race that ever lived?