Mia Farrow speaks in the Webb Center at Old Dominion University on Thursday while showing photographs taken during several trips to Darfur, a region of Sudan. (Bill Tiernan | The Virginian-Pilot)
NORFOLK
More than 400 people sat virtually silent Thursday night as the photos flashed on the screen, save for the occasional gasp and the impassioned commentary of the photographer, actress-turned-activist Mia Farrow.
Some of her descriptions of the starved, the scarred, the scared and the dying in the strife-torn Darfur region of Sudan were terse: "A dying child."
Farrow has made eight trips to the region, coming back each time with the same mission: To get someone, be they governments or individuals, to care enough to act about what she and U.S. officials have labeled a genocide by one part of Sudan's population against its non-Arab part.
"I could leave," she said. "They can't. And the killing continues."
Farrow, 63, spoke at Old Dominion University as part of its President's Lecture Series.
She made her name as an actress, from the 1960s TV series "Peyton Place" and movies such as "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Great Gatsby." Lately she has focused on humanitarian efforts, particularly involving war-threatened children in Africa, and taking care of her family - she has 14 children, 10 of them adopted.
In this Olympic year, she asked for a different kind of pressure for help, against the big commercial sponsors of what she calls the "Genocide Olympics" scheduled for August in Beijing - companies such as McDonald's and Microsoft. In exchange for Sudanese oil, she said, China supplies much of the weaponry used to attack unarmed villages.
She asked that people plead with the sponsors to act responsibly to help, or to demand that China press Sudan's government to stop the killings and to allow in more peacekeepers. And for President Bush not to attend at least the opening ceremonies of the games in protest.
Farrow called the millions who have been displaced without food, water or medical care, and the hundreds of thousands who have died, been mutilated and raped, "the victims of our indifference."
"What message have we sent after five years to the people of Darfur?" she asked. "Only that they are expendable chips in a much larger game?"
She knew the names of many whom she photographed. Some photos showed older women fetching firewood because of the risk of rape, to spare the younger women.
And children's drawings depicted helicopter attacks, shootings and rapes in their villages.
"I think, really, this is a defining moment for us as human beings," Farrow concluded. "If not now, then when?"
"We don't have it so bad, do we?" a student whispered to her companion as they left.
Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-3893, matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com
Source : PilotOnline.com
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