Results tagged “darfur”

David Blaine has found a new project: Mia Farrow. The 64-year-old activist/actress has tapped into the magician's bag of tricks to get some tips on how to endure a hunger strike. She started the fast on Monday, in the name of Darfur, and has been blogging about it on her website, saying, "Before I began this fast David Blaine (magician and endurance artist) called me. So kind of him. He told me a little about how to prepare and what to expect. He said after 6 days I won't feel hunger. He told me to drink 4 liters of water." Farrow only weighs in at 110 pounds, and will be living on a water-only diet for three weeks. She maintains: "What I am going through now is nothing compared what the people of Darfur are facing. When I feel hunger pangs and my head aches, I think of them." [via the Daily News]

Last night during the opening ceremonies in Beijing, the U.S. flag was carried by Lopez Lomong, one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan" who now hails from the upstate town Tully, NY. Governor Paterson issued a statement on his web site praising Lomong for not only "the joy and dedication he brings to the sport, but because of the amazing story of how he came to represent our State and Nation." Lomong is one of 75 other Olympians part of a group called Team Darfur that seeks increased recognition of the situation in his homeland. Once having fled from bullets all the way across the Sudanese border to Kenya, he will run in the 1500-meter event in Beijing.

City Council member and probable 2009 mayoral candidate, Tony Avella, is the latest politician to ask for America's withdrawl from the Beijing Olympics if China will not grant Tibet independence. Under China's rule for over 50 years, Tibet has made no headway, even with the support of human rights groups, activists...and Richard Gere. When we interviewed Robert Thurman, co-founder of the Tibet House, earlier this year he touched on the Olympics, saying:

The thinking is that if you give them a big P.R. thing to do like the Olympics, they won’t want people to see how they’re beating up the Falun Gong or whatever it is they’re doing lately. This is a fallacious concept but within that it’s true that the Chinese are trying to clean up their act so they won’t be embarrassed during the Olympics. Unfortunately, what the Chinese consider ‘cleaning up their act’ is to wipe out people who might do human rights protests; they don’t mean stopping the human rights violations.

Today a rally in Manhattan is taking place commemorating the anniversary of the 1959 uprising against China. Avella is in attendance and will most likely use this event to introduce his resolution, which demands New York City-based corporate sponsors boycott the 2008 Olympics, and that the International Olympic Committee move the games from Beijing. He stated, "That's the only thing that will make them do anything — international pressure."