Five Hillsborough High School students walked 18 miles from New Brunswick to Princeton as part of the 300-mile Sudan Freedom Walk.
By: Donna Lukiw
Hoping to draw attention to the genocide occurring in Sudan, five Hillsborough High School students walked 18 miles from New Brunswick to Princeton on March 19.
Students Andy Glaser, Amanda Smith, Molly Armus, Tammer Ibrahin and Richie Venezia joined the effort organized by a former slave from Sudan.
"No one knows about it and it’s a terrible thing," Richie said about the genocide. "Things could be changed if there was more awareness."
The 300-mile Sudan Freedom Walk was launched March 15 in New York City, culminating yesterday (April 5) in Washington, D.C. Participating high school students joined the walk for 18-mile stretches.
According to the Sudan Freedom Walk Web site, "the Sudan Freedom Walk Campaign was initiated by Simon Deng, a Sudanese man captured into slavery as a child in Sudan. He later escaped bondage and now resides in New York City, but travels often to spread awareness about modern slavery and the atrocities facing the people of Sudan. The goal of Freedom Walk is to ultimately increase the global response, focusing on the United States to free the 40 million people in Sudan from the treacherous policies perpetrated by the Government of Khartoum. This Government, either through policy, collusion or apathy, has been party to human trafficking, torture, ethnic cleansing, genocide, international terrorism, as well as numerous other human rights violations and injustices."
The students said they drove to New Brunswick and walked the 18 miles in about seven hours with the other 40 walkers before joining Mr. Deng at Princeton University.
Richie said Mr. Deng spoke about the genocide and slavery in Sudan, how he was tricked into slavery for over three years by a family friend and how he was threatened to have his limbs cut off.
"In doing something like the walk, you can establish a connection," Andy said. He added many people thought there wouldn’t be any cases of genocide after the Holocaust, "but there have been hundreds of genocides since then."
According to UNICEF, the ongoing conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region is affecting some 1.5 million children. Many of these children have witnessed terrible atrocities, including the rape and murder of family members.
Girls have been raped and many children have been wounded or killed while many have been forced to flee burnt-out villages with their families.
The crisis affects 3.4 million people and approximately 1.4 million children under 18 years of age including more than 500,000 children under age 5 are currently living in displaced persons camps.

