"Khartoum's troops have subjected the people of the Nuba Mountains to mass executions and daily bombing, and have burned down homes, marketplaces, churches, schools, and medical clinics." -- Faith McDonnell, IRD Religious Liberty Director

Contact: Jeff Walton, Institute on Religion and Democracy, 202-682-4131, jwalton@TheIRD.org

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2012 /Christian Newswire/ -- U.S. Secretary of State Clinton will speak Tuesday before a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum symposium about preventing future genocide. Activists gathered outside the museum will remind attendees that genocide is currently taking place in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State of Sudan, unacknowledged by the U.S. Government.

Event Details:

What: Bear Witness to Genocide in Sudan

Who: IRD's Church Alliance for a New Sudan and allied organizations

Where: Outside of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Independence Ave SW between 14th and 15th Streets

When: Tuesday, July 24, 8 a.m.

Even as symposium attendees discuss genocide, over 500,000 people are at risk of imminent death from starvation and thirst. Refugees hide in Nuba Mountain caves from aerial bombardment perpetuated for over a year by the Islamist Khartoum-based government.

Members of Act for Sudan, an alliance of Sudan activists that includes IRD, are also attending the symposium. They will challenge the Administration's inaction and the false moral equivalency with which it deals with the genocidal regime and those who oppose it.

IRD Religious Liberty Director Faith McDonnell commented:

"Sudanese President Omar Hassan al Bashir, an international war criminal, told his troops to 'sweep out the trash' in the Nuba Mountains -- meaning the black African Nuba people.

"The Obama Administration should be focused on ending this genocide now, before thousands more die.

"Since June, Khartoum's troops have subjected the people of the Nuba Mountains to mass executions and daily bombing, and have burned down homes, marketplaces, churches, schools, and medical clinics. Over half a million Nuba were blocked from access to South Sudan by Khartoum, and had to flee to the caves in the mountains where they are being deliberately and systematically starved by the Islamist regime. The regime launched a similar attack on Blue Nile State in September.

"Sudan continues its genocidal assault on Darfur and Abyei, as well as marginalizing and oppressing the other indigenous African people groups such as the Beja and the Nubians.

"The U.S. government continues to pressure both South Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army-North to give in to Khartoum's demands, even as they fight to defend the Nuba Mountains."