Genocide in Sudan
Re: “Bush: Killings in Sudan region are genocide,” June 2 news story.
President Bush agrees with former Secretary of State Colin Powell that genocide is being committed in the Sudan. But he won’t commit troops to stop the violence. The U.N. agrees that killings are happening there. But it will not call it genocide. I guess the Sudanese are as undeserving as the Rwandans were in 1994, when nearly a million were killed in major genocidal rage. Both seem less deserving than the Bosnians were in 1994 and the Iraqis are today.
Some may call inaction a diplomatic decision. I call it racism. I’m ashamed that we are not intervening. I do understand that this is a primary responsibility of the U.N. I’m outraged that the U.N. cannot even call it what it is, much less move to stop it.
Dan Callahan, Centennial
Guantanamo prison
Re: “Is Bush actually a man of his word?” June 3 Reggie Rivers column.
Reggie Rivers is right: Although President Bush insists the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities are nothing like the Soviet gulag, the two systems were both deliberately established to put prisoners out of sight of prying eyes and out of reach of the law.
Guantanamo was chosen expressly because it is inaccessible and technically not a U.S. territory. By keeping detainees there, the president and his administration believed they could keep the media and human rights organizations away while the military bent or ignored laws that would otherwise apply at home.
Holding foreign nationals in a “no man’s land,” calling them enemy combatants instead of prisoners of war, detaining them indefinitely without charges, access or representation – if another nation tried that on our citizens, would the president still be so glib?
Robert J. Inlow, Charlottesville, Va.
Democracy in Denver?
Re: “Election panel reforms sought,” May 29 news story.
Assuming The Post’s numbers are accurate, 14 percent of the possible voters in Denver have given 100 percent of its citizens a new bonded indebtedness of $378 million. Whether our fellow citizens were in favor or opposed to the new “justice center,” they should be alarmed.
We love to pretend that our country is a bastion of democracy, but things like the May election come along and prove that that is simply braggadocio. We are not ruled by a majority of citizens giving thought to the issues before them.
Perhaps election reforms would help, and they should be tried. The bulk of our citizenry do not know how to be a part of a democracy, or have lost interest in participation.
Robert Griswold, Denver
Voice-mail for homeless
Re: “Ending homelessness,” May 27 Open Forum.
As a formerly homeless man (3 1/2 years on the streets of Denver), a writer for the Denver Voice homeless newspaper, and a member of Mayor John Hickenlooper’s Commission to End Homelessness, I can speak with experience that those 5,000 voice-mail boxes provided to the homeless are invaluable.
Forty percent of the homeless work full-time. They just don’t get paid very well. And almost all of metro Denver’s shelters charge the homeless to stay there.
These voice-mail boxes are a lifeline to the homeless, who can use them to look for “real” jobs and seem to perspective employers to not be homeless. That is a stigma most employers look down on.
The homeless can use any phone, including pay phones, for free, to call these voice-mail boxes.
Harold Chapman, Denver
