ACTOR AND activist George Clooney was arrested yesterday while protesting in front of the Sudanese embassy in Washington DC.
Clooney was protesting against human rights abuses by the Sudanese government. He had announced his protest in advance and intended to be arrested.
Joined by his father, journalist Nick Clooney; US representative Jim Moran of Virginia; and National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People president Ben Jealous, the actor blocked the entrance to the Sudanese embassy.
Clooney and the others were given three orders to disperse by police and refused to do so. With his hands cuffed behind his back, Clooney addressed the plight of “innocent children” in Sudan. “Stop raping them and stop starving them,” he told the media scrum. “That’s all that we ask.” Clooney has been in Washington since returning this week from a tour of Sudan.
On Wednesday he testified in front of the Senate foreign relations committee on violence in the Nuba mountains in South Kordofan, a state in Sudan near its border with newly independent South Sudan.
Clooney has called on US officials to press the Chinese government to force the government of Sudan to open the southern region of the country to relief efforts. As the rainy season approaches, large numbers of the region’s inhabitants could face starvation.
– (Guardian service)