Scores rally for people of Darfur.

Byline: Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

Call it an exercise in transglobal empathy, or of disproportionate activism.

It was simply a moral obligation for the 300 people who showed up in Eugene on Sunday to rally for an end to genocide that has killed at least 180,000 people during the past three years in the Darfur region of Sudan in northeast Africa.

"I think it's people of faith, but also people of conscience - which sometimes go together and sometimes don't," said Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin, part of a large ad hoc committee that has been working since late last year to raise local awareness of the Darfur tragedy.

"I think this is like drawing a moral bottom line," he said. "This genocide - we can't accept it anymore."

Eugene's rally on the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza of the Lane County Courthouse was one of dozens around the country on Sunday that were part of a call to action by the loosely organized Save Darfur Coalition - a nationwide group of more than 150 organizations.

At the local gathering, speakers acknowledged that the United States has been among the first governments to recognize the situation, but maintained the Bush administration has responded too slowly and indecisively - possibly to gain favors from the Sudanese government.

Speakers were hopeful but not optimistic that the latest news out of Darfur - that mediators, under pressure from the United States, had agreed to extend talks for two more days after rebels rejected a peace proposal on Sunday - would produce a settlement.

Mayor Kitty Piercy proclaimed Sunday "rally to stop genocide day" in Eugene, and state Rep. Bob Ackerman, D-Eugene, called for "a regime change in Washington" that would result in a more responsive U.S. government.

"We're trading our morals for political expediency," said Ibrahim Hamide, a Eugene restaurateur and member of the city's human rights com- mission.

Hamide, a Muslim who was born in Palestine, said his heritage has made him particularly sensitive to the Darfur situation, which has grown out of a rebellion against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government. He urged the U.S. government not to use the conflict to gain advantages in the country located just across the Red Sea from the Arabian Peninsula.

"We cannot trade life for political secrets, or military secrets," Hamide said.

U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio reminded the crowd that after the massacres in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, "many world leaders said `never again' ' - but that the killings in Darfur continue a year and a half after the Bush administration recognized them as genocide.

DeFazio urged the U.S. government to assert itself on behalf of the people in Darfur, and use the situation to gain respect as a champion of the oppressed.

"This is a shining moment," he said. "It's a time for the United States to start rebuilding its image around the world."