Ex-Marine’s photo tour depicts Darfur horror

Saturday, March 25, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

To Brian Steidle, the truth is simple: You cannot sugarcoat a terrible wrong even half a world away in a nation that many Americans cannot even pick out on a map.

Steidle, a former Marine captain, served as the U.S. representative to the African Union peacekeeping mission to Sudan in North Africa for six months ending in February 2005. He photographed the horrors of genocide in the Darfur region of west Sudan.

Now on a 22-city U.S. tour to raise awareness of the tragedy, Steidle shows those photos to Americans of all ages, saying the educational value far outweighs the shock of seeing the troubling images.

"It's pretty graphic - there is no way to sensitize genocide," Steidle, 29, said. "Genocide is what it is.

"I've had children in my audiences before and have never been told not to show my pictures. It is important for people to see what is going on."

Steidle will speak at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Regal Green Valley Ranch Stadium 10, 2300 Paseo Verde, in Henderson, just off Interstate 215 and Green Valley Parkway. Admission is free.

Since February 2003, more than 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur as a result of what President Bush and Congress recognized in 2004 as genocide.

The slayings are being encouraged by black Arab Muslim Sudanese government officials using their Janjaweed militia against black African tribesmen, who also are Muslims.

The bloodshed has left 3.5 million people dependent on foreign aid, 2 million of whom have been forced to live in refugee camps. The camps have been attacked by Sudanese combat helicopters.

In a March 20, 2005, Washington Post op-ed piece, Steidle wrote of some of the atrocities he witnessed:

"Every day we surveyed evidence of killings: Men castrated and left to bleed to death, huts set on fire with people locked inside, children with their faces smashed in, men with their ears cut off and eyes plucked out, and the corpses of people who had been executed with gunshots to the head.

"We spoke with thousands of witnesses - women who had been gang-raped and families that had lost fathers, people who plainly and soberly gave us their accounts of the slaughter."

Backed by the Save Darfur Coalition consisting of about 150 faith-based humanitarian and human rights groups, Steidle is trying to convince 1 million Americans to send postcards to the White House, imploring Bush to make good on his Feb. 17 pledge to support a stronger multinational force to protect people in Darfur.

The effort will culminate in an April 30 demonstration in Washington.

Las Vegan Pam Omidyar, an organizer for Monday's event, said now is the time for Americans to come forward and demand protection for fellow human beings.

"I am a mother of three, and I know there are women in Sudan who are mothers of three or more who could flee with only with one child tucked under each arm only to return the next day to find their other children dead," Omidyar said.

"We are so fortunate with our freedoms and human rights and we want for others to have those same rights. One major reason these people are not getting enough help is that there has not been a mandate from the American public to get elected officials to act. We need to raise our voices louder."

Steidle, a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute who resigned from the military early last year, said it was "very hard" for him to remain a neutral observer as the tragedy unfolded before his eyes.

"I was neutral on the outside, but on the inside I knew who was right and who was wrong - that was clear as crystal," said Steidle, who stood by helplessly in December 2004 as he watched Labado, a town of 20,000 people, being burned to the ground by Sudanese forces.

"Sudanese government officials and their generals will totally deny their actions even when confronted with photographic evidence."