Gsolomon20’s Weblog

Gabriel Kou Solomon landed safely in Minneapolis-St. Paul airport today and was greeted by his host family and colleagues from the Save Yar Campaign. He’s looking pretty underfed but debonair even in clothes he’s been wearing for three days.

Kou had his first Subway sandwich in four months (his old standby meal — no, we are not fishing for a commercial endorsement deal) and will relax for a couple of days before we get cracking on planning for the July 28 congressional briefing.

Kou phoned and e-mailed us Friday to let us know that he has completed the first leg of his journey back. He flew from Juba, Sudan, to Kampala, Uganda, where he will unwind for a couple of days before leaving Tuesday to fly back home to Minneapolis/St. Paul.

His return flight is due to land at MSP early Wednesday afternoon. We hope to assemble a group to greet him. His research and advocacy in Juba since March have provided crucial contacts and information for this campaign against child abduction. His networking has kept this issue on the Government of South Sudan’s agenda. Kou is feeling good about his work, although it has been a strain at many times to work under the difficult conditions in a country that has barely begun to recover from its long civil war.

The timing of Kou’s return will give us time to plan before he joins in heading to D.C. for the 1 p.m. July 28 congressional briefing sponsored by U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn.

–DB

Gabriel Kou Solomon feels his work in South Sudan has just begun. But our congressional briefing on July 28 will be an important chance to raise the alarm about intertribal child abduction centered in Jonglei state. So we asked Kou to come back to co-present at the briefing and tell his family’s powerful story. He agreed, and he’s due to fly from Sudan to Uganda late this week and then back to the U.S. next week.

-D. Bernard

Our members Tracy Baumgardt and Madeline Thaden have just returned from a highly productive week of meetings with officials in Congress and the administration.

We’re very happy to relate that, with the crucial support and facilitation of the office of Congresswoman Betty McCollum, Tracy and Madeline arranged for us to hold an official congressional briefing in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., Room HC-6, at 1-3 p.m. July 28.

This will allow us an extended audience with top aides and other influential officials from government and nonprofits when we can describe the problem of uncontrolled child abduction in southeast Sudan. More to the point, we will ask attendees to use their influence to get the U.S. government to urgently lend assistance to this largely overlooked problem

We need your help.
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We are deeply grateful to the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association and the talented writer John Allen for the very prominent coverage they are lending to Gabriel Kou Solomon and this campaign in the brand-new edition of their magazine, On Wisconsin.

The article by Allen, the magazine’s senior editor, is the most comprehensive telling of that story, and it reaches out to Kou’s fellow graduates of an institution of which he is proud to be affiliated. The campaign is based in the University of Minnesota Human Rights Program, but Kou and Program Director Barb Frey are both graduates of UW Madison, as are many supporters of the campaign.

The cover story appears at a time when campaign members are meeting with aides to Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. (for whom Kou once interned), and other Wisconsin and Minnesota representatives in Congress to begin seeking special aid for the Jonglei area of South Sudan — the epicenter of the wave of child abductions that swept up Kou’s nieces. The article is a real morale-booster when Kou is exerting great effort to continue his research on the ground in Juba, South Sudan, in the face of difficulties with communications, security and expenses.

For readers of the magazine who are visiting this web site for the first time, welcome and thanks for your interest. We hope you will use the links at right to sign up for updates or join our Facebook group. And: Go Badgers!

Now that we have a better understanding of the problems that surround the crisis of systemic child abduction in southeast Sudan, we are forming a more specific request to Congress on how it can help.

Two of our members, Madeline Thaden and Tracy Baumgardt, flew to Washington, D.C. today and will remain through Saturday to lay the groundwork for a successful request.

Already we can thank Congresswoman Betty McCollum and her staff for supporting the idea of holding a congressional briefing in late July that would give us a chance to explain the crisis to an audience of influential congressional officials. We are also receiving great advice and support from the offices of Senators Russ Feingold, Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar (pictured at left) and Representatives Keith Ellison and Tammy Baldwin.

Wish them luck, and seeing as Madeline stepped off a transatlantic flight just about 12 hours before she turned around and headed off to D.C., wish them strength!

It is with profound sadness that we pass along the news that the father of Yar and Ajak Achiek Mading, Mr. Achiek Mading Biar, has been killed in a robbery on the road in Jonglei state, South Sudan.

The tragedy appears unrelated to the tribal conflict at the heart of the pattern of child abduction with which the Save Yar Campaign is concerned. However it is another painful sign of how the slow pace of Sudan’s recovery puts deadly risks in the path of every average Sudanese person.

On a personal level, it is a devastating blow for Kou Solomon’s sister, Amer Ayuen Kou, to lose her two daughters to abduction and then lose their father, her husband, to random violence; and it is devastating for our friend Kou Solomon, who was bonded to Achiek by their mutual determination to keep working to find Yar and Ajak. We are inexpressibly saddened for the family, including Kou’s brothers in Juba and Australia who have helped us in this campaign.

We are not giving up, and neither is Kou.
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The Save Yar Campaign thanks its longtime coalition member the UN Student Association of the University of Minnesota (UNSA) for hosting a successful benefit May 2. Guests helped cover the cost of sending two of our members back to Washington, D.C., in June to ask federal officials for specific help for the problems surrounding child abduction in South Sudan.

The guests also enjoyed good food, an exclusive photo exhibit of the campaign’s visit to Juba over Spring Break (see right), and presentations by Kait, Robyn, and Human Rights Program Director Barb Frey.

Kou is still in South Sudan, where he has been invited to take part in meetings aimed at intertribal reconciliation, a key element of addressing the root causes of child abduction. We are thrilled that Kou has the opportunity to participate in this rare and important conversation.

Thanks again to UNSA: Nick Hagman, Brian Meskimen, Aisha Patel, Madeline Thaden, Simone Bak, Kait Dougherty, and members.

Gabriel Kou Solomon has had a productive month in Juba. He has met with officials at every level of the South Sudan government. As he gathers information, he has made progress in sorting out the interlocking economic and social problems that form the context of child abduction. And more to the point, through his work as a positive ambassador, he reminds those officials that the rest of the world is counting on them to protect their most vulnerable residents – and that we are ready to help.
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This cause is getting support and attention as several of its leading organizers are being honored with awards.

Dr. Barbara A. Frey, who singlehandedly enabled the campaign to thrive by adopting it into the Human Rights Program which she directs for the University of Minnesota, has been selected to the University’s highly prestigious Outstanding Community Service Award.

Campaign Chair Robyn Skrebes and Vice Chair Amelia Corl each have been awarded an Upper Midwest Human Rights Fellowship thanks to the support of Al and Ingrid Lenz and the Otto Bremer Foundation. Coordinator Daniel Lynx Bernard has been selected for the Mary A. McEvoy Award for Public Engagement and Leadership. Read the rest of this entry »