A new story from the "Rochester [N.Y.] Democrat and Chronicle" that updates (most recently) "Riders aim for genocide awareness"...
Elvir Camdzic has seen the ugly side of humanity close up.
Growing up in Bosnia, he witnessed aspects of the genocide in that war-torn European nation. That helps explain why the Cornell University graduate, now living in San Francisco, today is pedaling through western New York on his way to Canada, gathering petition signatures along the route to try to get people interested and governments motivated to stop genocide in the African nation of Sudan.
Ride Against Genocide, a 600-mile bicycle trek from Ithaca, Tompkins County, to Ottawa, the seat of the Canadian government, made its way through western Monroe County Tuesday. Cornell students organized the trip.
"There's been unprecedented outrage about the situation in Darfur," Camdzic said. "Yet, despite all this international outrage, today the genocide continues. We find this inaction ... to be unacceptable."
The petition, to be presented to the U.S. and Canadian governments, asks that they monitor NATO support given to African peacekeeping troops being sent to the Darfur region of Sudan, and that they allow deployed troops to protect civilians and aid workers.
According to United Nations estimates, as many as 10,000 people are dying each month in the Texas-sized Darfur region as part of the two-year revolt against the Sudanese government in the capital of Khartoum.
The ride began July 11, the 10th anniversary of the massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia.
"We're linking the two genocides," said Camdzic, 28, as he and a small cluster of bicyclists stood at Broad Street and Exchange Boulevard Tuesday morning, preparing for the day's leg of the ride. "We're hoping to use that to get people to learn the lessons of Bosnia, not make the same mistakes in Darfur."
Then, with a left-hand turn onto Broad Street, the bicyclists headed west and were gone.
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