Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 7 PM Wanda Akin and Raymond Brown will speak at the University of Connecticut Stamford Campus on the courage and initiative of Darfur survivors daring to testify before the world about Crimes against Humanity. Their talk, “Women Acting for Peace and Justice in Darfur,” will be followed by conversation with Sudanese refugees from the Darfur Rehabilitation Project in Newark, NJ.
Wanda Akin and Raymond Brown have filed twenty-six witness applications from refugees with first-hand knowledge of the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign and systematic rape on-going in Sudan. They continue to interview potential witnesses. Only twenty-six US lawyers are certified to represent witnesses at the ICC.
Akin and Brown have criticized international court rules that discourage testimony from improverished witnesses and have a called for stronger measures to shield the identities of rape victims.
Akin and Brown served as counsel in the international war crimes trials at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2004 and also consulted with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. They teach international law at Seton Hall University and practice litigation in the US. Wanda Akin appears frequently on Court TV, MSNBC and at conferences on international law. Raymond Brown is host of the Emmy-Award winning New Jersey (TV) Network program, “Due Process” exploring topics such as the Death Penalty, Domestic Violence, adoption, and race and class in the justice system. He also anchored Court TV coverage of the war crimes trial in the Former Yugoslavia.
Both Akin and Brown regularly speak at public programs around the nation on human rights law, African American policy goals, leadership, and youth mobilization with other public intellectuals such as Cornel West, Tavis Smiley and Darlene Clark Hines.
The DRP, a non-profit group formed by Darfur exiles and their supporters raises awareness about Darfur with presentations to community groups throughout the tri-state area and state and federal officials. It sponsored a fact-finding trip to refugee camps in Chad in summer 2005, and hosted a national meeting of Darfur refugees in the US in Newark in fall 2005.
This event is one of a series in Days for Darfur, October 12-24 organized by the Darfur Support Coalition of Fairfield County and co-sponsored by a dozen local organization to increase awareness about the atrocities in Darfur and mobilize Fairfield County residents to take action. For more information contact darfursupport@igc.org,, call 203.329.1919, or go to: http://www.stamford.uconn.edu/darfursupport.html.
UConn Stamford staff and students — contact – mary.cygan@uconn.edu
RESOURCES –
Access: Victims Rights Working Group Bulletin, Autumn 2007 –interview with Wanda Akin & Raymond Brown (page 7 and front page) http://www.vrwg.org/Publications/04/ENG09.pdf
Darfur Rehabilitation Project call for testimony: http://www.darfurrehab.org/announcements.html
International Criminal Court Counsel list http://www.icc-cpi.int/victimsissues/victimscounsel.html
Wanda Akin and Raymond Brown homepage: http://www.brownakin.com/