FRAN. _'_N,_ -599“. _
donation. Charity night featuring DJ sets from the cream of Scottish indie. including Teenage Fanclub. Idlewild, and Sluts of Trust.
Stop the War Coalition March Assemble 5.30pm at the Mound. The march sets off for Calton Hill at 6.30pm for a ceremony to commemorate all those who have died in Iraq. CLUB
Live Free or Die The Bongo Club, Moray House. 37 Holyrood Road. 558 7604. £3/free. The Scottish Hobo Society invite you to come down and join arms in 3 act of solidarity. Special guest stars for the evening are Mystery Juice. Oxfam Music Launch Party Front Room @ Berlin, 3 Queensferry Street Lane, 467 7215. 8pm—late. Free (donations welcome). Fundraising gig for Make Poverty History featuring guest appearances by John MacLean from the Beta Band and Resident DJ Beefy. £1.50 drinks.
FILM
Gacaca: Living Together Again In Rwanda Filmhouse. 88 Lothian Road, 228 2688. 1pm. £4 (22.50). 2002 film about the Rwandan government's attempts to bring about reconciliation following the 1994 genocide.
POPaganda: The Art & Crimes of Ron English Filmhouse. 88 Lothian Road. 228 2688. 6.30pm. Pedro Carvajal's film follows leading ‘culture slammer‘ Ron English, whose songs and art take a swipe at the emptiness of modern culture. English, who often paints over billboards. subverting the bland advertising message, says of his work: ‘I guess I'm a criminal. But I don‘t think I'm a nuisance to society.‘
VISUAL ART
Looking Both Ways See Thursday 23.
The Forgotten Women See Monday 27.
Monday 4
VISUAL ART
Looking Both Ways See Thursday 23. The Forgotten Women See Monday 27.
Tuesday 5 July
ACTIVITIES & EVENTS
A Celebration of African Writing - 10 years after the execution of Ken Sare- Wiwa Play/fair Library. Edinburgh University Old College. 5.30pm. Free. CES/Scottish PEN host an evening of discussion and readings. Speakers include Zimbabwe's Chengeral Hove. Helen Habilo and Femi Folorunso from Nigeria. Zoe Wicomb from South Africa and Scotland‘s Angus Calder.
TALKS
Resisting the New Enclosures: Peace, Anti-Capitalism and the Multitude Word Power, 43 West Nicolson Street, 662 91 12. 7pm. Free. Illustrated lecture by Iain Boal.
VISUAL ART
Looking Both Ways See Thursday 23.
The Forgotten Women See Monday 27.
Wednesday 6 July
ACTIVITIES & EVENTS
March Against the 08 Gleneagles Hotel. Gleneagles. Perthshire. Assemble at noon at Gleneagles Train Station. For more detailed
20 THE LIST 9—23 Jun 2005
Healey visits aim , where he 3.1.; ._. that European _
could learn from
Our manin fria
$3.:
For 25 years, the people of Sudan have suffered at the hands of a malicious government. Travis singer FRAN HEALY flew there and found a few flashes of hope in a
desperate situation.
his is the second time I've been to Sudan. The first was in December. and both times were with Save the Children. on
behalf of Band Aid. While they‘ve got loads of
people out in the field. sadly. they‘ye pulled people out of Darfur now. because they lost a lot of their staff through bombings and shootings.
We flew into Kenya. and took a plane from the north to southern Strdart. a place called Maltral Kon. You wouldn‘t find it on a map or an atlas. It‘s just not there. While in Malual Kon we visited loads of tiny little villages: Arroyo. Akon. Alek. The indigenous people of the south. the Africans. are sitting on a gold mine: they’ve got mineral wealth beyond your wildest dreams. The Arabs who run the government in Khartoum have been trying to get rid of the Africans for 25 years by bombing them. raping them and putting them into slavery. Now they‘ve just gone into peacetime. which was agreed in January.
There is still a peace agreement in the south. btit in the north they‘re still killing people. There‘s no difference. It seems to me that this is the all-too familiar religious war between the Muslims and the Christians. There's always money involved: gold. oil and minerals. ()ur hands are dirty from all our colonising. The British were in power in that part of the world and when we left we handed the power not to the indigenous people btit to the Arabs. who we had brought in to be our army while we were there.
So we just handed them the power and the poor. indigenous people are the ones who have been dragged through the hedge backwards for 25 years. ljust can‘t see it lasting very long. because they‘re going to have to carve tip the mineral wealth for the guys tip north.
There are loads of guns. We were in a camp filming some schoolkids and just before the teacher came I heard this sound. None ofthe kids flinched. Then I realised it was a heavy artillery about a kilometre away and machine-gun fire. All the white people just shit themselves. Before we went out we had a UN security briefing and they tell you all the things you've got to do when you get sttrck in a firefight: make like a snake and get on the ground. don‘t move. don't run. But luckily it didn‘t go further than that. I think maybe people were trying out their weapons. btit still. the sound of real cannons going off and real machine guns cracking is scary.
Despite everythin". the people are very hopeful. They‘ve been through stuff that you and I wouldn‘t even see in the movies: it‘s too horrible. We were only there for a week btit we
just saw the beginnings of this idea. The aid that
was going in there wasn't doing anything. because you‘d dig a well and then a week later the Janjaweed [pro—government militia] would come round and blow it tip. But things are changing tentatively with this peace; aid is getting in and more villages are being set tip.