African Activist Archive

Mailing to Renee Furuyama of the Hawaii Committee for Africa from Jerry Herman of the Southern Africa Program of AFSC (American Friends Service Committee) asking for letters to be sent to Representatives and Senators. The mailing says I am writing to ask you to aid in a very serious effort, that of urging the U.S. Congress to stop funding UNITA; UNITA's murderous activity in Angola has caused a tremendous loss of life; our government seems not to care or value the life of Angolans or for that matter Africans. The mailing says your past effort was what took the sanctions bill forward, and more importantly, what keeps the Bush administration from lifting sanctions, at least for the moment; I also know of the heavy workload that you carry in your community, so I am reluctant to ask your help, but given the terrible dying and suffering in Angola I have no choice; because you know as I do that South African aggression in the region has caused 1.5 million deaths since 1980, and that in Angola over 333,000 of the more than a half million dead were infants; I know too, that you like the rest of us are driven to try and stop this carnage, which is being done in our name. The mailing says I have enclosed a sample letter that we are asking you to rewrite or type in your own words and send it to your Congressperson; but more, we would like you to get nine (9) other people to do the same; it is imperative that you try to do it in the next 5 days; this is a sample letter only, change it in any way you want, but try to make the key point that aid to Savimbi must stop; NOTE, you might include a demand that as the Congress cuts domestic budgets, the nearly 100 million dollars given to Savimbi, if cut, would lighten the damage at home. I know you know all of this so do the best you can. The mailing includes an action alert on Angola END U.S. COVERT AID TO UNITA. The action alert says your taxpayer dollars, to the tune of $50 to $100 million per year, have been going to fund death and destruction in this southern African nation; because of UNITA'S guerilla tactics of putting land mines in fields and other civilian areas, Angola has the world's highest amputee rate; this has also halted food production in many regions, and now Angola faces the worst famine in the world, with 600 people already dead (from drought in Central and Southern Angola in the past few months) and over 782,000 people facing imminent starvation; UNIT A also routinely targets rural water systems and health care facilities, depriving 1.5 million people of safe water and leading to the world's highest infant mortality rate. The mailing discusses UNITA (National Union for the Total Indenpendence of Angola), Jonas Savimbi, and George Bush.

African Activist Archive

[I am writing to ask you to aid in a very serious effort]

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