Press ReleasesMia Farrow is Interviewed in Chad by Internews’ Radio Station La Voix du Ouaddai
(November 21, 2006) La Voix du Ouaddai journalist Issaka Alafouza interviewed Mia Farrow at the UNHCR canteen in Chad last week. La Voix du Ouaddai is one of three stations broadcasting to the refugees and local Chadian populations as part of the Internews Humanitarian Information Service operating in eastern Chad. This was not the first time Mia Farrow had been to this part of the world. Two years ago the actress and mother of 14 children was in Darfur bearing witness to the unfolding genocide. Last week she came to eastern Chad on a fact-finding mission with the Save Darfur Coalition hoping to return to the states with a message to the world. Farrow sat down for a 30-minute interview with Allafouza to talk about her week in Chad and what she saw. After hearing that an area in the southeast of Chad, around the town of Goz Beida, had flared-up, Farrow flew to the hotspot for a closer look. Within hours she was standing amidst the smoldering remains of a village that only a day before had been the scene of an attack. Farrow told La Voix du Ouaddai that she was saddened to see that the violence in Darfur had spilled over into Chad, making it more difficult to respond to the ongoing refugee crisis and adding to it countless internally displaced persons — Chadians who are now homeless in their own country because of escalating violence in the region. The most recent estimate is that 70,000 Chadians have been displaced. Farrow says the origins of this current escalation are unclear, but there is no question in her mind that the continued insecurity in Darfur and along the border with Chad is contributing to the problem. Some of the violence has been attributed to inter-ethnic strife. The Internews Humanitarian Information Service is funded by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the US Department of State, the Office of Transition Initiatives at USAID and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. |
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