Saturday, March 24, 2012

George Clooney credits Christian aid agencies

George Clooney has praised the work of Christian organisations in providing humanitarian assistance to people in areas of conflict.

The actor told CBN News that Christian ministries play a significant role in providing humanitarian aid.

“They lead the work a lot of times here,” he said. “When we were at the Darfur rally it was ministers. It was a lot of people of faith that had been working very hard on this. So in some ways I’m trying to honour whatever part I can in the hard work that they do because I’m a big fan of all the work that’s being done. And people really put their hearts and souls in it.”

Clooney has been a long-time advocate for peace in Darfur, situated in the western region of Sudan. He recently spent eight days in Sudan and went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to tell of violence being committed by the Sudanese government against civilians in the border region.

Last Friday, he and his father were arrested during a rally outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington DC, after ignoring police requests to leave the grounds.

They were protesting against the failure of Omar al-Bashir to allow aid into the Nuba Mountains in the border region.

Just before his arrest, Clooney told reporters: “We need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The second thing we are here to ask is for the government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children. Stop raping them and stop starving them. That’s all we ask.”