Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee was arrested today with four other members of Congress, for protesting outside the Sudanese embassy:
Five Congress members were willingly arrested and led away from the Sudanese Embassy in plastic handcuffs Friday in protest of the Sudanese government’s role in atrocities in the Darfur region.
“The slaughter of the people of Darfur must end,” Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a Holocaust survivor who founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, said from the embassy steps before his arrest.
Four other Democratic Congress members — James McGovern and John Olver of Massachusetts, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and Jim Moran of Virginia — were among 11 protesters arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly, a misdemeanor subject to a fine.
“We must hold the Sudanese government accountable for the attacks they have supported on their own citizens in Darfur,” Olver said.
Dozens of demonstrators carried signs, some reading “Stop the slaughter” and “Women of Darfur suffer multiple gang rapes,” in front of the embassy Friday morning.
The protesters cheered as the Congress members and others were cuffed, hands behind their backs, with plastic ties and quietly led to a white police van by U.S. Secret Service uniformed officers.
The arrests were expected. Lantos’ office issued a news release about them in advance.
Ordinarily, we’d make light of the Congresswoman’s penchant for latching on to publicity and cameras, but at least this time she brought the media spotlight to an issue that certainly deserves it.
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