CLOONEY AND CHEADLE RECEIVE DARFUR AWARD
Hollywood actors GEORGE CLOONEY and DON CHEADLE have been awarded for their work raising awareness about the genocide in Darfur.
The pair was honoured with the Peace Summit Award at the World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in Rome, Italy on Thursday (13Dec07).
Clooney and Cheadle teamed up to stage Darfur benefits around the premieres for their movie Ocean’s 13 earlier this year (07). Clooney and his father also travelled to Darfur in 2006 to shoot a short film about the plight of refugees in. And Clooney insists more should be done to help the Western Sudanese region.
He says, "We have an American election coming so this is the time to put pressure on American candidates, because believe me none of these people want to talk about this issue.
"None of them want to deal with this issue, so right now is the time to place pressure on the people who can actually affect change because we can’t." The former ER star also took time to mention the case of British school teacher Gillian Gibbons, from Liverpool, England, who was arrested in Sudan last month (Nov07) for allowing her class to name a teddy bear after the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
He adds, "A young woman was threatened with forty lashes and six months in jail and it was on the front page of every newspaper for a week in England and America.
"I would suggest that every single human being living in Darfur right now would happily take forty lashes and six months in jail over the treatment that they’re getting. You hope that that kind of coverage would be handed out to everyone, not just one woman who happens to be white and from a Western country."
Movie & Entertainment News provided by World Entertainment News Network (www.wenn.com)
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