USA - US actor George Clooney arrested in protest at Sudan Embassy
(16 Mar 2012) On March 16th 2012 George Clooney and his father were arrested during a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, a day after the actor met at the White House with President Barack Obama to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. The protesters accuse Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir of provoking a crisis and blocking food and aid from entering the Nuba Mountains in the county's border region with South Sudan. Clooney, his father, Nick Clooney, and others including Democratic US Representative Jim Moran of Virginia, NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) President Ben Jealous and Martin Luther King III, were arrested after being warned three times not to cross a police line outside the embassy. They were handcuffed and placed into a US Secret Service van. The arrest finished off a week in which Clooney not only met with with President Obama, but testified before a Senate panel and attended a state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron. Clooney told the Associated Press before he was arrested that he can only hope to draw attention to the crisis in Sudan but that he doesn't know if any progress has been made. He said he was impressed, though, with Obama's engagement on the issue. Clooney said he asked the president to involve China more in pushing for a solution in Sudan. And he said international leaders need to "follow the money" flowing to Sudan's leaders to expose corruption. "One thing we really want to happen is to follow the money," he said. "You know, it's a very difficult thing to find the assets and freeze them, freezing them is the tough part. But, as we've seen through the Arab Spring, exposing the gross amounts of money that these leaders have tucked away, oftentimes leads to people, very poor people in their own country to be not pleased with them. So we feel like any sort of exposure like that could also be very helpful and very useful in what we're trying to move forward." Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: / ap_archive Facebook: / aparchives Instagram: / apnews You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...
