Special to the NNPA from the Afro-American Newspaper

 D.C. police arrested protesters that included Oscar winning actor George Clooney, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, Martin Luther King III and five members of Congress March 16 in front of the Sudanese Embassy during a demonstration against that government’s denial of food and aid to its people.“We need immediate humanitarian aid into Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” Clooney, who was arrested along with his father Nick Clooney, 78, told the crowd gathered at the embassy in northwest Washington.

He added that they want “the (Sudanese) government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children.”

Arrested and charged with disorderly conduct with the Clooneys, Jealous and King were comedian and activist Dick Gregory, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), Rep. John Olver (D-Mass.), Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) and former Rep. Tom Andrews (D-Mass.). All were restrained with plastic handcuffs.

The target of the protest is the blockage of supplies by the Sudanese government to an estimated 500,000 people in the nation’s Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile region.

Clooney said that the demonstration is part of a drive to galvanize world opinion against the government of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir.

“We need to stop using rape and food as weapons in Sudan,” he told MS-NBC