Farrow says Darfur campaign her most important role
HONG KONG (AFP) — Despite a glittering acting career that has brought worldwide fame, Mia Farrow said Friday the campaign to end violence in troubled Darfur had been the "most important endeavour" of her life.
Speaking in Hong Kong as the Olympic torch relay passed through the city, the 63-year-old said the campaign -- which has seen her travel the world to highlight the crisis in the Sudanese region -- now consumed her focus.
"It has eclipsed everything in my life except for my children," she told AFP in an interview in the southern Chinese city, where she was using the relay to pressure Beijing to use its leverage on the Sudanese government.
"I wasn't there when two of my grandchildren were born. That was an immense personal sacrifice for me and immense sacrifice for my sons."
But the star of "Rosemary's Baby", "The Great Gatsby" and "Hannah and her Sisters" has no regrets about the undertaking.
"There is so much head-banging, it is hard to call it rewarding," she said, ahead of a speech and small symbolic protest in the city as she tries to link this summer's Beijing games with the continuing violence in Darfur.
"But it is certainly my most important endeavour. Whether it succeeds or not, I know the effort is the most important thing I have ever undertaken."
Farrow's Hong Kong trip was the culmination of a shadow torch relay which has visited countries where mass killings have taken place, including Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur itself.
More than two million people have fled their homes since the Sudanese government enlisted militia allies to put down a revolt in the region in 2003.
The United Nations said last month that the death toll in Darfur from five years of war, famine and disease had reached 300,000, a toll Farrow said the Chinese government is complicit in.
"It isn't a pretty way to say this, but China is underwriting the atrocities in Darfur through the oil revenues which now top 4 billion US dollars a year," she said.
"Some 70 percent of that money has been used to attack the population of Darfur."
"I don't believe for a second that Sudan could have continued this level of destruction against its own people for more than five years without the backing of a giant, and that giant is China," she added.
Farrow said that although she remains frustrated that her campaign has been unable to stop the violence on the ground, which she fears has increased in recent months, she believes raising the issue is an imperative.
She pointed to China's decision to appoint an envoy to Darfur, and its decision to back a UN security council resolution, as small but crucial steps.
Farrow has more than a dozen children, many of whom are adopted, with conductor Andre Previn, director Woody Allen and later as a single mother. She said her determination was driven by a sense of wider responsibility.
"I have told my children that we are part of the larger human family. When one of us is suffering we all suffer. And if we turn away, then surely we are diminished in the most essential way."
