Mia Farrow turns star wattage on Darfur

BRIDGEWATER, Conn., April 30 (UPI) -- Actress Mia Farrow now channels her Hollywood star power into a different direction: the suffering in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

To stress her point, Farrow uses a presentation that includes photographs she took during her visits to Darfur as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.

"I entered Darfur as a mother, a UNICEF ambassador and an actress," Farrow told the Hartford (Conn.) Courant. "And I came out of Darfur as a mother and a witness."

As part of her crusade against the government-sanctioned violence, Farrow, of Bridgewater, Conn., and her son, Ronan, have had several opinion pieces printed in major newspapers.

The op-ed pieces also criticize governments supporting the Sudanese government. One piece railed against the Chinese government for sending billions of dollars in aid to Sudan in return for access to the country's oil. The Farrows also criticized Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, an artistic adviser to the Chinese for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Since the op-ed pieces were published, Spielberg asked the Chinese president to help end suffering in Darfur. In early April, a Chinese diplomat went to Khartoum to push the Sudanese into accepting a U.N. peacekeeping force, the newspaper said.