02nd Apr 2004
Genocide in Africa Not Newsworthy?
I’m listening to the BBC, and I hear a report about human rights atrocities taking place in Sudan. Excerpts from the BBC’s web account:
The Human Rights Watch report, entitled “Darfur in Flames”, echoes the warnings of, among others, United Nations officials and Amnesty International.
It accuses the government in Khartoum of carrying out a scorched-earth campaign in an effort to wipe out the year-old rebellion in the west of the country.
“Government forces and Arab militias are killing, raping and looting African civilians that share the same ethnicities as rebel forces,” said the rights group in a statement.
. . .
The UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Sudan voiced similar concerns last month, describing Darfur as the world’s worst humanitarian and human-rights catastrophe.
What struck me about this was that I hadn’t heard about it elsewhere. Was I just not paying attention, or are the U.S. media letting us down? NYTimes.com has nothing about it (today, anyway) on the front page of its International section, and nothing yet on its Africa page, either. (Perhaps this is breaking news and they’ll be reporting on it by tomorrow). Nothing on NPR about Sudan in the past 30 days, either.
Even if this is a breaking story, that’s just the Human Rights Watch report, not the killings, which sound like they’ve been going on for some time. Why nothing from NPR on the situation in a month? The NYT, to be fair, has been including some wire service reports on the situation lately, and at least one opinion column on the matter. Plus, they ran this letter the other day, “Genocide in Sudan, and Our Silence,” which pretty much sums up my point.
Anyone remember Rwanda?
No tags for this post
Exactly right.
This is genocide.
We must stop it.
Why the silence? Europe, the Arab league, China — influential trading partners and countries with close ties — must bring pressure.
Sudan’s leading trade partners are: China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany
Spread this Googlebomb for Sudan:
Sudan