Darfur - Where is our anger?

[sparky95]

Not white, not rich, no oil= westerners don't care!

 

[Croynan]

The efforts of the Westen World - including ourselves - the United States - has been a disgusting disgrace.

And their efforts via the United Nations has been even worse.

I cannot believe how the Western civilizations have failed so miserably to take definitive and concerned actions is this failure of mankind.

Of course the other side of this issue is that the excessive wealth sitting in the Middle East could play a major role in trying to get this horrific act of mankind under some degree of control - regionally, they are sitting right there - but I don't seem to have seen much in the news as to what efforts they have put forth in this matter.

Please feel free to chastise me if any of the above comments are incorrect and or offensive to anyone.

eM.

 

[justjoshoh]

We are far too concerned about popular culture to be worried about the minute problem of genocide. Darfur isn't where the Madonna adoption "story" is unfolding. Duke University and the lacrosse team is far away from the mass killings on the streets of Darfur. The public demands to hear about the on-again, off-again friendship of Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie. Chances are they won't be filming "A Simple Life: Darfur" anytime soon. Perhaps, if Heather Mills would make a claim about Sir McCartney tying him to the violence in Darfur, it would receive the appropriate attention. We'd be lucky if the populous even knew about a book written by a Congressional hopeful that details immoral values. Though their reaction would likely be that it is more important the real immoral actions taking place right now.

While some of these stories do have some journalistic interests, some of it should have remained where it had in the years, out of the mainstream media and in the tabloids. The stories that have some journalistic interests need not be covered so much that we devote hours and hours and coverage and lines and lines of text, such that we can get to the really important issues.

 

[Ramindra]

The situation in Darfur is truly a sad situation. I would agree that there is little in the Sudan worth fighting for, and the country poses no threat to the US, or anyone else for that matter.

It is a bit like Rwanda. Who cared that millions died there? In Eritrea and Ethiopia, who really cared that they fought amongst themselves and just about starved to death in the process? And when you do try to help resolve little civil wars, you finish up with situations like "Blackhawk Down". A lot of thanks you get for helping!

We cannot really expect any help from the region which is predominantly Muslim. It is the people from the Christian south of the country who are suffering, and to rectify the situation, neighbours would have to take action against the fellow Muslims.

Thanks to a few natural disasters, like the tsunami, the Pakistani earthquake, Katrina etc, many people are suffering from charity/donor fatigue. It seems to be of late that people have become more inward looking, more involved in their own wellbeing, both as a person and as a nation, than in some dry, tiresome country somewhere in Africa. I think also that we, the international community, have seen so many starving, pot-bellied, fly-ridden African children over the past decade and a half that now we no longer see them. We have switched off. And if we do not see them, we do not care!

Bob Geldhof and Bono try to raise awareness, and they succeed for a second or two, then we switch off again.

Resources that could be used to resolve some of the problems in the Sudan are tied up elsewhere, like in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor etc.

As Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." I think we live in a world of statistics, a world where GDP, CPI and IR mean more than deaths in Africa.

 

[Just_Believe18]

Africa is the forgotten continent.

 

[Sangshao]

I'm not sure what else we can do. The US has imposed its own sanctions, but France, Russia, China, et al, haven't allowed the UN Security Council to do the same. The US isn't sending troops anywhere else(even if they weren't engaged elsewhere they'd never be sent into combat for purely altruistic reasons), and those countries already opposed to sanctions certainly aren't sending their people in. So that's pretty much that. The international community will make a show of negotiating with Sudan until such time that the government tires of slaughering people. Murderous, oppressive, regimes aren't overthrown for merely being murderous and oppressive. Typically such regimes have to be threatening to people outside of their borders before there'll be a significant international response. That's how the nation-state system works, for better or worse. Typically worse.

 

[mojoe54]

Thank you, MattieMich for this post-- Darfur,Rawanda, South Africa-- when will the genocide end? When will the rest of us care enough to make it stop?

 

[bedbugy]

thats



Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 1,035 Re: Darfur - Where is our anger?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not white, not rich, no oil= westerners don't care! abot ight

 

[Sangshao]

Why is war the only options? Why can there be sanctions against N. Korea for weapons but not sanctions against Darfur for this?

The US does have sanctions against Sudan. They've tried for years to get the UN to impose sanctions. But China, France, and Russia all have oil interests in the country that would be threatened by poor relations with Sudan, so basically the security council is incapble of acting. That's pretty much par for the UN course. The Security Council will not impose sanctions, and the Sudanese government is oppposed to UN troops on their soil. So now what?

 

[buzzj]

Thanks for having made an important post! This situation should be a source of shame for every resident of every "developed" country.

 

[frankfrank]

In the view of the U.S., "Black" Africa is either a place to be ignored even if the worst happens (Darfur/Sudan, Zimbabwe), or exploited for resources even if massive suffering is involved (Nigeria, The Congo).

So very sad...there has always been world suffering, but it seems to have been much worse in recent years. Electing more Democrats in the U.S. won't change any of this, sorry to say - but at least it shouldn't get worse.