Sudan
'Media neglects Genocide in Sudan'

afrol.com, 19 November - At the opening this week of the exhibit entitled "Genocide Warning: Sudan" by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jeff Drumtra from the US Committee for Refugees made a powerful speech criticizing the press for its "professional negligence on the matter of Sudan".

- Thank you to the few journalists who are here this afternoon at this press briefing, was the bitter opening remark by Drumtra, which has been fighting windmills for years to make the public aware of the tragedy taking place at Government hands in Sudan. The US media have shown little interest in the campaign of the renown US Committee for Refugees, and non-US media has shown skepticism, as to the "US" prefix of the committee, knowing too well that the US is not the best place to obtain objective data about Sudan. 

The US Committee for Refugees, however, is one of the best sources to obtain data about the conflict in Sudan, as they are present in the war zone and as they operate on an independent basis. Actually, the committee is far more outspoken than the UN and its scandalized Norwegian Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs in the Sudan, Tom Vraalsen, a diplomat more interested in maintaining good contacts with Khartoum than actually meeting with the "Human Garbage" (in Drumtra's words) constituting the victims.

Addressing the "professional journalistic irresponsibility" of the media neglecting the Sudanese genocide, Drumtra told the surprised journalists: "Journalists cover events that are extraordinary. Events that are unprecedented. Events that set records. Sudan is full of records - awful, grisly records. Sudan is full of headlines - grim headlines. Yet American journalism largely ignores Sudan." He went on asking "In what way is Sudan not worthy of coverage?" 

Indeed, Drumtra knew to present the media with headlines: "2 million Sudanese people have died of war-related causes in the past 17 years. That's more deaths than in Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone combined," he could inform. "During Sudan's war, an estimated average of 300 people have died each day, day after day, for 17 years. That's not a story that merits coverage?" 

Refugees: 4.4 million Sudanese are uprooted by the conflict. Photo (c) US Committee for Refugees.

Jeff Drumtra keeps fighting windmills at home while his organisation distributes life-giving aid in one of the world's most war-ridden countries. The war in Sudan actually is the longest uninterrupted civil war in the world. It has been going on for 17 years without stop and uprooted some 4.5 million people. But it doesn't make headlines. "What is happening in Sudan, week after week, is out of the ordinary," he tried to explain journalists. But, he is wrong. 17 years of terror makes terror normality, and what headline is to be made of that the number of uprooted has risen from 4.4 million to 4.5 million? Yes, we are talking about 100,000 persons - but they are Africans and nothing more is expected in the "wild, African interior". It is a sad reality, but it is more a question about the "integrity of American journalism" than the case of Sudan.

The Sudan genocide exhibit in the Holocaust Museum therefore is much more promising when it comes to educate the American public than Drumtra's attacks on the press - however right he might be. It is the first time that the Holocaust Museum has devoted an exhibit to current events in a single country. "The moral power of the Holocaust Museum speaks for itself," as Drumtra says. 

Tens of thousands of people who visit the Holocaust Museum will see this exhibit. It will be their first education about Sudan. "Many will be shocked to learn that there is a place in our world today with such pervasive death, with such massive uprooting of people, with slavery, with religious persecution, with deliberate aerial bombings of civilian and humanitarian targets," as Drumtra said. 

This is an excellent way of informing the public. The lesson should be to involve more organisations in the fight against the Sudanese genocide, and an appropriate question is "Where are the organisations of Afro-Americans in this campaign?" Why are they not crying out about African holocausts such as the Jewish community rightfully has done about the Jewish Holocaust? Where is the Afro-American press?

And where is the African press? Leading African media are shockingly silent on the well-documented Sudanese genocide. Which excuses do they have? African unity?

Source: Based on US Committee for Refugees

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