Nick Kristof brings the horrors of genoicide in the Sudan close to home with a column showing and explaining four graphic photos — indicative of the kind of murders that have elicited official pronouncements but policy yawns in many parts of the west.
Check them out for yourself and read each explanation. Note that it’s believed some of these hapless victims were castrated, raped and burned alive. And then realize these were the ones he COULD publish in the staid pages of The New York Times. He writes:
So what can stop this genocide? At one level the answer is technical: sanctions against Sudan, a no-fly zone, a freeze of Sudanese officials’ assets, prosecution of the killers by the International Criminal Court, a team effort by African and Arab countries to pressure Sudan, and an international force of African troops with financing and logistical support from the West. But that’s the narrow answer. What will really stop this genocide is indignation…
Web sites like www.darfurgenocide.org and www.savedarfur.org are trying to galvanize Americans, but the response has been pathetic….But the real obscenity isn’t in printing pictures of dead babies – it’s in our passivity, which allows these people to be slaughtered.
During past genocides against Armenians, Jews and Cambodians, it was possible to claim that we didn’t fully know what was going on. This time, President Bush, Congress and the European Parliament have already declared genocide to be under way. And we have photos. This time, we have no excuse.
So why the seeming indifference? Is it because of a news overload? Because terrorism has transformed what the human mind now accepts as part of the norm of brutality? Is it because violence as entertainment has desensitized people a bit?
Regardless, he’s right…the murder of people of all ages and sexes…in ways hideously demeaming, terrifying and painful…goes on with a big “Oh, well” and a shoulder shrug from most governments. Then the questions become: what are the moral requirements and what are the practical options?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.