BEARING RESPONSIBILITY FOR GENOCIDE
by Carlo Romero
Oklahoma Daily, OK
Oct 4 2005
Staff column
“We have talked; we have sympathized; we have expressed our horror;
the time to act is long past due.”
These words appeared in a 1943 resolution by the U.S. Senate Foreign
Relations Committee calling for the liberation of European Jews from
the Nazi Holocaust.
They need to be spoken again about the genocide in Darfur, Sudan,
before the conscience of another generation is stained.
Already, since 2003, an estimated 300,000 African Sudanese have been
summarily slaughtered by their own Arab government in Darfur. At the
same time, more than 2 million people have been driven from their
homes in Darfur and forced to live indefinitely in refugee camps
in other regions of Sudan or neighboring Chad. Refugees have been
left to fight for sparse humanitarian aid while being harassed by
government militias.
The United States has a responsibility to take definitive action to
stop genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
According to a report by the United Nations International Commission of
Inquiry on Darfur released in January, “Government forces and militias
conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians,
torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and
other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement,
throughout Darfur.”
Alarmingly, the U.N. Commission found that “attacks on villages,
killing of civilians, rape, pillaging and forced displacement have
continued” despite its presence in the Sudan.
On Sept. 9, 2004, the United States declared through then Secretary
of State Colin Powell that the atrocities committed by the Sudanese
government amounted to genocide.
In a statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Powell
cited “a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities committed
against non-Arab villagers” and “that the government of Sudan and
the Janjaweed bear responsibility.”
Powell was right about the scale of human devastation. He was wrong
about who bears responsibility.
In a day and age when a person can fly anywhere in the world in less
than 24 hours, when no First World closet is without textiles from at
least 10 Third-World countries, when the Internet reveals precision
satellite photos of every square mile on the globe at any time of the
day to anyone interested, we all bear responsibility for the genocide
that is taking place in Darfur.
Americans in particular, who still live in a democracy (despite the
complaints of journalists and college professors), bear responsibility
for seeking information about the genocide and provoking their
government leaders to take action.
Tragically, the glaring majority of the civilized world has managed
to ignore the atrocities of Darfur.
Print media have buried stories about Sudan in the depths of their
publications. And, in 2004, NBC and CBS spent a total of eight minutes
covering the genocide in Darfur (Harper’s Index, October 2005). The
fourth estate has failed to fulfill its watchdog role, thus forcing
those interested in Sudan to turn to less accessible sources.
More and more, the situation bears stark resemblance to the genocide
inflicted on Armenians by the Ottoman-Turkish government in the second
decade of the 20th century. Despite a mountain of evidence exposing the
horrors, including photographs of mass graves and execution squads,
the United States held an isolationist stance during the Armenian
genocide and allowed over one million Christian Armenians to fall by
knife, bullet or worse to the Ottoman government. The country that
is now Turkey still denies the genocide ever took place.
The world’s reaction to the genocide in Darfur is also reminiscent
of the reaction to the more recent genocide that took place in Rwanda
in 1994. In Rwanda, more than 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered at the
hands of the Hutu majority while the world watched on the evening news.
The United States never involved itself in Rwandan genocide. And
the United Nations, who maintained peacekeeping troops in the region
to prevent widespread violence prior to the genocide, abandoned the
Tutsis and its purpose when the violence actually escalated.
Last Wednesday, Sept. 28, the U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland
warned about Darfur, “If (violence) continues to escalate, if it
continues to be so dangerous on humanitarian work, we may not be able
to sustain our operation for 2.5 million people requiring lifesaving
assistance.”
We walk into the Holocaust Museum and out of Hotel Rwanda saying
“never again.” Yet, in the words of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,
“It is happening again.”
Americans can only inspire their government to take action in Darfur
by displaying popular sentiment in favor of such action.
We must write our congressmen to voice distress about the genocide
in the Sudan.
We must organize demonstrations to show our leaders that we are
unified in our humanitarian cause.
But first, we must accept responsibility. Then we must act.
-Carlo Romero is a letters senior. His column appears every other
Tuesday, and he can be reached at [email protected].