Darfur, the ICC, the media, and us
So last week something important happened. The International Criminal Court took a major step toward prosecuting war criminals responsible for atrocities in Darfur. This includes Sudanese government officials. From the ICC press release:
Today ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo presents evidence showing that Ahmad Muhammad Harun, former Minister of State for the Interior of the Government of the Sudan, and Ali Kushayb, a leader of the Militia/Janjaweed, jointly committed crimes against the civilian population in Darfur.
Based on evidence collected during the last 20 months, the Prosecution has concluded there are reasonable grounds to believe that Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb, (also known as Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman) bear criminal responsibility in relation to 51 counts of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes. The evidence shows they acted together, and with others, with the common purpose of carrying out attacks against the civilian populations.
The crimes were allegedly committed during attacks on the villages and towns of Kodoom, Bindisi, Mukjar, and Arawala in West Darfur between August 2003 and March 2004. The Prosecution has focused on some of the most serious incidents and the individuals who, according to the evidence, bear the greatest responsibility for those incidents.
This is a BIG DEAL story. Sooooo, how much media attention did it get? Surely this is something that hogged the headlines, since after all, this is a major step to stop a genocide / impact a humanitarian disaster.
Er... well, in an ideal world, at least. But no. In the U.S., the story was ignored.
Check this out:
When International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo presented evidence against two individuals for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur on Tuesday, some national media covered it significantly more than others. Ahmad Muhammad Harun, former Minister of State and head of the “Darfur Security desk” in 2003-2004, and Ali Kushayb, a Janjaweed commander, were the first names related to Darfur atrocities presented to the court, so the announcement was important both because it was new and because the Prosecutor had decided to start with some key figures, not small fry.
But as far as media were concerned, the Europeans were far more interested than the Americans. A quick trawl through Factiva in recent days looking for keywords "Ocampo" and "Darfur" (with spellings adjusted for different languages) returned 103 articles in European sources but only 14 in the US. Mind you, Europe returns higher results on other foreign affairs issues, but not with such a huge gap as that -- using "Iraq" and "Maliki" in the same timeframe, for example, gives you 390 in Europe vs 234 in the US.
103 to 14 is probably a fair representation of the very different levels of interest in the story in two places. This may be somewhat surprising given that media interest in Darfur has generally been higher in the US than in Europe over the past few years. It probably has more to do with suspicious US attitudes towards the ICC in general. As one American media watcher told me, the feeling about the story in the States was, "The Hague? What's that?"
I don't know why this happens. The article suggests it's because the ICC is making the story and Americans are "suspicious" of the ICC (in which case I partly blame Bush for his repeated attempts to destroy the court's credibility). Whatever it is, it's another example of a major story affecting an important political issue going largely unreported in the U.S. And people wonder why disasters like Darfur happen! There are a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is a nine-letter four-letter word called IGNORANCE.
Bearing witness
It's not suprising that this was ignored in the US. We rejected the ICC treaty, and have ignored the situation in Darfur for the most part for years. We have shown nothing but contempt for the activities of the international community, and been almost isolationist in our policies for nearly a decade.
The story wasn't totally killed by the media, I did see it, I believe in the Times, or possibly the Post. The fact is that most people ignored it because they didn't care, they didn't want to see. That really is why we're here. We care, we open our eyes and see the world around us.
We are here to bear witness to the world and to act on what we see. I hope we can rally around that idea.
Peace and love,
Joe!
Post new comment