Nicholas Kristof: ‘All Ears for Tom Cruise, All Eyes on Brad Pitt’:

If only Michael Jackson’s trial had been held in Darfur. Last month, CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur.

See also Coalition for Darfur: ‘Witness’.

This week’s post from the Coalition for Darfur, by Eugene Oregon:

As Mark Leon Goldberg of the American Prospect reported back in April, the Bush administration was leaning heavily on congressional leaders and managed to stall, andprobably killed, the Darfur Accountability Act.

As Goldberg explained, the bill

[E]stablishes targeted U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime, accelerates assistance to expand the size and mandate of the African Union mission in Darfur, expands the United Nations Mission in Sudan to include the protection of civilians in Darfur, establishes a no-fly zone over Darfur, and calls for a presidential envoy to Sudan.

Because of this pressure, the bill appears to be trapped in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Relations, presumably never to be seen again.

So what is Congress going to do now that sanctions, a no-fly zone and civilian protection are off the table? Apparently it has been reduced to “[encouraging] the people of the United States [to pray] for an end to the genocide and crimes against humanity and for lasting peace in Darfur, Sudan.”

That’s right, the US Congress has been reduced to calling on the American people to pray that somehow this genocide ends.

On July 1st, the US Senate quietly passed S.RES.186

A resolution affirming the importance of a national weekend of prayer for the victims of genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, Sudan, and expressing the sense of the Senate that July 15 through July 17, 2005, should be designated as a national weekend of prayer and reflection for the people of Darfur.

The House passed a companion resolution (H.RES.333) just yesterday.

The key portion of the resolution reads as follows

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

1. supports the goals and ideals of a National Weekend of Prayer and Reflection for Darfur, Sudan;
2. encourages the people of the United States to observe that weekend by praying for an end to the genocide and crimes against humanity and for lasting peace in Darfur, Sudan; and
3. urges all churches, synagogues, mosques, and religious institutions in the United States to consider the issue of Darfur in their activities and to observe the National Weekend of Prayer and Reflection with appropriate activities and services.

This resolution appears to be the work of the Save Darfur Coalition, a vital organization that has done a great deal to raise awareness of the genocide - but what does it say about the level of US commitment to address this situation when Congress is unwilling to do anything beyond simply asking the American people to pray for the dying people of Darfur?

If members of Congress are truly concerned about the deaths of nearly 400,000 Darfuris, or the fates of an estimated 3 million more, they are certainly capable of doing more than quietly declaring a “National Weekend of Prayer and Reflection.”

Save Darfur deserves credit for getting Congress to even do this much, but this resolution cannot absolve Congress of its pathetic failure to adequately address the situation in Darfur. If anything, it only serves to highlight the government’s utter lack of concern.

From the Coalition for Darfur.

The big news regarding Darfur this week is that the International Criminal Court has formally announced that it is conducting an investigation into allegations of crimes against humanity in the region.

This investigation is a welcome, if belated step, but one that is also unlikely to have much of an immediate impact on the violence, disease and starvation that plagues the region.

The investigation is the result of a UN commission of inquiry that began in September 2004. Established under UN Resolution 1564, the commission took three months to investigate “violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in Darfur by all parties, to determine also whether or not acts of genocide have occurred.” In the report it issued in January 2005, the commission declared that genocide was not taking place, but that “serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law amounting to crimes under international law” had indeed occurred. The report went on to recommend that the UN Security Council refer the situation to the ICC for possible prosecution.

In April, the Security Council did just that and turned over evidence gathered by the commission, including the names of 51 people suspected of punishable crimes. And now, two months later, the ICC has finally begun an investigation.

It has taken nine months from the time the Security Council authorized the commission to investigate the crimes in Darfur to reach the point where the ICC has finally launched an official investigation.

The ICC has only been in existence for three years and has yet to indict or hold a trial for anyone connected with either of its two other cases, despite the fact that the ICC began its probe of Uganda in January 2004 and the Congo in April of the same year.

Furthermore, the ICC statute itself contains a provision (Article 17) regarding “complementarity” that grants states the priority to try their own citizens for crimes that fall within the ICC’s jurisdiction. The ICC thus has no jurisdiction over these cases unless it can be determined that “the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution.” And making that determination is going to take time.

Considering that Khartoum has already begun to look at ways to exploit this provision and is openly rejecting calls to cooperate with the ICC, it is likely that, as Nat Hentoff noted, “It will be at least a year, maybe two, before the ICC even issues its first indictments.”

We ask you to join the Coalition for Darfur as we attempt to raise awareness of this genocide and collect contributions for worthy organizations providing life-saving assistance to the forgotten people of Darfur.

Since I’ve been a bit lax on keeping up with my Coalition for Darfur, two for the price of one today:

• Day 141 of Bush’s Silence

  The latest from Nicholas Kristof

  A reader from Eugene, Ore., wrote in with a complaint about my harping on the third world:

  Why should the U.S. care for the rest of the world? he asked. The U.S. should take care of its own. … It’s way past time for liberal twits to stop pushing the U.S. into nonsense or try to make every wrong in the world our responsibility.

  And while that reader wasn’t George W. Bush, it could have been. Today marks Day 141 of Mr. Bush’s silence on the genocide, for he hasn’t let the word Darfur slip past his lips publicly since Jan. 10 (even that was a passing reference with no condemnation).

  [edit]

  When Americans see suffering abroad on their television screens, as they did after the tsunami, they respond. I wish we had the Magboula Channel, showing her daily struggle to forge ahead through humiliation and hunger, struggling above all to keep her remaining children alive. If you multiply Magboula by 2.2 million, you get the reasons why we should care.

  [An update from his next column notes that Mr. Bush finally let the word Darfur pass his lips on Wednesday, after 142 days of silence, but only during a photo op. Such silence amounts to acquiescence, for this policy of rape flourishes only because it is ignored.]

• Improvement is in the Eye of the Beholder

  Jan Pronk, U.N. envoy to Sudan, recently said that Secretary-General Kofi Annan was greatly impressed by improvement of the situation in Darfur. In Pronk’s words

  Mr. Annan was really impressed by the improved situation in Darfur, which he visited on Saturday, Pronk told a press conference in Khartoum.

  [edit]

  Foreign press reports, especially in the American press, which speak of no progress in Darfur are completely untrue, he added.

  At the time Annan was in Darfur, The Scotsman was reporting that

  Confidential African Union (AU) reports have provided damning new evidence of the involvement of Sudanese government forces and their Janjaweed militia allies in the murder and rape of civilians in the Darfur region.

  At the same time, two aid workers from Doctors Without Borders were arrested because of a recent report documenting hundreds of cases of rape in the region.

  On top of that, the World Food Program reported that the number of people requiring food aid in Sudan is now more than six million, while the UNHCR reported that Janjaweed and government attacks have all but destroyed village life and forced some 2 million people into makeshift slums. With the majority of villages destroyed and insecurity rampant, it is not surprising that the displaced have become entirely dependent on foreign aid and are increasingly unwilling to return home.

  As Eric Reeves explained in his most recent update

  Sometime in the summer of 2004 (we will never know precisely when), genocidal destruction in Darfur became more a matter of engineered disease and malnutrition than violent killing. In other words, disease and malnutrition proceeding directly from the consequences of violent attacks on villages, deliberate displacement, and systematic destruction of the means of agricultural production among the targeted non-Arab or African tribal groups became the major killers.

  According to a recent International Crisis Group estimate, a minimum presence of 12,000-15,000 [military] personnel is needed now to undertake the tasks of protecting villages against further attack or destruction. But as it stands now, the African Union hasn’t even been able to deploy the 3,000 or so troops required under its current mandate and will most likely be unable to field the 7,000-12,000 troops called for in its expanded mission.

  Thus, it is rather difficult to comprehend just what sorts of “improvement” Annan and Pronk claim to have witnessed in Darfur.

  The international community continues to fail to seriously addresses this crisis and so we ask you to join the Coalition for Darfur as we attempt to raise awareness of this genocide and collect contributions for worthy organizations providing life-saving assistance to the forgotten people of Darfur.

[additional Kristof excerpt and update added—lc]