| 4-20-07 was spent in NYC at a human rights rally and a bunch of my friends got really into the holiday and enjoyed being in the sun! As for tomorrow I'm going on a date and going to the beach...i love the beach...and dates. But mostly the beach. Halleluiah April vacation!! In the meantime I can't wait until I am 18 and can move the fuck out. I admit I rather hate authority. Though I realize that doesn't make me particularly special. So I turned in my kaylee essay on the genocide in Darfur. Wicked relief to have it over with. I think it came out well. End Genocide in Darfur “As we looked along the horizon, we could see hands and heads sticking out of the trenches," said Marcus Bleasdale, a photographer responsible for capturing pictures of between 30 and 40 mass graves, in which up to 100 people had been buried (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3918765.stm). Marcus Bleasdale was not photographing the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in 1945, or the aftermath of the slaughter in Rwanda in 1994. The horrifying images featured in the photos, released on July 23, 2004, were of victims of the genocide in the region of Sudan called Darfur. Based on a survey taken in 2004, on average, 18,000 innocent civilians in Darfur die each month, which breaks down to an average of 600 victims every single day (Odinkalu). The Bush Administration increased funding for humanitarian aid in Africa from $1.4 billion in 2001, to $4 billion in 2006, with projections to further increase funding to $9 billion in 2010 (Fletcher). However, compared to the $418 billion that the United States has spent so far on the war in Iraq (http://nationalpriorities.org), a mere $4 billion a year, from the super power of the world, to support an entire ethnic population facing imminent eradication from the face of the planet does not seem so generous. In a poll commissioned by the Genocide Intervention Network in December 2006, 1,018 adults were asked how much they had heard about the situation in Darfur; 26% answered they heard a lot, 33% answered they heard some, 24% answered they heard a little, and 16% answered they heard nothing at all (http://www.genocideintervention.net). The genocide in Darfur needs to be addressed immediately through increased US funding for humanitarian aid, increased action from the UN Human Rights Council, and increased media coverage. Darfur contains two ethnic groups, the African farmers and the Arabic nomads. Classification into either category is determined by whether the people harvest crops or herd livestock, and by the language they speak, and not by actual heritage. Arabs began to dominate the government over the course of the past century, which made being Arab politically advantageous, causing rebels to describe themselves as Africans fighting an Arab government. The stated political aim of the rebel armies is to compel the Sudanese government to address the political marginalization permeating the region. Since 2003, Sudanese government supported militia called the Janjaweed, a racist pro-Arab extremist group, in coalition with the Sudanese armed forces, have been fighting two rebel groups in Darfur, The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/SLM). The Sudanese armed forces and the Janjaweed have targeted the civilian populations the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa, to prevent their providing any support to the JEM or the SLM/SLA. (http://hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/4.htm). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Gutteres, described the situation in Sudan as “the largest and most complex humanitarian problem on the globe” (http://www.justiceinitiative.org). The reason for this statement may possibly be that already 400,000 people have been brutally killed by starvation, disease, and violence, leaving behind at least 2.5 million civilians who were forced to escape Darfur for displaced-persons camps in Sudan, or for refugee camps in neighboring Chad. Today, over 3.5 million Sudanese people rely on international aid in order to survive. The number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), or civilians who have been forced to flee Darfur to seek safety somewhere else Sudan to avoid armed conflict and human rights abuses, has reached a staggering 1.85 million. (http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/background). According to international law, the crime of genocide is defined in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, as possessing two elements. The first being the mental element, meaning the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” According to this definition, in order to stand accused of “intent to destroy”, the crimes committed must include all of the following: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy a group, prevention of births, and the forcible transfer of children. The second element is the physical element, which is the mental element being put into action by committing genocide. In order for a conflict to earn the label of genocide it must contain all of the mental and physical elements. (http://www.preventgenocide.org) According to BBC News, in 2004, the US House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution, with 422 votes, that the Bush Administration should call the massacre in Darfur by its rightful name: ‘genocide’. In this same year, the Bush Administration doubled the amount of money being given to humanitarian aid in Africa to $4 billion (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3918765.stm). Unfortunately for the entire world, however, the Bush Administration also chose to spend 100 times what it spent on humanitarian relief for all of Africa, on the war in Iraq. According to a poll of 1,018 adults taken by the Genocide Intervention Network in 2007, 62% voted that Darfur should be one of the US’s top/high priorities (http://www.preventgenocide.org). In a CBS News Poll, conducted in April 2007, 994 adults were asked if the US did the right thing by entering Iraq, or if the U.S. should have stayed out. The majority voted that the US should not have entered Iraq with 51% against the 44% of those who voted that the US made the right decision. (http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm) The numbers all speak for themselves; the US government agrees and acknowledges that what continues in Darfur is genocide. American citizens have voted that they would support the government if it made Darfur a major priority (http://www.genocideintervention.net), and American citizens have voted that they currently do not agree with the Bush Administration that the war in Iraq should remain a major priority (http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm). If $4 billion has made a difference to the humanitarian relief effort in Sudan, imagine the difference the $400 billion could make, that has already been spent on the war in Iraq. The UN Human Rights Council was created in 2006; its General Assembly is made up of 47 members, and their purpose is to “protect and promote the fundamental freedoms of people around the world” (http://chomun.uchicago.edu/com/hrc.htm). Created to replace the infamously ineffective Commission on Human Rights, the United States declined a seat in the council, because the State Department felt the rules of the council were not designed to prevent human rights violators from getting a seat (Pleming). China has a seat on the new Council, despite its public opposition to the US efforts to implement sanctions on Sudan, and despite its public support of the Sudanese government in the battle to replace the current peace keeping force, the African Union, with a larger UN peacekeeping force (http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/membership.htm). China’s seat in the Human Rights Council, despite their economic alliance with the Sudan, who is China’s fourth largest supplier of imported oil, gives validity to the US argument against joining the Council. So far, the main accomplishment of the Human Rights Council was in December 2006 with the drawing up of the Darfur Peace Agreement, which was signed months later by the largest rebel group in Darfur, the SLM (http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/4/docs/A_HRC_S_4_5_en.pdf). However, without the cooperation of the Sudanese government, this document cannot be put into action, and is therefore useless. The UN Human Rights Council overall is an ineffective body because the US is not a member of the council, China is a member of the council, and there have been no results to speak of nearly a year later despite the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement. The American Progress Action Fund performed an analysis of network news coverage of the Darfur crisis, and revealed just how obsessed the media is with the trivial at the expense of serious news developments like genocide. According to the analysis, ABC News aired 468 segments discussing the Michael Jackson trial, and aired ten segments discussing genocide in Darfur, in June 2005. Likewise, CBS aired 614 segments on Michael Jackson; NBC aired 526 segments, CNN aired 878 segments, Fox News aired 1,753 segments, and finally MSNBC aired a staggering 2,009 segments, all in June 2005. As for the coverage of Darfur by these networks at the same time, CBS did not air a single segment, NBC showed five, CNN showed 47, Fox News aired 41, and MSNBC aired 23. The American public received 50 times more coverage about Michael Jackson’s life, as they did coverage about the lives of an entire ethnicity facing extinction in Darfur. With all of the network’s numbers combined, the media in June 2005 was responsible for 8,303 total segments on the Michael Jackson trial, the “runaway bride”, and Tom Cruise, and only 126 segments covering genocide in Darfur. Approximately ¾’s of Americans claim to receive their information about the world from news on the television, instead of newspapers, magazines, and the internet, which explains why still so few people have even heard of Darfur, never mind done anything to help Darfur. (http://www.beawitness.org/methodology). According to Sara Flounders of the Centre for Research on Globalization, the United States is utilizing the situation in Darfur to its advantage in order to distract attention from the unjustified war in Iraq, to “further demonize” Arab and Muslim people, and to gain access to large oil reserves, large deposits of natural gas, and one of the largest deposits of high-purity uranium in the world, all located in Sudan. Finally Flounders points out how very suspicious it is that so many “leading architects of imperialist policy” such as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gen. Wesley Clark and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have all argued in favor of intervention in Sudan. In conclusion, Flounders believes the UN and the US should leave Sudan alone, because any help they might provide would be selfishly motivated, and unwanted. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=FLO20060606&articleId=2592) To say that the American people are going to be so easily distracted from the war in Iraq is an insult to the American people. The situation in Iraq is in no way relevantly related to the situation in Darfur, and is not going to be dismissed from the attention of at least 62% of the American population, who believe the US did the wrong thing by entering into Iraq in the first place (http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm). In fact, the situation in Darfur emphasizes the importance of not being in an entanglement in Iraq, because if it weren’t for the war our resources could be used to alleviate the problems harrowing Sudan. Furthermore, according to the USHMM, the Janjaweed are “recruited, armed, trained, and supported by the Sudanese government, and are drawn from several small nomadic groups who claim an Arab identity. They have used racial slurs while attacking and raping the targeted groups, who are considered non-Arab. The ethnic and perceived racial basis of the violence has been well documented by the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, independent human rights organizations, and international journalists” (http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/alert/darfur/contents/01-overview/). As for America’s interest in gaining access to Sudan’s natural resources, it is certain that America would not be willing to provoke a conflict with China by trying to steal the resources of their fourth largest oil provider (http://www.iags.org/china.htm). As for the “leading architects of imperialist policy” all wanting to intervene in the genocide in Darfur for personal selfish gain, it seems rather unlikely. Flounders made it unclear what all of the various heads of state would have to gain from sending money and humanitarian aid to the starving, raped, and thirsty land of Sudan; she also made her statement under the cynical assumption that they care even less than she about the hundreds of thousands of people being raped and murdered every single day. The Centre for International Justice conducted a survey, for the State Department, of the Darfurian refugee population; their results were that 67% had witnessed the murder of a non-family member, 61% had witnessed the murder of someone in their family, 44% had survived being shot at, 28% were victims of forced displacement, 25% had been abducted, and 16% had been raped (http://www.justiceinitiative.org). One personal story is of an 18 year old girl named Hawa, who lives alone in a hut of plastic bags and sticks in a refugee camp. Three years prior, she was kidnapped in the middle of the night by the Janjaweed and raped. Everyday she is reminded of the rape, not only because she suffers pain in her stomach and cannot sit for long periods of time, but also because the uncle and aunt who raised her will have nothing to do with her because of it. (http://hrw.org). We the people must demand of our government as much money as it takes to keep this from happening ever again. In history it has never been an acceptable thing to standby and apathetically witness genocide, and it is not an acceptable thing to do today. China, one of the 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council, responded to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s urging of the Council to neglect their powers of sovereignty and sanctity of national borders “in the higher interests of protecting hapless civilians caught up in war” saying, “Such arguments as ‘human rights taking precedence over sovereignty’ seem to be in vogue these days”( http://www.iags.org/china.htm). If the United Nations Human Rights Council is ever going to accomplish anything, it must be a more exclusive body, consisting only of members of the world truly dedicated to peace and the improvement of human rights for the world. Finally, the American Progress Action Fund said at the conclusion of their survey of major new networks in 2005, “If television does not cover the genocide in Sudan, it does not exist in the minds of many Americans. If it does not exist in the public’s mind, there is no sense of urgency, and no public pressure on world leaders to do anything to stop the killing” (http://www.beawitness.org/methodology). In light of this the time has long since past for the media to stop providing trivial information and instead report on important events, to better prepare its viewers to change the world. So yeah a whole bunch of my friends are in Egypt right now and Remy is in FL... : ( yay for them and sad for me to not have them for a whole week at least. That's all. |
